Guild Wars 2

Much love to all the TC and FA small mans out and about this week. You guys are great fun to play against. Is a lovely breath of fresh air after T1 blob central even if you do seem run a lot theme groups. We have fought a full group of engineers, multiple groups of thieves >< and now necros along with a guild named [FIVE]. Good stuff out there guys! Thank you for the fights, our little guild needs the practice of standing and fighting instead of running away thinking we are going to get zerged at every turn.

Xirin.8593:

joshisanonymous.5270:

Is it actually being caused just by being in the same zone as many of other players?

Yes. Specifically when there is a large zerg vs zerg fight. It will affect the whole zone. Proximity to the fight doesn’t matter.

This. Skill lag also seems to stick to you as well for some reason. After you are involved in a situation with extreme skill lag you will find it re-occurring more frequently in less skill lag prime situations for the rest of your play session but this is only based on anecdotal evidence so far. A guildie has even reported skill lag following a map switch to a less populated border after a particularly brutal three-way caused us all to give up on a map for the evening but that still needs more confirmation.

If we are having the queue bug conversation again as evident of more threads on the issue popping up this week that must mean we are starting to see queues more often lately so the question is, did they happen to lower the WvW map population caps this week or did too many more guilds transfer into the top tiers again? >< Either way, expect more fun with RNG in queues coming to a venue near you soon.

staff guardian with aoe #1 that can damage thru walls particularly effective. In tier 1 three ways the blob with the most guardians wins. =/

Bummer it is not a very entertaining fix tho.

Ruin.3461:

Skill lag is not based on the client’s hardware, it’s based on the server’s hardware. The way to fix skill lag is for ANet to buy more/better servers.

Or for ANET servers to have less simultaneous calculations to perform which could be achieved by lowering the WvW map population caps or finding ways to strongly dis-incentivize clustering together of players on a map.

Sorry to hear that Sureshot on the plus side, JQ gets a bit of a vacation from skill lag this week to remind us why the super stack dog pile in tier 1 might not be that great of an idea. ~^

sounds like another great idea to add to the pile. I am less sure about the party tag part just because it is more complicated but the first 2 and commander tag comment / editable tool tip option would be awesome.

We did not have the same level of skill lag back when ANET did their little lower WvW population map cap experiment. Just because they did not see a noticeable improvement in the 3 way lagfest that is SM at that time (Jan/Feb) does not necessarily mean a reduction in those same caps today would not help make the borderlands a bit more playable in primetime. By all means . . . please do not discourage any further experimentation. Experiment away, I’d love to know what lower map caps feel like in the current meta. Maybe there is nothing that can be done for SM but at least I use to have 3 other maps to avoid skill lag on. Not so these days.

Yeah the whole queue bug issue only makes lowering the WvW map population caps that much bigger of a mess that I don’t blame anyone for trying to avoid but all we are doing now is making both problems potentially much worse for the future with all our crazy super stacking in tier 1. A little foresight from all sides would be greatly appreciated.

interesting ideas that could definitely help with the problem. If the overflow map was something easy for them to do I would hope it would have already been done but I have a feeling it is more complicated than it sounds. I don’t mind the new match up system but I think maybe it was too late to be useful now we have already slipped over to the new full blown super stack meta. Anything that helps to unstack the servers while keeping the core of the communities in tact seems like a good start to me and yeah that will have to involve lowering WvW population map caps to get skill lag under control.

A whole map can get extreme skill lag delay when there is a huge 3-way fight happening somewhere on it. The skill lag problem this month has also been exacerbated by some ISP clog somewhere in the pipeline to the ANET servers which is also causing DC issues.

While other tiers do experience instances of skill lag it is safe to say they have fewer problems with than the top servers. We created this meta of super stacking to the top and blobbing up when we do so I guess we get to live with it but it is not good for the overall health of the game and I for one would like to see ANET lower WvW map population caps along with some world population re-balance to help address the issue. There’s been a lot of threads on the issue these last few weeks so the best we can do is keep the pressure on till we hear some news.

They are too small for the number of players they have allowed onto them as evident by all the skill lag we get to enjoy in large battles but I think they hit the limit of their tech with the size they have and their server architecture and can’t make them any bigger. We could probably use one other map of similar size and lower WvW map population caps to properly spread things out, preferably this new map would have some open space without objectives to please the GvG crowd and give them a place to do their thing.

Skill lag is definitely a server side problem and ANET has already said as much back in March after the culling fix saying they would be rolling a number of little things on their end they hoped would help with the skill lag issue. I am worried that those fixes actually did help so they decided to increase the WvW map population caps at the same time they upped the server population limits and it was too much but they are stuck with it because it will kitten off too many players to decrease those WvW map caps back down for all the queues it will cause. I don’t like queues either but at least I can play the rest of the game while waiting in them and I know there is plenty ANET can do the encourage a re-distribution of players across worlds. Hopefully they are working on adddressing the problem and we will hear from them soon on when it will be ready to roll out live.

Proximus.9760:

tl:dr – Get the player cap to a level at which skill lag is non existent until infrastructure to back up more amounts of people is ready.

There are a ton of players who agree with you Proximus and this forum has been flooded with threads about skill lag over the last couple of months but there are also a lot of messy facts that making stating this opinion strongly with support very difficult to do and we all know how people treat Truthiness on the internet, pick it apart piece by piece till it rolls over and dies or gets stuffed with straw.

