Guild Wars 2

swilkers.5938:

Yams.6082:

swilkers.5938:

I have a level 9 thief that can dominate players in WvW. It’s a joke playing a backstab thief in WvW.

I’d like to report this nincompoop for hacking. Either that, or he owns up to the drivel that he’s spouting.

Really? Wearing ZERO armor I can kill several in a mob. If you can’t kill much then maybe you should LTP.

Like Yams says … nincompoop.

bhagwad.4281:

So with the latest patch, I’ve finally got a reason to enter WvW. I know the basic mechanics – basically “Hold onto your Points! Seize theirs!”.

The problem is that it’s huge. So when I go in, I ask “Where’s help needed?” I get a name, spent some time finding it on the map. Then I’m on my way. Usually takes me 5 mins to get there and by that time it’s all over…if I even manage to reach it!

So I figure this would go easier with a party. I ask in map chat if there’s any slot open and no response – at least for the three or four times I’ve tried it.

Occasionally I catch a zerg and follow along…but I don’t really know what’s happening, or why the direction of the zerg changed, or where we’re going next.

So…how do you guys go about it?

Find a server with a server-wide voice chat (Devona’s Rest has one on TeamSpeak3) and listen. Commanders will usually be talking tactics and you can determine where most people are on the map. During chat lulls you can ask questions, and if you get snarky replies you picked the wrong server.

Personally, I’m glad that the WXP bonuses are mostly minor relative to the insane amount of play time it will take to achieve them. If the grind is so extreme as to not really be worth it then it really isn’t a grind that many players will waste their time on like Anet did implementing it.

I love the removal of culling, but I find all this showering of praise for Anet pretty silly. ANet made some really ignorant game engine and server side rendering decisions when they put this game together and had to implement culling as a crutch to make the game even playable. After seven months they patched together enough elements that should have been there at launch in order to be able to remove culling. Now that players can actually see each other in WvW, more of them have decided to give it a try with the result that skill lag … a function of really poor server side hardware and network decisions … is making the game virtually unplayable for many.

This thread is like me thanking my grocer because he only sold me one wormy apple instead of two.

Ralathar.7236:

1st I want to mention that this is the players fault not Anets. Yes Anet designed the system that does in fact encourage it to a degree, but the players choose to do it. If people were not total cowardly, instant gratification, skilless kittens you wouldn’t see this.

Now you more properly appreciate one of the big difficulties with giving players freedom and choices, people today more often than not take the “easy” route to “win”.

2nd it has been mentioned several times that Anet actually wants to add more incentive to defense and supportive roles. Unfortunately botters screw us all over on that. We can’t even have Dolyaks because, once again, people.

So yes, Anet made changes and people are trying to exploit them (though they could just as easily do a good defense and earn points) but we, the players, are to blame. Not Anet.

This is what happens in mainstream games. When games were less mainstream you’d see alot less of this kind of stuff and people self-policed alot better.

That’s just stupid. You can’t blame players for following the reward path that ANet laid out for them. In fact, LOTS of players predicted this would happen and practically begged ANet to reconsider how they set up these rewards. This falls squarely in ANet’s lap.

Terok.7315:

Yea, my skill lag is absolutely ridiculous. It can get as high as 5 seconds, but on average it takes about 2-3 seconds for a skill to execute. Oddly enough, everything else is perfectly fine. For the first time ever I’m able to participate in large scale battles without my game slowing to a crawl or magical legions of angry JQ people appearing out of nowhere. :P

Once they get this skill lag sorted out, WvW performance will probably be near perfect for my system.

It’s a server-side hardware issue so don’t hold your breath.

Anyone with half a brain could have seen this coming and dozens publicly predicted it. The amazing thing is that ANet has said a few times lately that their objective is to “reduce the zerginess” of WvW.

It’s hilarious when devs don’t even understand their own game.

D W.5179:

This is the problem with communications coming from all over the place instead of one controlled organized place, like the official forums. I never know where to get my GW2 news from LOL.

^this^ … a hundred times ^this^

ANet has the most ridiculous and disorganized concept of how to communicate with their players base. Some things show up only on Twitter or Facebook, some show up only on third party fan websites, some show up only in convention interviews, some show up in separate dev blogs, and a few show up in one forum thread but not the official announcement thread. It’s totally haphazard and makes ANet look like noobs from a media coordination point of view.

DeWolfe.2174:

For Anet not knowing or not saying, that is two different things. I give them way more credit. Fore, if they know the population distribution of particular builds in WvW, they know the base population as well. Loot from my understanding is a separate issue entirely. I believe the game was originally design that you manually had to loot the corpse. Possibly even fighting over whom would get the loot even. Thus, auto loot is something more complex when they have layers of code to undo.

