Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

So it is not superior then?
If it were the age, business-model and publisher wouldn’t really matter.

Did I say it is superior? I said it WAS superior. I’ll repeat, just in case…it WAS superior

lordkrall.7241:

Nikola.3841:

RVR compares to WVW as Bachs fugues to Lady Gaga

And yet I can almost guarantee that more people play WvW in GW2 than people playing RvR in DAoC at this time.

IF DAoC was so superior, why don’t people simply play it?

1. Its 12 years old
2. its not f2p
3. EA controls it, do I need to elaborate?

lordkrall.7241:

Kwll.1468:

If you think DAOC was weak compared to GW2 I would love to know what you are smoking. DAOC was and is the all time king of RVR. GW2 has nothing like the glory of relic raids.

As have been already explained: Weak as in less complex (both in ways of combat and in ways of the actual engine of the game).

RVR compares to WVW as Bachs fugues to Lady Gaga

Straegen.2938:

Xsorus.2507:

…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiZk2lnkJgY

This was taken in 2012

when the zergs were considerably smaller then they use to be.

The video does a nice job in showcasing how much simpler combat systems are in older games. Skill use by number games are certainly a step up from the old *nix MUDs but feel just as antiquated to me. It is much easier to resolve a stack without combo fields, trait/armor/weapon triggers, bouncing weapons, heavy pet resolution, dodge, block, condition stacks, boon stacks, etc but those are reasons GW2 combat is more fun at least to me.

DAOC gave people freedom to spec and spellcraft in so many ways, all other games after it were very simplified…GW2 has millions times less weapon/armor/jewelry combinations, as everything is dumbed down and preset…of course, that made a lot of problems, specially after TOA expansion release. GW2 were smart enough to dumb it down so we have just 20-30 viable armor/weapon specs, unlike millions in DAOC

Straegen.2938:

Do thousands of players log tens of thousands of hours playing a failed game? No. The fact you are here on some level has you agreeing that the game isn’t a failure. SWToR mass PvP was a failure as in they had to remove it from the game. Arguably Warhammer Online is a failure as well.

Once they make Warhammer F2P, I’m going back…hell, if they do it with DAOC, I’ll go back there…only thing keeping me here is because its free

Until they sort it out, enjoy video, maybe

How about lowering number of stacks from 25 to 10 just in wvw as a measure against lag? As condition necro, I’d rather be able to hit more enemies, even if I could not stack 25 conditions on them

Straegen.2938:

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.

Did you even play NF? Porting would put you into action very fast…and porting was established like in Omaha Beach, by heavy fighting, not by something as dull as protecting yaks

Straegen.2938:

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.

They first tried (and mostly failed) to introduce something really CPU intensive…collision detection. They didn’t remove frontiers, just final stage (forts). lag
was often worse than GW2, bugs were indeed horrible, balance was atrocious…but PVP was way more fun, too

Its their evil plan to keep you playing until you die…I know I…can’t…resist…new wxp level…is calling me…

PVE fluff is so easy to add, compared to WvW

Good CD bay defense, DB

Fordel.3208:

You didn’t need to chain stun in DaoC, a single stun was nine seconds long and a AE mez was just under a minute.

Seriously, I understand the nostalgia for the game, but it was (is?) a unbalanced mechanical nightmare.

Purge, heavy tanks aoe demezz, good resists (that can more than halve duration), mesmerisation dampening.
AE sorc mezz was actually 72s + possible 25% from items, but there were so many counters

Nightmare was introduced mostly by bringing new classes with expansions (greed to sell as many without much care for impact on game)

Straegen.2938:

In the video it wasn’t the damage that got that group in trouble it was the control as they were all switched off. I have long believed that damage should be capped (for DPS reasons) but control abilities should be area of effect without a cap. Turning off 50 players stacked tight would likely ease lag and make staking inherently dangerous.

As for DAoC combat in this case being superior… being chain stunned sucked.

I’m chain stunned in GW2, not in DAOC where they had pretty long immunity (except at the very start of game, when it, indeed, sucked)

Also, this stacking GW2 philosophy is totally counter-intuitive for me

Dawdler.8521:

If Anet uncapped AoE blobs would turn into a bunch of lowres characters from 2001 lagging all over the place and animated like they got a broom showed up their kitten ?

No thanks, I think I prefer GW2 with AoE cap.

You think you’re smart, don’t you?

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

Look closely at around 1:10

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

Another possible solution would be something like DAOC co-op server…server with purely PVE in mind…that would be a win-win situation, PVE players would get their things done easier, and WVW servers would get rid of worthless players

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

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

richardsmith.3104:

I don’t see an issue, WvW is fine as it is. If anything to be worked on is more endgame content.

Go back to PVE, because for me and two previous posters (well, one at least) WvW SHOULD be endgame content

Both of you are right, unfortunately

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

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?