ANET will not release hard numbers on what their WvW map population caps are or have ever been and I don’t blame them for that but it makes it really hard for those of us in favor of lower WvW map caps to to present the evidence that clearly shows fewer players allowed into WvW will decrease skill lag even when it is a complete no brainer in terms of logic. The best we can do is estimations from Commanders based on their use of /squad info and I’ve seen things that range from assuming the WvW population caps are somewhere around 80 per side on the borderlands to 120ish but when those numbers have changed and the effect that has had on the occurrences of skill lag is not well documented. I would love to see more information on that even if only being notified when increases or decreases in WvW map population caps happen.

Some players on some tier do not experience the same level of skill lag as others under the same conditions and this could be for a myriad of reasons but most accept the fact that skill lag happens when you get battles larger than 50v50v50, especially within keeps and towers (due to increased calculations of line of sight checks I would imagine). Simultaneous ISP connection problems, millions of combinations of user side configurations, lots of new code and patches and a whole host of other problems outside of ANET’s control like Blizzard’s voodoo doll and magical my little pony curses (ok maybe not the last two but who the kitten knows anymore) all contribute the issues and make it difficult to pin down.

The problem is largely one of perception of personal experiences and until ANET can hear its player-base with a unified voice expressing their displeasure with skill lag and demanding something to be done about it there is a good chance we will get to continue with status quo. We need more people giving very specific information about their experiences with skill lag and less knee jerk responses from the peanut gallery. Yeah, I know good luck there but hey sometimes miracles can happen . . . statistically speaking and all.

Kadub.8743:

@Mesiphidon.8324

Then why hasn’t arenanet reduced the number of players that can get into the battle lands to fix the lag issues?

Some of us have been asking ANET to do just that, lower the WvW map population caps because it is something simple that we know they can do easily (they’ve raised and lowered them multiple times already since the betas). But can you imagine the kittenstorm that it would start when just suggesting it on the forum generates all kinds of backlash? And then the queue monster would rear its ugly head again which would make everyone unhappy.

When ANET does lower the WvW map population caps they are going to have do it in conjunction with some other fixes that will help spread players back out again so I am hoping that is the only thing keeping them making the easy change right away. There are still some players who do not believe lower WvW map caps will help with skill lag but most all the evidence we’ve seen says otherwise. ANET says the AoE cap stays in place because more skill checks on more bodies would mean more skill lag, goes to figure just kitten dies (and skills firing at the same time) would go a long ways in reducing skill lag then. It is just a mater of time but the WvW map caps will have to be lowered eventually or get lower naturally as more players leave the game. I rather not it happen that way. Sorry but I just don’t really have a lot of faith in the tech being able to solve this one since skill has been an issue since before launch.

Ahmrill.7512:

Luthan.5236:

Yes. We need different suggestion forums. Also for sPvP.

Agree, both WvW and sPvP are such different aspects of the game from PvE they should each have a seperate suggestion forum. Having WvW and sPvP buried in the massive PvE suggestions just makes no sense.

Not only are the issues vastly different between WvW, sPvP and PvE, but the teams working on this problems are completely different people as well! So is it one persons whole job to read the suggestions forums and parse out all the threads for the different game design teams?! Yikes! How would they even be able to keep track of anything that way? Oh wait. . . or maybe no one reads any of these forums but us and moderators and it all just for appearance eh? Yes please, WvW suggestion sub forums . . . sooner rather later would be great.

There seems to be several issues at play at once and I am sure someone more knowledgeable on the issues of latency lag, skill lag and ISP connection problems could better explain how it is all inter-related but here is the general gist as I understand it (some of this is a bit of extrapolation and assumption).

First yes, skill lag (the server side problem of abilities taking too long to calculate) has been getting worse for most users lately. Different people seem to point to different things as when they started to notice increases in skill lag.

Some things we know, GW2 has always suffered from skill lag, especially in larger scale battles. BWE 3 was so bad I almost lost faith in the game launching with functional large scale WvW but then they did all those bonus test events and figured some stuff out which ultimately led to the introduction of culling that everyone hated so much. In order to turn culling off so we got to see the enemies we were fighting, skill lag had to get worse and back in March was on their radar to be improved upon over the next “several patches”.

You only noticed skill lag in large three way battles around Stonemist for the most part for awhile there so I suspect some of those improvements actually helped. In the same time frame we’ve also had a lot of turn over in the game, people come and going more frequently which is the wonderful thing about a buy-to-play MMO model, you can step away for a time and return when things of interest to you are going on. This lead to some world population instability as people came and went while at the same time, new players continued to join the game.

Flame and Frost along with the Living Story in general created some buzz and added a bunch of new goodies and particle effect skins. The fluctuations in world populations along with some of the improvements to skill lag may have been responsible for ANET deciding to increase the world population caps by a large amount some time in May. It feels like around this same they also increased the WvW map population caps to help accommodate the increase in players while keeping queues low. They have blog posts talking about how changes to those caps are something they can set dynamically on fly from their end and we have experienced a few of these up and down changes already in the games history. There was a noticeable increase in skill lag frequency around this time but not much of a public outcry over it. This is also around the same time the new WvW scoring system came into play.

The dragon bash stuff in June also seemed to tick up the occurrence of skill lag a decent amount and threads on the topic started popping up more often. There were some jokes about all the flapping halo wings on dead bodies in WvW being the cause of a new kind of butterfly effect. We started to see more complaints of skill lag outside of Eternal Battleground and beyond the top tier servers.