Then you give ANet too much credit and you haven’t kept abreast of several forum threads on the topic of player queues in spite of mostly empty maps. You also should read the ANet response from almost back at launch when they admitted they didn’t know where all the players were that were supposedly causing queues.

And obviously autoloot is a separate issue. I only brought it up as a comparison for coding effort, and you’re delusional if you think that implementing a player voting scheme takes significantly less coding than adding autoloot would. My point about ANet needing to keep track of players who leave the map while the vote is in progress apparently went right over your head.

So yeah … of course you still like your idea. It’s human nature not to objectively judge your own.

Cactus.2710:

My biggest hope for tomorrow’s patch is that it doesn’t totally break something.

LOL. It looks like that hope of mine didn’t pan out at all. ANet had to shut down WvW entirely after the patch. I guess that’s one way to make culling go away.

Let’s see now … ANet can’t even tell for certain how many players are actually on a map, and they’ve already said that they don’t have the resources to change things like making loot bags autostack in your inventory. But you guys think they are going to code a pop up voting mechanism based upon player populations that also keeps track of who voted and whether they’re still on the map or not, or whether they logged out and then logged back in to vote again.

I see ………

My biggest hope for tomorrow’s patch is that it doesn’t totally break something.

Markadis.9012:

How is it obvious that Anet hasn’t cared about WvW for the last 7 months?

So all the updates and changes to WvW that has been coming before this big patch is… what? Non-existent?

Inconsequential.

Please list “all those changes” in WvW since launch that you think significantly and positively affected game play. Seriously … amuse us.

chrisk.4320:

Cactus.2710:

That’s the part I don’t understand. All of these hacks are by definition client side, and ANet knows EXACTLY what the client application should look like. It seems to me that some simple code check (hell, even a parity check) should be able to tell whether or not somebody has modified their client. Why should that be so difficult? If somebody smarter than me knows what I’m missing here I’d appreciate being clued in.

They don’t modify any game files, they modify the memory. I’m not sure how it works, but memory editing cheats dates back to the ages of Game Genie or GameShark, except now they use specialized programs or CheatEngine.

Yes, of course I understand that the hacks don’t actually modify the files on the hard disk … they modify the file residing in memory. But the “file” in memory is the code that the server is interacting with, and it seems to me that it wouldn’t take much for the server to periodically check that code to see if any of it had been modified. It wouldn’t have to check the entire amount of code … just random sections.

chrisk.4320:

World of Warcraft has Warden. It’s automatic. You do some ridiculous thing like teleport around or speed hack, it catches you. You get banned in a few minutes of use. It watches 3rd party programs modifying memory of the game, which is how these hacks work.

That’s the part I don’t understand. All of these hacks are by definition client side, and ANet knows EXACTLY what the client application should look like. It seems to me that some simple code check (hell, even a parity check) should be able to tell whether or not somebody has modified their client. Why should that be so difficult? If somebody smarter than me knows what I’m missing here I’d appreciate being clued in.

gennyt.3428:

The GW2 client has a lot of authority, it lowers the overhead for Anet. Don’t hold your breath waiting for hacks to become a non issue.

It seems to me that it could even get worse since tomorrow’s culling patch offloads more processes to the client instead of being processed at the server. Anything client-side can be hacked.

There’s something really, really, really really wrong with the basic game when people have to try to come up with “game-within-a-game” ideas to make things interesting. I would MUCH prefer that ANet spend their time and resources fixing the basic issues (lag, maps, matches, etc) in WvW than wasting time on distractions like this.

Antoos.1465:

Maybe a zone where siege weapons cannot be used? theres nothing worse than constantly being shot by cannons/arrow carts because people are too scared to fight. they constantly resort to sitting on a cannon, you either fight 50+ ikittenerg or watch as people retreat to the safety of their keeps. why level to 80 if your just going to sit there and press 1 over and over?

Playing as a guardian, siege weapons arent that much of a threat. But i go WvW to fight other players, not to dodge cannonballs.

There’s your problem right there. You go to WvW when instead you should be going to sPvP or tournaments. Try reading the description for WvW before you whine. You’re like the guy who buys a ticket to Siberia so he can vacation on the beach.

MiLkZz.4789:

Convenant.7092:

No… ArenaNet clearly stated multiple times that this was to get you that “finding a treasure” sense. Which is completely stupid.

No it is not, I like it. And if you die you don’t deserve bags, it’s that simple.