DB has overflow in LA atm

Its actually childish to be offended by it, lol

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 have both and prefer necro

Vena.8436:

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.

Its questionable whether or not the data of accessories and upgrade slots is ever sent beyond the server where calculations occur, so appearance units may be less than stated, being limited to 4+6 with only skins/dye variations or roughly 20 units. But I hold to the point that the majority of the data has to do with conditions/boons (and all timestamps there in) and many other non-appearance related effects all of which are sent to you because you need to know about them.

Everything you mentioned is similar in DAOC, except amount of conditions, because yes, DAOC had them too, just not as many. You could get several types of DOTs on you, and there was melee bleed, too. Also you had stats (6 basic stats and 6 types of resists) but those weren’t the set in stone, either…you could debuff someone on all those stats and resists.
Debuffs were timed, so game had to take timers on all of those, dots/bleeds had ticks too, and you could also purge them…and purge as ability was timed too

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

You mean GW2 sends us video frame by frame as jpegs? That sounds extremely inefficient?

No…

That was more a point to show you how data size have changed over the years, hence why I said a simple example.

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?

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

And how much more data is sent? I mean, it still has to send 6 pieces of armor per pesron, and color of each piece, same as in DAOC…it doesn’t have to send each pixel so that increased resolution would mean difference…same with color of armor…try to explain WHAT is that additional 199 times more data needed to be sent, because I really can’t figure it out

Here’s a basic one, make all files 1600×1200 for normalcy:

Make a .jpg file and use one color and save that file.
Make a .jpg file and use 256 colors all at the same time and save it.

Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^4.
Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^8.

Compare file sizes. I hope you don’t think the linear mesh of DAoC that is wrapped around a character to form the skin has the same file size as that of a GW2 mesh.

You mean GW2 sends us video frame by frame as jpegs? That sounds extremely inefficient?

Vena.8436:

That data is still sent to your computer, the only difference is that those settings tell your computer not to render it off of the hard drive and to save your own, personal, cpu/gpu capabilities in rendering everything else.

Yes, I know how big two orders of magnitude are… and you could probably take a moment to consider that data traffic from individual products nowadays is several orders of magnitude larger than what it was even just a decade ago.

And how much more data is sent? I mean, it still has to send 6 pieces of armor per pesron, and color of each piece, same as in DAOC…it doesn’t have to send each pixel so that increased resolution would mean difference…same with color of armor…try to explain WHAT is that additional 199 times more data needed to be sent, because I really can’t figure it out

Draygo.9473:

GW2 features a trait system that has to be checked per character every damage tick which is partially why CPU expense to damage dealt is high. The reason the AoE caps are higher on siege is because 1) siege doesn’t account for offensive stats or traits, 2) siege is locally limited (5 in a 1,000 range area or so).

I want you to write out, in pseudo code, jscull a single damage tick. Compare it to, in pseudo code to DaOC’s damage calculations.

This is not the answer:
damage = attack *rnd / mitigation factor

The answer will use up more than 5,000 words. You have to consider every trait, every condition, everything that affects damage (weakness, traits), offensive traits that may increase damage or apply additional effects, boons on the target such as protection, defensive traits that can do a wide variety of things. Rune sets with on-hit and when-hit effects. Also consider that every time damage is dealt the server has to update all clients in an area with the new health level. It is by no means simple.

AC’s don’t have to consider over half that list. And are location limited, which is why the cap is higher.

But you can continue to demonstrate your lack of understanding about anything to do with programming and computer systems, that will do just fine.

Oh and WAR had no aoe cap, and servers lagged to hell and back, where brightwizards killed everything in large fights and everyone else was just fodder. Even 30 on 30 would lag pretty badly in a chokepoint getting blasted by aoe.

Luckily, DAOC didn’t have to adjust players health after they been hit :rollseyes

WAR can’t be compared because of single reason…collision detection…without that, performance would be fine

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

Also, i played it on exactly 156 times slower line and lagged less…do GW2 really have to transfer 200 times more data?

Well thats an ISP/bandwidth issue, though the answer to that is probably yes because that no longer cares about just cpa of the engine but also all other details (graphical, other player positions/appearances, and otherwise) that need to be sent.

What appearances? All enemy players look the same because when I’m in WVW i put gfx to minimum, and still die unable to use skill because of skill lag in bigger fights (not that it would help me, anyway). So game actually looks worse than DAOC, too

Btw, do you even have idea how big is 200 times difference in something?

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

DAOC AOE damage spells not only had to check if you’re in range, they adjusted damage proportionally to your distance from caster. Imagine that!

Right, and? You know what else does that? A bunch of skills in GW2!

Also, i played it on exactly 156 times slower line and lagged less…do GW2 really have to transfer 200 times more data?

Vena.8436:

Moreover, all melee is positional, such a statement is pointless. What I was speaking of was positions needed to be checked for cleave which means checking not only yours and your targets position, but all position with the 200 or so arc of your attack.