It is hard to be sure when the meta in WvW became more zerg focused but I think it is safe to say that in the background of all these other smaller changes taking place, the increase in frequency of the whole WvW map getting together to run smack into the other 2 sides with their own blobs was steadily increasing. We all know first hand the effects of this on skill lag as 1 key spam sessions became a new element in the meta, so much so that some servers and commanders actually start to plan for it as staff guardians become even bigger darlings of the zerg.

Then the DC and ISP junk with some major networks doing some re-routing and construction that started happening the beginning of July piled onto this already compounded problem of skill lag and too many bodies in one place. So currently a lot servers, not just those in the top tiers regually get to be engaged in battles where all anyone can do is spam the #1 key and stack more people on the pile in hopes of winning the day. Those battles are not the least bit interesting to me but once one starts on a map, players across that whole zone can feel the effects.

The ISP problem is due to be fixed soon and is something out of ANET’s control but the underlying issue of skill lag is not going away without some seriously dedicated resources. The biggest thing ANET could do today to help with this issue to lower the WvW map population caps but every time someone brings that up there is a back lash of fear over the queues and split up communities that could result from such an action. Hopefully ANET is working hard behind the scenes to bring us lower WvW map population caps in a manner that will satisfy every one because I think it is pretty safe to say this game cannot handle the size of battles we’ve been throwing at it lately and if we can’t accept that then maybe we let our expectations get too high.

That’s my story and I am sticking with it. Hope it gets fixed soon!

AndrewSX.3794:

Swamurabi.7890:

1. change map population cap to force players away from top servers

No.

For a simple reason: while it might be on paper a good way to deal with stacked servers, it would just crush communityes like a card castles.

It’s already incredibly difficult to get some social structure in this game built for casuals, and to grow some attachement to a community, a server, and it’s people.

And you want to crush that?

Just no.

It would be worse than the problem.

(and, god, NO free transfers. that’s even worse.)

I can think of several ways that ANET could implement lower WvW map population caps that would not “crush” world communities starting with things that make world transfers guild based instead and I think you are wrong suggest those communities are so fragile as to fall apart with any little change. Now I would not argue that ANET did a horrible job in the beginning of giving us the tools needed in order to build strong healthy WvW community cores from the ground up and there is a ton of work they could do to improve that experience now but it is unproductive for us to just throw our hands up in the air and say it is too late to try and improve the situation and we just have to stick with the mess we’ve got ourselves into.

Sure there are a bunch things we need from the games design mechanics to help us make this a better game but there is plenty we can do as players on our side to improve things on our own. The biggest thing we have control over were we decide to play and we should all be working together to spread out the WvW population more evenly between servers instead of stacking on the top 3 servers and making the skill lag blobbing problems even worse.

Swamurabi.7890:

The game is headed in the direction of a re-balance.

1. change map population cap to force players away from top servers

Anet has already made changes to player cap and said they can change this at any time.

2. Stat buff for outmanned AND outpointed servers as well as stat de-buff for high population AND high PPT servers

I don’t see any way of making the game “balanced” and FUN for everyone without this.

3. Change from server bases WvWvW to faction based WvWvW, with “overflow” instances added for more players.

We already have 3 factions in GW2, Vigil, Priory and Order of Wispers.

I agree strongly with the first 2 and seriously hope ANET is already long since working on this. They cannot lower WvW map population caps significantly without doing something to both fix and improve the queue system and finding a way to make the players want to spread our populations out more evenly between the worlds.

I am not so sure about your 3rd point but do see the merits in it. It just does not sound like something that could done quickly or easily and making that big of a change in direction is usually something game company’s do not like to do until they are desperate.

But yes, the first 2 points need to happen as soon as possible and I dare say if we don’t get communication along those lines before the one year anniversary there are a lot of folks who are going to be beyond frustrated with how long things have been allowed to degrade with those simple changes that would make such a huge and immediate impact not having been implemented. Once those simple changes are in place ANET can re-evaluate the new meta that results to determine what additional changes are still needed to improve the quality of WvW overall across servers.

I hope something like this is the direction they plan to take the squad system, it almost seems to logical. I also think a comment field tool tip should be made available to add to the commander pin so different colored pins can state their squads purpose, havoc, defense, offense, ect so we can get like minded groups better working together towards common goals.

DevonCarver.5370:

It’s my intention to have as much of the Living World stuff drop in WvW as possible and to do it in a way that gets you a good return. We want people playing in WvW during these events too.

That is nice to hear. Was just posting on guild forums where members were wondering why we don’t see things like Guild Missions or Living Story steps that are WvW centric. I realize those are different teams working on that stuff but it would be great to see WvW included in the unfolding world of Tyria a bit more.

I am sorry if my realm mates think me rude for even bringing this topic up but the dangers of keeping our heads buried in the sand hoping daddy ANET will fix these problems for us is just far too great to do anything else. I will continue to beg ANET to lower the WvW map population caps and I suggest those of you interested in preserving competitive WvW for the long term do the same. <3

Yeah, I know, I write too much and no one reads it all and then half of what I get in response are a bunch of knee jerk reactions to tid-bits taken out of context but such is the world of the internet and I love words too much give in to short attention span theater.

We have had skill lag a lot longer than just these last couple of weeks (it started to be a bigger issue as soon as they turned culling off back in March but avoidable with practice) and while the ISP issues might be compounding the problems we are seeing today we all know lower WvW map population caps will lessen the burden on those poor little server farms so why wouldn’t we want to advocate for that? Lower WvW map population caps would cause queues in some timezones on the top tiers so ANET would need to find a way to incentivize world population re-balance before taking the next step of returning world population limits back down to what they were before that big completely unnecessary raise in May or even take them back down as far as they were before free transfers were eliminated. I do not see anything in this opinion that should be controversial.