I like lootbags, they make for nice screenshots and reward the person who wins the batlle. There won’t come a ‘put loot in bag’ function because the encumbered thing. And put it in your bank or what not, takes the pleasure out of it.

They wont chance the system and I hope they wont either.

LOL. The time you spend running around collecting easter eggs is time you don’t spend helping your team, especially if they’ve run off to actually play the game. You have a weird sense of what “pleasure” is in PvP. Besides, like many others have said … ANet could have easily let loot bags autostack in your inventory until you had the opportunity to open them later.

EnRohbi.2187:

Am I the only one who spams the Interact key while in zerg fights?

Devs have stated before they won’t put in a real autoloot system, I believe their reasoning had something to do with handling items when your inventory was full, but I don’t remember perfectly and don’t want to sift through thousands of dev posts to find a citation.

Just be glad it’s not like PvE and you have to actually go to your enemy’s corpse to loot it.

Actually, what they stated was that they were initially worried about inventories getting filled up and that they also thought opening a bag gave a sense of discovery. They admitted that they didn’t give it any thought beyond that, and they said that now it would take more resources to fix than they are willing to throw at it. Stacking loot bags for later opening would have been the smart way to go, but apparently ANet isn’t motivated to do anything about it.

Cruces.3280:

What if server population in WvW was scaled based upon the lowest teams population?

This would allow for balanced game place and eliminate the massive population zergs.
It’s funny to see players in Jade Quarry and Blackgate crow about how good they are with multiple massive zergs runnning in all maps at the same time.

This would be based upon the tier you are currently fighting in, not the entier server population.

If server population was scaled based upon the lowest teams population the winning servers would be based entirely on skill and not player prostitutes.

I’ll give you the same three examples of why this is a dumb idea that I posted for the other guy who didn’t think this through either:

-1. Let’s say that at some point in time Server A tries to field 20 players, Server B tries to field 40 players , and Server B tries to field 60 players. If you cap the number of players on the map to 20 you have 60 players who are shut out of the game entirely. Maybe eight hours later the situation flips with Server A trying to field more players than the other two servers, and now you still have a bunch of players who cannot play the game. The surest way to kill any activity is to make sure you exclude lots of people who would otherwise want to participate.

-2. Let’s say that Server A fields 40 players and both of the other two servers are capped at that level. After an hour or so ten of the players from Server A decide to log off or jump from EB to their BL. What are you going to do … boot ten of the players in EB from each of the other servers to restore balance? How are you going to choose which ones have to leave? I’d like to see the kittenstorm when that happens.

-3. Player caps only make sense on a map by map basis. Under your scheme I’d have our server put all our players in our own BL to start, capture everything possible, then pull EVERYONE out so that neither of the other servers could even get in the map.

Energetik.6471:

1v1v1

not 25v1v1
not 25v25v1
not 1v25v25
not 25v1v25

1v1v1

One man out, one man in.

Balanced.

The March 26th patch better fix this issue or you’ll have lopsided games forever.

I’ve argued with you on this topic in the past using generalities, but since you still can’t seem to understand this is an unworkable idea I’ll try to describe some specific examples why:

-1. Let’s say that at some point in time Server A tries to field 20 players, Server B tries to field 40 players , and Server B tries to field 60 players. If you cap the number of players on the map to 20 you have 60 players who are shut out of the game entirely. Maybe eight hours later the situation flips with Server A trying to field more players than the other two servers, and now you still have a bunch of players who cannot play the game. The surest way to kill any activity is to make sure you exclude lots of people who would otherwise want to participate.

-2. Let’s say that Server A fields 40 players and both of the other two servers are capped at that level. After an hour or so ten of the players from Server A decide to log off or jump from EB to their BL. What are you going to do … boot ten of the players in EB from each of the other servers to restore balance? How are you going to choose which ones have to leave? I’d like to see the kittenstorm when that happens.

-3. Player caps only make sense on a map by map basis. Under your scheme I’d have our server put all our players in our own BL to start, capture everything possible, then pull EVERYONE out so that neither of the other servers could even get in the map.

natanfk.1649:

So, the lagging problem is on my CPU or on arenanet servers?

Because I get INSANE lag when playing WvW (and I didn’t get this lag a few months ago), and I play every other game on max and it’s fine… even on low graphic it lags

Ability lag (aka skill lag) is strictly a server-side problem caused by more load than the engine/servers/network can handle.

Culling is BOTH a server-side (load reducer) and a client-side (toaster rendering) issue, but without culling the load is heavier on the engine/servers/network than it would be with culling.

