@primatos.5413 said:
If the lag was gone, we had soething to prevent overstacking (alliances maybe?) and the balance would be proper in a way.. could be a nice game to play..
Since we're looking at Adjusting Capacity...Can we make it part of a larger plan to fix the WvW game mode?
A ) REBOOT - Can we Reboot WvW before we start?
Let's go back to the basics that made WvW uniquely server community based - For full context - Click - WvW-Reboot
B ) REDESIGN - Then Redesign & Replace the game mode by swapping the old one for a new one to minimize risk.
Match-Ups redesigned to be Player Driven, but Anet Controlled - For full context - Click - WvW-Redesign
C ) REOPEN - Then let the New Redesigned game mode adjust capacity to impact both performance & competition in a healthy way.
Examples to adjust capacity:
Adjusting the number of maps within a Globe helps to increase or decrease "seat" capacity of a Globe to host more or less players that are battling inside
Maximum Globe "Seat" Capacity is set by ANet
Seats are Reserved based on the following - [ Home Team - 45% ] / [ Enemy Raider = 40 %] / [ Referee = 15% ] - (Percents Adjustable)
Redesign should be built-in & naturally allow capacity to scale based on player demand - For full context - Click - WvW-Match-Up
We ought to have A Serious Step-by-Step Road Map & Vision to save the WvW game mode by transforming it...imho
@Anchoku.8142 said:
What has changed in the code to create such problems with lag?
Considering that there hasn't been any announced performance and optimization passes to the new skills and traits introduced and old skills modified since the last time they've done it (after HoT), one could say everything's changed.
@Anchoku.8142 said:
What has changed in the code to create such problems with lag?
Considering that there hasn't been any announced performance and optimization passes to the new skills and traits introduced and old skills modified since the last time they've done it (after HoT), one could say everything's changed.
Perhaps; there could have been server hardware and/or network connection changes, too. Cost reductions, including traffic prioritization changes could have happened. It would be a shame if a cost-saving choice resulted in reduced performance but it has been known to happen.
@Anchoku.8142 said:
What has changed in the code to create such problems with lag?
Considering that there hasn't been any announced performance and optimization passes to the new skills and traits introduced and old skills modified since the last time they've done it (after HoT), one could say everything's changed.
Perhaps; there could have been server hardware and/or network connection changes, too. Cost reductions, including traffic prioritization changes could have happened. It would be a shame if a cost-saving choice resulted in reduced performance but it has been known to happen.
You're right. There were those changes too when they moved to Amazon servers. I'm pretty sure they moved some time after the last major look at optimization. It's good they're looking into this again.
I'm just deathly scared if there will be no follow through since this is my biggest issue with the game. I just hope they are going through the results of the test and working on a next stage, and letting us know about it. I still wish they'd give people an option to tunnel through a closer geolocated aws to connect to the main server (seperate issue from skill lag). In some cases it would help with latency/ping stability/routing issue.
@briggah.7910 said:
reset NA spent first 40 mins in EoTM. then 1 hour in EBG. no skill lag but 1 spike for a few seconds. 19 in queue took 40 mins to get into EBG
Yes. Before the map capping test, during the first hour on reset days, we have map queues only in one and maybe two maps. Two map queues was very rare. And even then the queue is short, like less than 20. And, there are days where there is no queue at all on all maps just 30 mins after reset.
Yesterday's reset? WOW!
All maps were on queue and some even as high as 40+ in queue. I didn't know that 7 is such a magical number...
edit: I told youu ♫
Queue isnt necessarily a bad thing. It means more people are enjoying WvW due to reduced lags. If it keeps up, some of The guilds and pugs will just go to a server with less qs.
Also reset as overhyped event shouldnt be measurement for issues. How were qs on saturday Prime?
Ri Ba - Charr of logic twitch.tv/ribatime ~Key to fixing WvW with minimal effort resides in my post history~
Sounds to me like Amazon pushed back and told them it wasn't they fault, so then Anet has decided to look in to it or at least do something, which is good. Lag has always been here, even since pre launch. It reached the height of its problem during the WvW seasons when guilds would run up to take an objective and have absolutely no control over there abilities for roughly a min straight and then when everything caught up would either be standing over bodies or were actually the bodies on the ground. It happened all the time and caused loads and loads for frustration. In the past Anet has tried culling with various efforts to cull players in the field which lead to invisible zergs, they finally got that to a reasonably balanced state. Hope they figure it out and fix it.
Let's nerf everything, so that we don't need any skill to play.
The Truth sometimes hurts but it is good for you.
I've been having so much stop and go lag since this has came into place. Most times, it's not a ping issue. It gets worse every week, I've literally seen very little change but that could also be my internet as well, but most times when I do have issues, it's not from my side.