And it is just one person’s opinion, I do not represent anyone but myself. I do not represent my guild, the online JQ community or the in game JQ community or even really apparently anyone else around these forums so I do not see what harm me having this opinion would do to JQ’s recruitment efforts. I do not think this thread should be closed and I only apologize for offending anyone by choosing to post it in this form but to be honest, those of you using this forum, those recruiting for your servers and those looking for new homes are the ones who should be considering the consequences of your actions.

I would also +1 most of what Magicarp said in his big post above (yup, you are all right, it feels funny to agree with him on these forums) except for his apparent belief that we have to accept these flaws in the game because ANET was too shortsighted or busy to do things correctly from the beginning. We can change the current meta if we want to. I know Laylyn tried very hard early on to promote the 6 to 9 strongly competitive worlds mantra and was beaten down by the game mechanics and human nature as we cycled through the periodic boom and bust meta that Magicarp very accurately describes in his post.

I could never be prouder of JQ than I am in that we did not fall prey to that same implosion mindset when it came our time to fall off the throne at #1 and that was because our community was built for some old fashioned notion we use to call realm pride so in a sense, JQ fought the established meta and is still hanging tough today because we decided to react differently. Why can’t we all decide skill lag isn’t worth mega stacks at the top and the risk of the new match-up system ever pairing our three world with anyone else and the horrible lopsided unfun battles that would result should be eliminated? I actually hope ANET is manipulating our match-up behind the scenes at the top to make sure we never fight anyone but BG and SoR because while there might be some personal entertainment value and getting to battle against our friends and foes on TC or DB it could never be anything other than complete domination and that cannot be healthy for the game overall.

No one needs to tell me about the hours JQ spends undermanned, I play in the transition timezone between NA and Oceanic most of the time and get to watch as everything of ours in the borderlands is flipped over to paper, powerless to stop it with the small bands rag tag bands of defenders we can cobble together in those hours but that does not mean more players is the answer. All three of the top servers have their outmanned hours and fewer players across the WvW maps as a whole would allow for smaller numbers in those off peak times to actually have more of an impact on the score. This should not be an arms race to the top. I can not even imagine what WvW is like on the bottom tiers. Yes, we get to have intense battles all hours of the day in tier 1 but I do not think lowering the WvW map population caps would hurt that intensity and it might actually help to spread it out some to a few other servers. Would it really be gamebreaking that instead of 100v100v100 we went back to 70v70v70? I would love to see what JQ’s more dedicated WvW guilds like SF, SW and Aco could do with less skill lag and a leaner meaner fighting force. All the open field zerg battles lately have been great to fun to watch until you realize you cannot do anything other than spam the 1 key the whole time. Imagine what we could do using all the rest of our skills as well!

Of course my JQ community leaders are disappointed in me for this thread but I did not expect anything different, even from those I highly respect because we have all been beaten into believing more population is better and skill lag is the price we have to pay for wins. I wish there was never the NA/EU split in the first place so we could have full maps 24/7 across many worlds but that is just not possible with the number of people currently interested in WvW and the number of servers we have (and now it is summer so we have no idea what anyone’s population is actually going to be like in the fall). Should we really be promoting the abandonment of the lower tiers to fill all of our time zones? If ANET begins merging servers that is just going to start a domino effect of problems we really do not want to see but maybe I am just being naive to believe MMOs can stay healthy beyond the first year in this day and age.

Think about what this meta is doing to the game overall. Shortening its life cycle. This is the game I wanted to be able to play for years with the people who started out on JQ because it is an incredibly awesome community and a beautifully put together game (still a lot of work to do in the WvW department but I want to be around when they get to all those fixes on their to do list) but we the playerbase are undermining its incredible potential with our unending urge to flock to the top. I know I am not very good with words and probably did a horrible job of stating my opinion but I seriously believe for the good of the game overall all three top tier servers on the NA side (can’t speak for EU as I have no experience there) need fewer players not more until such time as ANET servers can handle bigger populations and larger (or more) maps. Whether skill lag is a technical issue that they can fix soon (doubt it) or not, wouldn’t it be better to play the game within the limitations that it can currently handle?

I certainly do not mean to offend my server mates who have worked very hard to build the WvW community we have today on JQ (one of the very best I have ever been a part of) and I am not ignorant enough to believe the trolls who claim this whole super stack phenomenon is somehow JQ’s fault from what happened in January after they closed off the free world transfers but without ANET doing anything to help the situation what other course of action is left to us other than taking a little personal responsibility and spreading ourselves out. I am no one in the JQ community and yet have made very strong ties here since beta so I plan to remain a part of it in spite of my frustration with the increasing occurrences of skill lag and mega blobs everywhere but I think it is past time for us all to take a serious look at the consequences of our choices.

Wotah, what other game? There isn’t one.

P.S. I am sorry if it was disrespectful to start this thread on this forum and maybe it should be moved but I still think it is a important discussion to have.

Gudradain.3892:

The best spot = Eternal Battleground JP entrance.