ANet believes that they have fixed the client-side aspects of culling to the point that they are willing to remove it in the next patch, but they have said that lag will not improve. They have coded some things differently and given players some rendering options so that a wider range of computers can function without culling, but they haven’t done anything to upgrade anything server-side. Load mismatches are still going to give us lots of ability lag.

Vena.8436:

Johje Holan.4607:

I don’t believe that. Because I don’t believe in coincidences. The serious crippling lag started recently.

The problems are caused by two separate things, again this has been elaborated upon by multiple people here, but you’re free to believe that Habib is lying to you for kittens and giggles.

Not to mention that, on the majority, the issues of these past few weeks are a bit far removed from two months ago when affinity culling was added. Its a matter of coincidence if they actually happened together, not close to or over a month apart.

You’ve said that several times and you’ve been wrong each time. Culling and ability lag are not unrelated, and in fact culling was originally instituted to minimize lag … although it is true that there are things that affect client side rendering (an aspect of culling) that do not strongly affect server side lag.

Here’s a test for you. Please make a list of the things that affect lag, and then make a separate list of the the things that affect culling.

Roo Stercogburn.9671:

I’m really excited. I love hearing uninformed opinions and a lot of what I’m reading is great!

Uninformed opinions is what you get when the devs respond so poorly and what little previews they do provide show up in obscure blogs instead of official forum posts.

Porky.5021:

Grithan Soulforge.5726:

Or you know… actually respond to all the people who have been reporting the character for days..

This.

The in game GM’ing of this game is pretty bad compared to other games I’ve played. In other MMO’s I’ve had GM’s pop up next to me to go over an issue I was reporting.

Here….meh…..not even close to the same thing. Reporting seems to be a total waste of time here.

Rift’s version of WvW (Conquest) was horrible, which is why I left that game, but they had GREAT customer service. Devs commented on issues and problems quickly and candidly in the forums, and GM’s were so responsive that they often whispered me for clarification within minutes of my submitting a ticket or report. ANet is at the far end of the bell curve in this regard … their attention to their customers is amazingly bad.

Magnetron.5823:

You know what i want?

~ No more skill lag
~ No more culling
~ New maps

Same here … except that ANet just stated that skill lag will get no better for a long time (per Habib’s post) and they also pretty much admitted that they have no plans to add more maps to WvW (see Mike Ferguson interview at http://guildwars-2.ru/an-interview-with-guild-wars-2-team/ )

Vv W.7821:

So please, don’t jump on the “no more PvE in WvW” bandwagon unless you’re willing to stand at a camp for hours on end and defend it, those NPCs have a role, albeit a very weak one in their current state.

It’s not a bandwagon … I’d be against adding more PvE to WvW if nobody had ever complained about it. I play WvW for two things … the strategy aspects of trying to outwit the other team(s) and the skill aspects of trying to outfight other players. NPCs (quaggans, dredge, etc … even guards) add a minor element to the strategy side of things, but making it more important to fight NPCs than other players is NOT what WvW was intended to be.

If I wanted to fight “superior NPC’s” or dragons or bosses I’d go do dungeons, but I hate that playstyle and I play WvW so I don’t have to do it.

TwoBit.5903:

Progression is simply incentive; it’ll help retain players, but it won’t bring back players who have left WvW due to fundamental design issues. I don’t recall these players specifically asking for “progression,” either. Purpose and engagement maybe, but not “progression.”

^this^

“Progression” is simply the simplest and cheapest way for the devs to distract players from fundamental design flaws in the basic game. Can’t make the game more creative? Can’t afford to make the game refresh itself so it doesn’t get boring? Can’t figure out how to add more depth to the game? Just add “progression” and pretend it’s content.

Personally, I don’t understand why players ever fall for this kind of ploy. The donkey that settles for chasing the carrot at the end of the stick may not realize there is no worthwhile end objective, but humans should be able to figure that out.

Draehl.2681:

I’m sure many of you will disagree, but I would love to see more emphasis placed on defeating (and defending) guards. I, for one, glean a good deal of enjoyment from taking the yaks/waypoints, but there is really only so much of this you can do. While siege always will be a large part of WvW, I find that running supply and using the sieges can be rather dull and there’s not always manageable groups of other players to fight.

A brief (un-fleshed-out) example.

What if players could use supply on some item, that when used would call out a “Champion Captain of the Guard” from the keep? He would be leashed to the immediate area around the keep, but if defeated might remove 10% from the hp of the gate and/or destroy some supply within the keep.