DAOC AOE damage spells not only had to check if you’re in range, they adjusted damage proportionally to your distance from caster. Imagine that!

Vena.8436:

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)

A rather poor comparison considering how much simpler the calculations in DAoC were compared to GW2. Any single skill in this game, usually, has more things to compute than several skills all going off concurrently in DAoC, and the stat breakdown in one game vs. the other is vastly different. Just look at one simple auto-attack in this game: condition damage, duration, critical damage, critical change, power vs. toughness, cleave for position, boon alterations to anything above, condition alterations to anything above, fields and finishers (and % therein). DAoC? Comparatively could be simplified to a D&D dice roll.

If you want a more ample comparison, look to Wintergrasp from WoW when it was first launched and everyone was trying to play to unlock the Raid therein. The moment everyone got to the gate, spamming skills, the game simply locked down and became unplayable. Its the exact same phenomenon and cannot be countered with “add more servers!”. WoW servers (at that time) were top of the line and ample, but with so many people spamming so many abilities… nothing could cope with that stress.

You could say that both WoW and GW2 had crap optimization… which is a likely suspect statement.

Another game of interest to look into, would be Aion. However, I honestly have no memory of that game anymore or what happened when 200-some people all piled up in a room within the Abyss. I’ve stricken it from memory… the grind, all of that grind.

Its pretty obvious you never played DAOC.

1. DAOC melee was POSITIONAL…that means server had to compare your position vs target at all times to see if you executed it right. Also, most of melee styles were chained, and game had to check if your previous style failed, for one of many reasons (miss, block, parry, not positioned right, PBT…)
2. DAOC melee damage was much more complicated than GW2 because of armor vs melee type calculations (slash/thrust/crush). Also, it had whooping 46 classes, all with much more abilities than GW2 classes…I mean, my warden and cleric both had about 60-70 buttons to use
3. DAOC also had lots of types of spell damage (spirit, body, …), and all of those had their own resistances that could be both crafted and by buffs
4. Game kept insane amount of data about everyone (you could see your number of kills, deaths, heals done, damage done…in real time)

Mattargul.9235:

Nikola.3841:

And Chorazin, you could also ask similar question about command line…for those uninitiated, just look how extensive it was:

http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/content/slash-commands

Let me just stop you right there…

I’d much rather have a config screen than hack the command line. What’s next? Set your config with peek/poke?

How about both? Where is your fancy graphic screen way to find all guardians level 30-40 that are currently in Metrica Province? Or Graphical way to find who has most kills in wvw, who healed the most, or managing who has right to enter your house in housing zone and what he can do once he enters?

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.

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)

Fuzzion.2504:

Wotah.2975:

Nikola.3841:

Kudos to JQ leaders for making everyone come to DBBL wipe after wipe after wipe…I stopped counting after we wiped you 25th time at hills

You’re welcome!

But it was fun 4 vs an entire DB zerg

/salute to DPS , u guys are not easy

That is your strong point, I guess, I never had fun dieing in pvp in any mmo

And Chorazin, you could also ask similar question about command line…for those uninitiated, just look how extensive it was:

http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/content/slash-commands

Faranox.4217:

The problem is that the zerg will also have limitless AoE BUFFS, thus negating the positive effect of the entire zerg being targetable.

Another bad/strange thing in this game…your buffs should work on your group only…whats the purpose to be in group beside changing green to blue dots on map?

Bushido.2184:

I doubt it’s a performance thing. DAoC had it, keeping track of so many stats that it’s absurd, for every player in the game at all times, and during massive battles.

In 2001 with Pentium 3 servers.

And I got it all transferred to my client over 64k line, with less lag…go figure

Kudos to JQ leaders for making everyone come to DBBL wipe after wipe after wipe…I stopped counting after we wiped you 25th time at hills

lordkrall.7241:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” bull crap. 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?

Please show me all these “thousands games” with massive PvP, all I can think of is DAoC and that game was quite “weak” compared to GW2.

I would say that technical limitations is actually a rather good and logical answer, one can also assume that it might have to do with balancing and such as well.

Weak? Please explain before you get your MMO license revoked

It was easy for DAOC developers, they had mighty Pentium 3 servers that could handle all that amount of data!!!

Work on skill a bit, though

Jamais vu.5284:

TRON.1085:

Please can we be able to loot after death in WvW?

It is one of the few things discouraging mindless zerging, where you jump in shouting YOLO, quickly tag everything, and then happily die.
So no, don’t agree I’m afraid.

I agree, because side that is zerging usually lose, so its nice punishment for them been zerglings

In DAOC…ah nm, I’m starting to be boring to myself

Paavotar.3971:

Wouldn’t that be horrible if all WvW zones had Queues and they were full off people who were not interested in WvW, but only the WXP and the reward chests.

I forgot to add to my idea: keeps and towers take would be worth nothing, only wxp would be rewarded for killing other people