You have 3 nice spot to watch the show from above and waypoint to come back quickly

I would guess that is not enough room and a bit tricky of terrain for most guilds to consider but now that the Obsidian Sanctum has been removed from the WvW map population cap it does make the most logical sense as the place to go. I propose ANET further remove that map to make it a stand alone bonus place for non competitive WvW with nothing that counts towards the over all score, a small above ground portal zone with merchants for each side and one npc guarded takeable structure (no siege allowed anywhere on the map) that gives access to the underground points into the jumping puzzle portion of the map and then slap a huge open field with limited mobs on top of it for open GvG (Agramon from DAoC reborn). Problem solved and it probably turn into a dueling gankers paradise as well.

I have noticed an increase in GvG happening away from the Windmill lately and it has caused some confusion. Not sure about the reason why but maybe some GvGers can explain.

do we really still have that many queues outside of reset nite?

It is sort of like baseball pitchers, everyone has their own routine and superstitions about what works for them but all we know it is something pretty bizarre and mostly out of our control.

Please don’t transfer here ever . . . the skill lag has gotten ridiculous and we really already have more way more players than we can deal with. There are tons of really great severs out there in need of dedicated WvWers and transferring to JQ, SoR or BG will not solve all of your problems, look to yourself first. Every server everywhere will always have a time zone where they are outmanned and wish for more players but the cost is not worth it. The super stacking has to end now or we will kill this game of so much potential before we even make to it our first birthday.

In fact, I think just having these forums is a mistake and is ANET admitting defeat that they never figured out how to give us the tools needed to make for strong communities where we could organize ourselves into semi like minded groups and take on greater and greater accomplishments together. Guilds recruiting to find more players fitting into their playstyle makes perfect sense and servers showing off their personalities as a way for new players to figure out where they want to “live” makes a lot more sense than having worlds competing with each other for the extremely limited (and getting rarer everyday) resource of WvW players and pouching from each other at a cost to the lower tiers.

One of these days ANET is going to have to lower the WvW map caps to deal with the skill lag issue and NA tier 1 is going to be hit with mega queues when they do. I love my server and I love the JQ community for never giving up the fight but stacking more and more at the top is never the answer.

SBI were always our favorite foes back in the good ole days. It broke my heart to see you guys take your fall but I had always heard great things about the community there so I knew you guys could keep it going. Glad to hear your hardcores are still kicking hard. Keep fighting the solid fight SBI, with a little perseverance you will make more great things happen soon! Best Wishes! Miss you guys! <3

LetoII.3782:

Burl.9567:

We’ve been playing a lot more EB lately. Guilds/players seem to run from the fights a lot less. Not sure what the difference is in dynamics between EB and the BLs.

Think they’re not as well trained in EB. It’s been severely impacting our stockpiles of droppable merchants, and what to do with all these darn badges?? One only needs so many golems.

Been great to see Agg in there too! Quickly becoming a fan <3

Yeah, I am not sure TW should be bragging about farming pugs in lag central EB but SW, Agg & WARD have been working hard to toughen up our Eternally casual forces out there so they can give ya some better competition. It has been nice seeing TW forces out looking for some open field fun lately without the rest of their server close behind.

I honestly thought last nite someone had called out BG border as the official small man border for the evening as I kept seeing all these smaller guild forces running around from all 3 sides and there was a queue on a monday nite! ~gasp~ We use to do that in DAoC back when Emain was zerg central, we’d call out a rarely used zone for the 8mans to hit, so nothing like organized GvG but just a place you could expect to find some smaller non-laggy affairs. Anyone with forum weight wanna give it a shot?

Arkay.5230:

We already have 3 hour queues on reset. Reducing the number allowed on the maps would make the game even more unplayable because you physically could not play unless you are unemployed or have massive amounts of time to waste sitting in queue.

Ok, seriously? What server are you playing on with 3 hour queues?! You know the queue system still borked right? We so rarely see queues these days due to fewer people playing WvW for a myriad of reasons (lag and population imbalance likly being high on the list there) that ANET never did figure out why it wasn’t working properly. I play on JQ and we can still field some decent numbers at times but nothing close to anything more than 30 minute queues. If your queue is longer than 15 minutes you should really try again. Are there really servers left out there where queues longer than that are common? Admittedly, I am very ignorant about what is going on over the EU side of things so maybe longer queues are a thing over there.

From reading way too many of these threads, it appears the skill lag getting worse lately issue is not a tier 1 only problem but those of us who play in the more WvW stacked servers have it more often than others so logic seems to dictate that our over stacked servers are making the game unplayable for us which seems to suggest if we want to play the game without skill lag we would start transferring down to less populated servers and spreading ourselves back out. I hope ANET is on board and trying to find a way to incentivize the un-stacking of our WvW populations before they lower the map population caps.

Wouldn’t it be cool to see where todays worlds would stand in the ranking and population if we were all magically returned the server we started out on and given one free world transfer to get back together with newly made friends and guilds before being locked into a much more strict world transfer system that only lets you move down and never up? /ponder

Teikoku.2068:

There is a simple solution to JQ’s coverage problem. Hey JQ! If your forum warriors would stop spending so much time on the forums kittening, and instead actively improving and providing a community guilds would be more than happy to join, you guys would probably get more guilds coming over. There must be something kittening wrong with your server if all the guilds are constantly going to SOR or BG. JQ should ask itself why they are being passed over for SOR and BG.