Just a basic idea, but something like this would be great for those of us who tire of siege and (especially) like PvEvP.

Count me among those who disagree with you. I’ve never understood why players think adding more PvE to WvW is the way to make WvW more interesting or exciting. Turning WvW into a pseudo-dungeon just seems stupid to me.

dreztina.4820:

There’s nothing to achieve in wvw unless you care about making a meaningless score go up every week. The progression is just going to be for zergers; stuff like carrying more siege. Just run around killing kitten. Much more fun. Technically you can get geared from solely wvw, but it will take you a very, very long time to get a full suit like that.

You sound like somebody who would rather play HORSE than a real game of basketball. To each his own …

Vena.8436:

Cactus.2710:

In any case, none of us really know whether the real limitation at ANet’s end is game engine, server hardware, or in/out bandwidth. It could be all three, but I’m putting my money on game engine being #1 and network bandwidth being #2. The reason I say that is that recoding the game engine takes LOTS of resources and is fraught with opportunity to screw something up, server hardware isn’t particularly expensive (although the software to manage if might be), and network bandwidth costs a lot of money each and every month.

I don’t see why you don’t believe the answer provided when it is logical. Its not like he’s saying the problem with skill lag is related to magical faeries or kittenroaches in the cogs. Its a bottleneck on the processor for skill lag (processing in-game events), and its bandwidth for culling (sending info about said processed in-game events… most of it, hence the culling). Makes sense… and they need to upgrade their hardware.

Culling is a bandwidth issue, it has little to no bearing on the data that was already all being processed and bottlenecked to begin with (the game did not not process data it wasn’t sending… it just wasn’t sending it :: your character is still going to die to culled player X spamming his aoe on your culled body without the two of you ever seeing one another). Removing it will certainly add another layer of stress on the servers but it will be much more an issue of bandwidth than an issue of stressing the server -> all the data is already processed or trying to be processed (before bottlenecked into lag), sending it isn’t going to blow out the wall sockets.

I don’t doubt their engine is poorly optimized but I’m pretty sure they have a solid flow of income from the store to fund servers/bandwidth. If they can appease the WvW crowd with some good developments, and throw some fun stuff into the shop for us too… who knows, maybe they’d get even more money.

We agree exactly on the cause of the problems and what needs to be done to fix it. Where we apparently disagree is on how we interpret what Habib said. He stated that the factors required to fix culling were different than the factors required to fix lag. His exact quote was:

“They are fundamentally different problems that will need different solutions.”

In my opinion, that was pure deflection. Culling would never have been necessary if the game engine and server-side network bandwidth had been sufficient to handle the traffic. Five months ago Habib gave this assessment of culling.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-real-problem-here-is-invisible-enemies-Give-their-algorithms-time-to-match-servers-properly/page/4#post356817

In my opinion, that post was candid where his recent one was not. It wasn’t long ago that Habib posted a promise (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Update-on-Culling/first) that Anet would buy whatever server hardware and bandwidth they needed to properly run the game, but it seems that really isn’t the case. As we both agree, lag is caused by server-side bottlenecks so I totally do not understand how Habib can now claim that culling and lag are independent issues when his previous posts have explained that they are not.

The real problem with WvW is that tiered server-vs-server-vs-server matches are never going to give balanced matches and fresh opponents. That just seems so patently obvious by now that I don’t understand why people seem to think that there has to be a way around the problem … there isn’t. Even Straegen’s proposal has flaws and could be gamed by players shifting populations a couple of hours to get more favorable matchups. We’re either going to live with some unhappy form of the current system or ANet is going to have to change WvW to be instanced (preferably shorter than weekly) without unique server identity (maybe battlegroups).

Vena.8436:

Cactus.2710:

Culling was put in place to minimize skill lag in high demand situations (lots of stuff for the servers to process).

Culling or not, the server was still processing all in-game activity, it just was never trafficking all of that data back to the players involved (particularly in regard to opposing players) but it was still trafficking it frequently such as to allow your machine to update what to render and where. The only “unit” in the whole situation that was not getting adequate information was your computer and no amount of throughput or graphimagics could render information that you didn’t have. The servers were still processing all of the relevant data -> why cull bombs are so effective: you’re blind to your opponents position and they are to yours after bombing you, but the server is well aware of where everyone and thing is and was processing that data: ie. damage, player position, player statistics, etc. That data was simply not all going out the pipes to the players involved nor in a timely manner (culling), it was still being processed in full and in real time until bottlenecked by processing capabilities (skill lag).