@Diku.2546 said: Since we're looking at Adjusting Capacity...Can we make it part of a larger plan to fix the WvW game mode?
A ) REBOOT - Can we Reboot WvW before we start?
Let's go back to the basics that made WvW uniquely server community based - For full context - Click - WvW-Reboot
B ) REDESIGN - Then Redesign & Replace the game mode by swapping the old one for a new one to minimize risk.
Match-Ups redesigned to be Player Driven, but Anet Controlled - For full context - Click - WvW-Redesign
C ) REOPEN - Then let the New Redesigned game mode adjust capacity to impact both performance & competition in a healthy way.
Examples to adjust capacity:
Adjusting the number of maps within a Globe helps to increase or decrease "seat" capacity of a Globe to host more or less players that are battling inside
Maximum Globe "Seat" Capacity is set by ANet
Seats are Reserved based on the following - [ Home Team - 45% ] / [ Enemy Raider = 40 %] / [ Referee = 15% ] - (Percents Adjustable)
Redesign should be built-in & naturally allow capacity to scale based on player demand - For full context - Click - WvW-Match-Up
We ought to have A Serious Step-by-Step Road Map & Vision to save the WvW game mode by transforming it...imho
If they shut it down to do work do you honestly think it'll get turned back on again ?.
WvW will continue to be used with no changes until it's replaced by a New game mode.
Weekend events are held to test a New Parallel game mode.
THR - 11:59 pm - WvW is removed from service.
FRI - New game mode is put into service & temporarily replaces WvW.
SAT - New game mode is tested for proof of concept
SUN - 11:59 pm - New game mode is removed from service. MON - WvW is put back into service
Repeat above weekend event until Parallel New game mode is fully tested & ready to replace WvW.
I'd like to emphasize the need for design mechanics that help to create Match-Ups that encourage Healthy Competition that's "Wholesome" for the players...imho
Redesign should be built-in & naturally allow capacity to scale based on player demand - For full context - Click - WvW-Match-Up
Examples to adjust capacity:
Adjusting the number of maps within a Globe helps to increase or decrease "seat" capacity of a Globe to host more or less players that are battling inside
Maximum Globe "Seat" Capacity is set by ANet
Seats are Reserved based on the following - [ Home Team - 45% ] / [ Enemy Raider = 40 %] / [ Referee = 15% ] - (Percents Adjustable)
Lag is back again during weekend at least: while ping is under 50ms, the skill lag is about 2000ms. This was today on EU Gunnar/FoW during US morning, midday EU.
Even in 10 vs. 30 fight, which is an almost "empty" EBG map.
This looks like bad service from Amazon side, because if it was from the Guild Wars 2 code then would be almost constant.
Good for a turn based game maybe, not WvW.
I've also been Wiresharking my connection while playing wvw during reset and I never see my upload rate for gw2 go over 70kbps, and my download rate never got over 1.8Mbps, even in a zerg on zerg in EBG. What I did see was a spike in round trip time between when a packet is sent and acknowledged, almost 1.5 seconds for each packet. Only during big zerg fights.
It is also important to remember that FPS drops, lag , and server latency are not the same thing. The have similar effects on your experience because of the way the client tries to compensate. Just know that using your FPS as a troubleshooting tool for this particular problem is misleading.
Since GW2 is using AWS EC2 instances I'm going to have to assume they are using the cheaper T2 variety to save costs. The main problem with the EC2 platform is general is that it's software load balancing instead of hardware and this is how bottlenecks happen. The load balancing application has to compensate for burst traffic and that performance is predicated on how good the hardware resources are to begin with, then how much has been earmarked for that Virtual Machine. In all honesty, even the T3 servers would have problems. You almost have to move to dedicated hardware with very powerful hardware load balancing to address this. WvW would have to be a cash cow to facilitate this kind of change because that solution is expensive. It's not.
Also there is no difference in the packet on the transport side between a targeted skill and an aoe skill. The FPS drops people have due to those are client side. What I imagine does happen on the server side is making sets of multiple dmg calculations from an aoe bomb. It's most likely why the scourge aoes had targets reduced; it wasn't a balance problem so much as a computational problem.
Note: this is all conjecture using what I can see easily from my end and my knowledge of how AWS EC2 servers work. I have no in depth knowledge of how the code is structured, but I make my living as a network design engineer so I have a better than average grasp of how data flows.
tldr: it's most likely server-side influx traffic and the servers can't compensate fast enough to keep from having delayed packets back to the clients. What we see as users are skills "blinking" and what the client is waiting for is the packet from the server to say it got the skill "send", once this cascades (as in big fights with scores of players sending bundles of skill activations) it gets worse until one side is dead. Once the fight is over, the packet queues clear and the latency returns to normal.