Ever hear of quality over quantity? JQ doesn’t have that many trolls these days either, in fact losing for a while has actually helped us shed some of the worst of them. I would say a lot of JQ are exactly where we want to be, still competitive and having fun fighting for it every nite. We might lack coverage in a few time zones but there are not enough guilds to stack 4 maps full 24/7 across 3 servers and if we were trying to get more transfers all the time we would be making some lower tier suffer for the pleasure of getting MORE FREAKING SKILL LAG! >< So yeah, no thank you, JQ doesn’t really need anymore players, SoR and BG just need less. We’ve got a pretty cool crop over here already.

It is still possible to play GW2 with this crazy skill lag but you definitely have to adjust your play-style a bit and hope you don’t accidentally run into a lagfest battle because skill lag seems to stay with you a while once it starts for some even after they switch maps. Maybe it is more of a serious problem for the top tier servers who insist on running their blobs smack into each other all the time. >< Maybe this ANET’s secret way to try and create disincentive for zerging.

They can lower the WvW map population caps, they have done it before. You are probably correct that they won’t do it until they have a way to address the world population imbalance issue and the proper incentives in place to help us make smart choices about how we distribute our WvW populations across the servers. That is an issue that has been a problem for awhile now so I am hopeful they were already working on finding a solution there.

In the meantime, it really would be wise of them to lower the map caps even if only temporarily to improve our game experience while they work on correcting whatever broke the system over the last month if it was something as simple as some little duplicate bit of gremlin code but I have my doubts about that. I would rather have longer queues for a short time than crippling skill lag for any amount time but maybe I am in the minority in that regard.

Blooper.9765:

What I’d like to suggest may also not be possible (I’m totally unskilled in this field) but I’m guessing it’s possible. Simply put, Anet probably has a pretty good idea at what level a given map becomes unplayable; so, lower the number of players for that map to a manageable level.

Everything you suggest is very doable and has pretty much been done before, we use to have much lower map caps than we do now and devs have stated that world population caps are dynamic to be adjusted on the fly so we have theorized it is the same for WvW map population caps. There has also been tons of threads on the subject lately tho I don’t suppose we’ve been tossing ideas around as much as having kitten fits over it since the idea phase did not see a lot of response.

I’ve been begging ANET to lower the WvW map population caps for more than two weeks now when skill lag started to become intolerable for me (it’s been annoying for awhile but gotten much worse lately) and plan to keep doing so knowing full well that the queue kittenstorm that would result from lower map caps would probably cause my hubby to quit the game or at least leave the server. I’ve stopped playing WvW in our servers prime-time and try to avoid the zergs like the plague but if your map is bogged down with a 3-way fight somewhere it can affect players across the map, although it seems to be worst if you happened to participate in the three-way and then leave the area, it is almost like the skill lag clings on to you like goo and wont let go.

I accept that in order for a solution like lower WvW map population caps to be successful ANET would need to have a few other fixes in line to roll out at the same time that would deal with world population redistribution and incentives so I am hopeful they are just waiting on one of those pieces to be done before taking action. Hopefully they will give us a clue how long we might need to wait soon but in the meantime, go outside and enjoy your summer or find times and ways you can enjoy WvW without as much crippling skill lag. Cheers,

dani.1956:

Gratz ! And another message for Anet : Fix this kittening lag !
My B-day is this month so i want this : Lag Fix !

I really hope you get your birthday wish dani! Maybe if enough people close their eyes and clap really hard saying “I believe in ANET devs! I believe in ANET devs!” the skill lag free dreams of the world can come true. Better start wishing upon any falling stars you too.

For the skill lag issue I don’t think it would take very much to settle a lot of us down, just an acknowledgement they are aware of the change in the issue and are looking into it. I’d be please as punch if that included an announcement of lower WvW map population caps while they did their investigation so we could at least enjoy WvW 75% of the time away from SM. I just want to know I am not going crazy in feeling the skill lag has gotten much worse in the last month or so and there isn’t something deeper wrong that I could do something about on my end.

plegnic.8324:

Suppose a total of 600 people are in the map (is 200/team a decent estimate?) that’s 180,000 condition stacks updating every second.

Goodness no try half that, maybe 300 per map but either way, still a decent number and point well made. I think for many simply not knowing the numbers they are dealing with compounds the frustration and we are left to guess how many of us are out there running around. IMO they should just lower the WvW map population caps to whatever they can do the calcs for in that worst case scenario, find a happy friendly way to rebalanced the world populations and then start doing the behind the scenes work get those numbers higher.

An increase with GPU usage starting with the end of the Flame and Frost event would be an interesting timing issue. I wonder what changed and when exactly. I would say anecdotally that lag in general and skill lag in particular has been getting slightly worse for me with each patch since mid May. You can actually feel zergs approaching now in WvW which use to be something only a guildie playing on an older apple could do.

Not sure if reducing the WvW map population caps would actually help that much then but I would still like to see it done just to feel the affects of a such a change. Even if it was only for a temporary amount of time while they sorted out their problems. Yeah, I know, queues suck but what difference does it make if you waiting in a queue or waiting for your skills to fire? Add up all the skill lag time you get in a given play session and see how long of a queue would that be worth to you?