Culling wasn’t much of anything to alleviate data processing, the data was being processed irregardless -> it just wasn’t all being reported to the players (a bandwidth limitation, and that’s what culling was -> a bandwidth alleviator and a way to let people play on toasters).

Hence why, long ago, Habib provided bandwidth as a limiting factor on culling which makes sense. Trafficking data like models, coordinates, configurations, colors, etc, would gobble up bandwidth. Having the servers constantly streaming the relevant data without culling will indeed put strain on them, however the issues are not 1:1.

Skill lag will likely require a change in hardware.

Also, I’m bizarrely baffled by why you bothered listing the specs on your computer when this whole discussion is server related (even the person you quoted was referring to the servers not your irrelevant machine). Your computer specs are about as relevant to the server structure and capabilities (ie. skill lag) as my ability to make sandwhiches is relevant to Iron Chef.

I listed my computer specs because the guy referenced older computers, and he spoke of “CPU” limitations … which I take as meaning client side since we usually refer to server side issues as simply being “the server”. I didn’t think that would be hard to figure out, but just for you … there you have it.

And yes, of course the server eventually processes all of the data, but if it can’t do it real time it doesn’t respond to keyboard mashing and we get lag. I wouldn’t have thought that was hard to figure out either.

In any case, none of us really know whether the real limitation at ANet’s end is game engine, server hardware, or in/out bandwidth. It could be all three, but I’m putting my money on game engine being #1 and network bandwidth being #2. The reason I say that is that recoding the game engine takes LOTS of resources and is fraught with opportunity to screw something up, server hardware isn’t particularly expensive (although the software to manage if might be), and network bandwidth costs a lot of money each and every month.

Silver.9084:

Fuzzion.2504:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Decrease-lag/first#post1665161

Tbh this isn’t really a reply on the Skill Lag problem, they just said that culling changes will not affect them.

We want a reply if this is going to be fixed anytime soon because most of the people i know are REALLY annoyed by it.

Read it again …this time with feeling. Habib clearly stated in that thread that skill lag was not going to get fixed soon because it required different measures than those they will implement to remove culling. Here’s exactly what he said:

“I should clarify here again that the culling fix will have minimal impact on skill lag. Skill lag happens because the server too busy to process everything that’s happening (e.g. it’s at 100% CPU). The removal of culling addresses issues experienced by the client but those changes don’t really impact the skill lag situation. They are fundamentally different problems that will need different solutions.”

Part of what he states there is BS, since culling and skill lag are NOT really independent issues, but it does appear to be true that the stop gaps ANet is putting in place that will help them remove culling next week won’t address the fundamental server/network limitations that they built into the game … and those limitations are what cause skill lag (and was the original reason that culling was instituted in the first place).

We’re still going to have skill lag and it may even get worse if enough players decide to fully render at high resolutions. That’s going to be the case until ANet either improves their server side engine/network enough to handle what is being asked of it. Since all of that costs real money, don’t hold your breath.

saiyr.3071:

Cactus.2710:

Habib Loew.6239:

I should clarify here again that the culling fix will have minimal impact on skill lag. Skill lag happens because the server is too busy to process everything that’s happening (e.g. it’s at 100% CPU). The removal of culling addresses issues experienced by the client but those changes don’t really impact the skill lag situation. They are fundamentally different problems that will need different solutions.

Sorry, but this just doesn’t sound right. One of your earlier posts even states that culling was instituted to avoid server-side overload, and that would make sense. I don’t believe for a second that lag and culling are independent issues. Culling was only partially a client side crutch for underpowered computers … it was primarily put in place to regulate how much data the server had to process and force feed through the pipeline. The server doesn’t even really know whether something has rendered yet client side, but it does know when it is getting bogged down trying to process too much data internally.

If lag still exists after you drop culling it’s either because your game engine is too limited and you don’t have the resources to fix it, or you backed off on your earlier promise to buy whatever bandwidth you needed to fix the problem.

In any case, it’s pretty clear that we’re being BS’d here.

Eh? Culling was partly for older computers, which the default models should have solved. The other part of culling was a network issue, not a CPU issue, unlike the skill lag. Why does that sound like BS? Just because it’s called skill “lag” doesn’t mean it’s a network issue.

Skill lag is what happens when the server cannot respond to what the client is asking it to do because the server and the server side network are overloaded … i.e., trying to do too many things in a short period of time. Skill lag is NOT … I repeat, NOT … a client side CPU issue. My computer is a water cooled 3770K/GTX680/SSD/16gig-1866MHz box running Win7-64 and I can get ability lag even in Tier 5. Wanna know how? ANet uses a merged server system to share server capacity for WvW (if you search about you’ll find a video where they explain that). When a big fight breaks out in T1 it can take some time for the merged servers to dynamically redistribute capacity to compensate, and when it does that there is a ripple effect elsewhere.

It’s pure BS when Habib says that skill lag and culling are independent. Culling was put in place to minimize skill lag in high demand situations (lots of stuff for the servers to process). It IS true that culling can be turned off like a switch (where skill lag cannot) and it IS true that client side rendering can be improved via the measures that ANet has described so that when culling is removed toasters can still give decent results, but the root cause of skill lag is lack of server side data handling capacity … and that’s the real reason culling was instituted in the first place. They are NOT totally separate topics.

Zephyrus.9680:

Just priorities.

Skill lag is exclusive to t1 and t2. Culling is much more widespread.

No it isn’t. I (as well as most of my guildies) get ability lag fairly often during NA prime time and we’re in Tier 5.

Habib Loew.6239:

I should clarify here again that the culling fix will have minimal impact on skill lag. Skill lag happens because the server is too busy to process everything that’s happening (e.g. it’s at 100% CPU). The removal of culling addresses issues experienced by the client but those changes don’t really impact the skill lag situation. They are fundamentally different problems that will need different solutions.

Sorry, but this just doesn’t sound right. One of your earlier posts even states that culling was instituted to avoid server-side overload, and that would make sense. I don’t believe for a second that lag and culling are independent issues. Culling was only partially a client side crutch for underpowered computers … it was primarily put in place to regulate how much data the server had to process and force feed through the pipeline. The server doesn’t even really know whether something has rendered yet client side, but it does know when it is getting bogged down trying to process too much data internally.

If lag still exists after you drop culling it’s either because your game engine is too limited and you don’t have the resources to fix it, or you backed off on your earlier promise to buy whatever bandwidth you needed to fix the problem.

In any case, it’s pretty clear that we’re being BS’d here.

Timze.7980:

that might just be because of the big zerks just fight there somewhere…
No matter as long as you are in same server :/
I want to see how this will turn even worse after next patch erases culling… but I hope I’m wrong.

I don’t think that you even need to be on the same server as one that ends up in a huge battle. ANet has stated that they use a distributed server system (dynamic capacity allocation) for WvW. That means that an unexpected demand on server capacity anywhere could cause lag for almost anybody anywhere else as server capacity reallocates itself to cope.

Keeping in mind that ANet has floated a couple of small stealth patches over the last few weeks, I’m pretty sure that they’ve been doing some trial and error testing to see what works and what doesn’t in order to be able to turn off culling on March 26. Or more likely, they’ve been doing some trial and error testing to see just how little additional bandwidth they have to buy prior to March 26.

SoPP.7034:

The threads some people start… if you’re not getting the 1v1 you want perhaps don’t try to get it in WvW (that stands for World vs World), and then to label an entire guild in such a generic way…. you embarrass yourself and those you represent.

^This^

some more characters

I’m pretty sure that ANet has been mucking around with several things lately as they test out what they can get away with in order to drop culling. The simplest thing would be for them to buy lots more bandwidth, but that’s expensive so they no doubt want to try various software mitigations as much as possible before committing to the bandwidth. Probably lots of steath trial and error going on right now.

MiLkZz.4789:

Yep you said it right, Anet is working on the engine. They are optimizing it so it works more efficiently. Another thing Anet failed in is multi core support. It is implemented but bugged. There wil be better support for this too. Not sure they will release it this patch, but rest asure you will be pressing your skills and see something happening in the nearby future.

And culling is a way to reduce lag as you said yes. They can’t remove culling completely without optimizing all these things. And they promised culling will be history so I am expecting nothing less. Because if they remove culling and lag is unchanged, this will increase the server load by so much that the game just keeps crashing at X amount of people. I do think Anet has competent people and this wont be the case.

And why complain on the forum, you are just waisting time. Don’t you think Anet knows about these problems? No use in opening 1000 threads about 1 problem.

It would appear that you have way more blind faith than the rest of us have, and I’ll point out here that after six months of absent bug fixes the preponderance of evidence does not support you very well. The list of WvW problems ANet knows about but hasn’t fixed is pretty long.

As I said, we’ll find out March 26. I’m hoping you are right … not me.

MRA.4758:

kuora.5402:

MRA.4758:

kuora.5402:

This is Anet’s problem not ours.

Not necessarily true. Might as well be your ISP’s problem, which makes it to your problem.

~MRA

Fair enough, so our whole map has ISP problems.

… shut up.