Not so sure about your numbers there . . . just guessing I would assume but probably pretty close to 100 per side per map these days which really just needs to be lowered enough to make fewer huge skill lag infested battles. Also not sure this would help the problem or not. Granted you’ve given everyone a lot more space to run around in but there is still plenty of opportunity for those 50vs50v50 battles that cause skill lag to occur and lately, big battles on one location in the map have been having effects across the map where people can’t even fire skills while standing around in their spawn camp. I imagine there is a reason they had to keep the maps the size they did and broken apart. There is likely a point of diminishing returns when it comes to resources and map size for this sort of thing. It is good to keep tossing out ideas. Daydreaming of game improvements are half the fun of forums like these.

xTiMeBoMBx.2863:

ANet’s servers are incapable of handling the clashes of big groups in an area at one time. This is why we need a WvW population balance, i.e. a flexible cap, and create more maps for us to battle on. Anyone crying about “a cap is gonna limit contents from players” is all crap and you deserve to play in a laggy, smashing #1, and fail WvW system, which we’re currently in. All skills worked just fine before culling was fixed, so guess what, ANet only fixed culling by shifting processes, not recoding. Hence the skill lag problems began.

I agree with most of that but I am not so sure we even need more maps to deal with the current WvW populations across worlds. I play on a top tier world that tends to have a least 2 maps outmanned 12hrs out of the day. I guess it depends on how low of WvW population caps they have to resort to and what they are now since we are never allowed to know the numbers behind the scenes. ><

I could see them pulling the Obsidian Sanctum out as its own map, expanding it to include a waypoint spawn safe zone for each team with maybe one camp like area to capture and defend, banning seige weapons on the map and putting a huge open green field on top of the underground jumping puzzle portion of the map perfect for GvGing (think Agramon from New Frontiers without bridges or gates). Bet that would be a popular place. Then they would just need to replace the Inner Sanctum on EB with a series of catacomb like tunnels connecting the Valley / Lowlands / Overlook / keeps for underground assaults and sneakiness.

Anyways, YES! Lower WvW map populations caps and lets see how the game performs then.

robocafaz.9017:

SykkoB.9465:

tbh 7 months ago the lag actually wasnt that bad.

Yes it was. It’s always been this bad.

I do not recall seeing skill lag rage threads all over the forums every reset until the last month or so. Sure SM in EB has always been lagtastic (they don’t call it Lagmist for nothin) but I never really understood how SM alone was responsible for that “feature” of WvW when skill lag is is not a client side issue but maybe graphics lag on the client side just compounds an already existing problem to the point of noticing it.

Granted, until March we didn’t even have skill lag because we had his evil twin culling instead where we didn’t even have to see those waves of enemies attacking us. The funny thing is skill lag results in the same sort of battles as culling induced, massive fights where you can’t do anything or get killed but in cullings case it was because you could not see the enemy nor they you while with skill lag it is just a slow death as we all spam our auto attack and hope someone dies when you are down. Neither one allow for any sort of strategic play that is not some cheap use of abusing the game mechanics and not very much fun to participate in.

Unfortunately there are probably multiple factors at work here negatively affecting a lot players in game experience and causing us all lose patience and start kittening. The recent blight of DC’s is probably completely unrelated to the typical 40vs40 skill lag lock-ups, and regular client side lag due to graphics overload is likely a compounding issue for some of us, along with ISP stuff and other crazy things that are difficult to pin down. So as much as I love to kitten about this skill lag BS, I am also aware how ignorant I am of all the elements involved. I just want ANET to take notice and maybe do a little preventive maintenance in lowering the WvW map population caps so we can see how much that helps the situation.

SykkoB.9465:

U cant blame it on the players or high tiers blah blah zergs

WVW has a player cap IF the game cannot handle it when there is a que or the player cap is reached for the bl, THEN anet needs to lower the cap cause its THere engine failing

also shouldnt buggs/lag be getting fixed or less the longer a game is out and not worse ?

/agree with Syk, I like your spark kiddo ANET needs to show us what lower WvW map populations caps feel like so we can start making some choices from there. If this is more than just a problem on the overfull worlds then there is a lot more work to be done.

On the downside, I am not surprised things actually get worse over time instead of better. That is a well documented problem with code in general. The more cooks in the kitchen and the faster there is turn over and movement between departments the more spaghetti code you are going to end up with. I get the feeling ANET grew really quickly there for awhile, got a lot of shake up and had some baseline changes with new ideas doing things the original engine design never dreamed of.

I do not envy them the work they have yet to do but I also know changing their WvW map populations caps is something they can do easily and quickly. I just expect they are waiting to do so until they have some other elements in place to make the transition more manageable and less of a kitten screaming contest when it hits.

Nikola.3841:

You think graphics is server side, not client side?

Obviously skill lag is not a client side issue while the graphic settings part of the “pretty” is but I am thinking more of the over all bells and whistles that have to be sent back and forth like particle effects, glowies, flapping wings on dead & dying bodies, siege weapon skills, guesting and the like. I am total technophobe and have no clue what I am talking about when it comes to this junk, just that skill lag is a real issue in this game and it gets much worse the more players you have in one location and the more patches full of more shiny pretty flapping stuff that gets added. Coincidence? I haven’t a clue but it seems fishy.

morrolan.9608:

dan.3618:

I dont know why they dont just do the obvious and reduce the amount of players by a 3rd in all borderlands. They have implemented somthing that technically cannot be accomplished.

To do that they would have to put a 5th map in. They can;t just reduce the no. of players and have the long queues it would lead to.

How about we stop stacking the top 4 servers and spread the populations back out a bit instead of having long kitten queues as a result of lower WvW map populations caps. Sure ANET can’t do one thing without a cascading effect so I am sure that is why they are waiting to get their ducks in line so they can push out several changes simultaneously that will hopefully address skill lag, zergs, WvW population caps, server population caps, guild transfers, the outmanned buff & off peak hour population swings all in one big package. I’ve got my fingers & toes crossed for it and if this super fix it all in stroke WvW patch doesn’t hit before the anniversary it is going to be sad times and maybe the problem will fix itself when more players move on to other games.