Yeah, stupid me. How do I dare to give actual sound advise:

https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Laggs-und-Disconnects-Telekom-Kunden/235435

I should better shut up and not disturb you in your choice of being ignorant.

~MRA

Actually, your advice isn’t sound at all … and yes, you’d probably best just shut up.

Lag is a server-side data handling issue (weak game engine, not enough in/out bandwidth, too much unnecessary information being sent from the server, etc) and culling was merely a crutch to artificially reduce the number of players (and therefore the data that needed to be processed at the server) by pretending that they weren’t there. Lag has virtually nothing to do with anyone’s ISP … although some people have had freezes and disconnects due to client-side router issues and detailed client-side rendering requires a CPU with a pretty fast clock.

Removing culling requires that ANet make a huge leap in the server-side ability to process data … but it doesn’t require anyone with even a low end broadband connection to improve their ISP performance. Even ISP paths with significant packet latency don’t cause multiple-second ability lags.

Zephyrus.9680:

The majority of WvW doesn’t experience this. Playing on T3 this was extremely rare. It’s a T1 and T2 issue.

I’m in T5 and neither I nor my guild mates think it is rare at all. I rarely run with a zerg but the small group I’m usually in often gets caught by a large zerg, either out in the open or when defending a keep, and the ability lag shows up just about every time the total numbers exceed about 60 or 70 players. Spam any key and wait 2 to 5 seconds for it to pop. And before you make some other ignorant assumption, I have a good broadband connection and my computer is a water cooled 3770K/GTX680/SSD/16gig-1866MHz running Win7-64.

Every once in a while (maybe every couple of weeks) I’ll find myself totally helpless in a fight. None of my abilities work and all I can do is run around until I die. I start to complain about it in guild chat only to see that huge string of unsent numbers and letters next to my name there in the chat box.

MiLkZz.4789:

Do you even read the forum?

26 march…

ps.: I’ll help —> https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-vs-worldthe-end-of-culling/

You’re clueless. Do you even understand what you read in the forum? Here … I’ll help.

Lots of players being in the same general area creates a HUGE need to process data at the server and in/out of the server. Lag is what happens when the server gets overloaded with data that it can’t handle. Culling was instituted as a way for the server to pretend there are fewer people in the same general area than there actually are, thereby reducing lag. Taking away culling does NOT fix lag … it has the potential to make it worse unless ANet has improved the game engine, improved compression algorithms, reduced the player and visual effects required to be rendered client side (thereby reducing the data needing to be transmitted), and purchased more bandwidth. Maybe they have accomplished all that … maybe not. We will find out on March 26.

By the way, ANet uses a dynamic server capacity merging system for WvW. That means that what goes on elsewhere (probably even in other tiers) can affect whether or not anyone experiences lag anywhere. Large data bursts require capacity to be shuffled around and that takes time. I was randomly getting huge lag (several seconds) this last WvW reset while I was doing my daily in PvE, and I’m in Tier 5.

I was doing my daily outside of WvW (I was in Cursed Shore) for a while last night right around reset since we had queues for WvW. I was killing a mob when all of a sudden all of my abilities just froze. The client was still functional like it is for a while just before you get DC’d back to the character select screen (also a far too common occurrence lately), so I just walked my character around waiting for the inevitable DC (which never came). Literally ten seconds later everything popped back to live … the mob was dead and I was standing back where I had attacked it.

Incredible …

Irony.5203:

Nihevil.8024:

It’s only going to get worse when culling is removed.

Probably not. Culling will be client side, skill lag is server side.

It’s pretty clear that you don’t understand the basic mechanisms at work here. Culling is done server-side, and while it also reduces the rendering that the client needs to perform, culling was primarily instituted to reduce the load on the game engine and the required server in/out bandwidth. When ANet turns culling off ALL that load goes back on the server. ANet is probably trying to mitigate the impact by giving players more options on what the game engine needs to tell the client (i.e., rendering options), they may have purchased more bandwidth, they may be using some better compression algorithms to reduce the bytes that need to be transmitted to the client, and they may have improved how the game engine itself handles all that data. BUT, culling and lag are absolutely not independent topics and there is every possibility in the world that ANet doesn’t get it right when they turn off culling … and that means lag, maybe even more of it.

Stiv.1820:

I think some of us are just at a disconnect with Anet and their overall progression mentality. We want a DAOC style system that rewards quality over quantity. It’s just not going to happen. All they seem to care about is progression for the sake of progression, even if it’s meaningless.

Progression is the easiest and cheapest way to pacify the mindless, which of course covers the majority of people doing anything any place any time.