The quick poor man’s fix is for us to spread back out across servers and for ANET to lower the WvW map population cap to something the game in its current form can handle. I just don’t think we are going to see that happen because too many of us would start screaming “YOU LIED!” on the whole epic 100vs100vs100 battle bit. I honestly would rather be able to play the game than get those huge large scale fights everyone was hoping WvW would have.

I wouldn’t call it running from the problem. I would say leaving the stacked servers could actually help a lot and maybe once more of us better understand the problem we can make logical demands of ANET to do what is easily in their power to correct the problem and lower WvW map population caps. If the game is not working the way it is now then I don’t see why some band aid fixes for a temporary solution, ie, moving down tiers and spreading the populations out would be a bad thing. Yeah, ANET should be doing more to encourage us to do the right thing but so far they are a bit behind with it so time to busy and do it ourselves.

ANET is making tons of money from this game, hand over fist, a sub fee isn’t going to help this issue. You can’t always just throw money at everything. People going on about the old games that didn’t have this issues forget they also did not have a fraction of bonus goodies that GW2 comes with (w/o out a sub I might add), especially the eye candy. The first seriously “pretty” MMO with something like WvW, Aion did have serious issues with lag as I recall (WAR wasn’t pretty in my book but I seem to remember some lag problems there as well).

I think guesting and multi-server tech is actually just bogging those poor suffering server farms. It is not simple stuff they are asking their engine to do but we all act like they are purposely not fixing easy stuff to frustrate us. Maybe we need to take some responsibility here and spread our darned selves out a bit to give them some breathing room. Maybe then we once we all see some improvement it’ll start to sink into their heads that the dream of 100vs100vs100 battles may not be meant for this game with these graphics. Bummer but if so I’d like to know sooner rather than later. ><

Eviator.9746:

Maybe ANet should reduce map population by 25 or more players per server per map. That would solve the lag, and encourage guilds to migrate and even out the population because of high queue times. The top servers will have less of a “weak” time slot because the maps can field only so many, and then if a server is dominating, legitimate claims of superior skill can be made.

I’ve been begging for it along with many others but you know ANET wont do it for fear of kittening off the short attention span must win kiddies. They got such a backlash back when they closed down free transfers at the same time as lowering the cap but granted, that was bad time to do it. Just seems like ANET can’t catch any breaks. They keep pulling the right tricks out at the wrong time and nothing is syncing for them. You gotta pitty those poor devs but at the same time, it is getting to be a tired old tune.

JQ players asking for more guilds, you guys are doing it wrong . . . SoR and BG should be figuring out how to shed some of theirs. It is ok to have the outmanned buff sometimes . . . you can still play the game with it and even have some good fun to boot not to mention ~gasp~ you wont have to pay for repairs!

Yeah sure ANET could do a heck of a lot better job encouraging us to spread out so all this skill lag trash wasn’t such a stupid problem but if they are not going to do anything about it soon why wait for them? Lets get the ball rolling and stop stacking the top severs for petes sake. >< Sorry, just getting real sick of all the skill lag and crashes left & right.

In the another skill lag thread you pitched a fit when someone said transfer down a tier and while I agree with the sentiment that asking us to fix the problem is not a logical long term solution, it is something we as players have control over right now. The problem is no one wants to do it because there is no reward for doing so and guilds having to start over and pay for it is actually a disincentive instead.

I am a huge proponent of realm pride and building strong WvW communities which takes time but GW2 has been screwing it up since before launch starting by not giving us the proper tools to gather our communities together to the broken guesting system which made free world transfer last much longer than they should have and the creation of the world boom and bust cycle that plagued the first 5 months of the game. So now here we are, culling is fixed but culling might have been the one the thing that was keeping skill lag in check and the bigger our zergs get the worse skill lag is. Every reset seems worse since early May. Sometimes we the players just have to take things into our own hands. I want to play the game not wear out my #1 key.

We get a ton of these threads every single reset but they are usually gone and buried by the time Monday rolls around. Do your part if skill lag is effecting your enjoyment of the game to make sure we have massive bunch of these skill lag posts front page come the beginning of the work week if we want ANET to start taking us seriously and stress the point if you would rather see lower world and WvW map population caps (and hence sadly, longer queues) than suffer another reset weekend of intense skill lag.

Xsorus.2507:

DevonCarver.5370:

Just wanted to hop in and mention, again, that the AoE cap on player skills is a technical limitation. Were we to increase that, skill lag would get considerably worse.

Really….Worse…?

So instead of just taking 30 seconds to use an ability like now…the Anet servers would leave the building, get in the car, drive to my house, punt kick my dog, and punch me in the nuts?

Because i really can’t see how it can get much worse

quoted for truth, if skill lag could be worse I think it might break some time space continuum and actually get so bad it was better. o.O Lets give it a try! Come on, the gate is straight, Deep and wide, Break on through to the other side!

They will not lower the WvW map caps until we the players demand it because last time they tried there was a kittenstorm of hate over the queues it caused. They have to both lower the WvW map population caps at the same time they do something to address the overstacking of the top tiers. I am hopeful they have something in the works and are just waiting to get it all sorted out but a new way to transfer guilds intact would be pretty cool. We really do just need to spread out until such time as (if ever) skill lag can be corrected.