The key feedback that we’ll need from all of you is to get a sense of how the maps feel with fewer players. We still want WvW to feel like WvW, and we realize that any reduction to player counts will have a negative impact on the overall gameplay experience.
@corwin.8356 said:
tldr: it's most likely server-side influx traffic and the servers can't compensate fast enough to keep from having delayed packets back to the clients. What we see as users are skills "blinking" and what the client is waiting for is the packet from the server to say it got the skill "send", once this cascades (as in big fights with scores of players sending bundles of skill activations) it gets worse until one side is dead. Once the fight is over, the packet queues clear and the latency returns to normal.
Thanks for the tech analysis Corwin! Since packet delay or loss has become exacerbated by software or hardware issues, what do you think of the below scenario where instancing & population control are borrowed from Edge of the Mist (legacy map design & code)? Would that alleviate issues in terms of packet bloating & server relay latency spikes?
Current EBG Map:
Server resource fixed due to map on 24/7
No instancing
No timer for matches
Players wait for Queue during peak times
Skill lags due to Blob clashes
Current EOTM Map: (from wiki)
Each match is 4 hours in duration broken up into 5 minute ticks.
The scoring portion has a duration of 3 hours and 52 minutes when a winner is decided.
This is followed by a 5-minute grace period to allow players to finish up.
Players are removed from the map while the map is resetting. The next match starts 3 minutes afterwards.
Questions from a packets' perspective:
Based on the current EOTM's map design where focus is on divide & conquer + capping points instead of blobbing, would instancing with a timer minimize packets loss & relays from the client side?
Would server resources then be easier to balance with micro-'instances'? (some minimal server-side coding probably required)
In terms of Amazon's servers, would a 50 vs 50 (something Amazon is using for their own upcoming game for example) segmented in instances with 4 hour durations run better while decreasing packet loss?
Skill lag was back tonight, fat 3 way in garrison.
Also in fat 3 way in open field around swt.
Also stuttering stepping in one instance.
But not as bad as before... I guess.
^ Another derailing post - Anet
Perma stealth is needed to outrun zergs. - Thieves
/Stomps Mirage-Scourge-Warclaw, boon ball balance! - Anet
No expansion money as long as Mesmers are trash. - Me
Last night on EB (Eu Desolation) anywhere near a meta blob and my ping would skyrocket between 3000 - 4000. Move away from the blob and back to 200ms. kitten ridiculous that you would build classes that literally kitten boons non-stop. You want to fix the lag? Absolutely gut every single boon-share / corrupt / condi spam meta build there is. Your hardware just can't handle it.
Deso since 2012. Elementalist for life.
[EXG][TAG]
Yeah I'll just say the game was fun while it lasted but its pretty much done and over with now the whole send of season 4 was basically the game coming to a close. I'm just not big on playing another version of condi wars 2 with massive lag the first few times was enough but I'm not about to keep playing this trash.
@Limodriver.4106 said:
time to bring out more wvw maps to reduce the Q size. Time to make eotm one of the wvw map.
I was never a fan of EotM, and having recently taken a little walk around in it (I got killed by some random, surprise champ), it felt SO old no mounts. It's really amazing what mounts did for the game.
We know skill lag is an issue in WvW. We’re actively investigating performance improvements and optimizations, but this is not a quick process and is going to take some time. While these investigations are ongoing, we want to see if there are other opportunities for some short-term improvements.
We’re planning to run some tests to see what performance gains we can get by reducing the total number of players on the map. The current target for the initial test is with EU reset on this Friday, July 10, where we’ll be temporarily reducing the map caps in WvW for both NA and EU by 21 (7 per team) and monitoring the impact on performance over the next week. The key feedback that we’ll need from all of you is to get a sense of how the maps feel with fewer players. We still want WvW to feel like WvW, and we realize that any reduction to player counts will have a negative impact on the overall gameplay experience. We will be weighing that negative impact against the positives of any performance improvements to determine if it makes sense to move forward with lower map caps beyond this initial test. If we do move forward with lower map caps, we will also be keeping a close eye on queue times and will increase the number of tiers as needed.
This is not a long-term solution. Even if we find that reducing map caps leads to big performance improvements and the impact on gameplay is minimal, we will be continuing our investigations into performance with the plan of incrementally restoring map caps as improvements are made.
Que times have pretty much killed my desire to play WvW waited 35 minutes to get into EBG last night I normally just play 45 minutes to an hour after I get off work. When I am in I do not see a performance difference however I have have very little performance issues in GW2 any game type. East coast USA decent PC & about 150mbp internet service hardwired to LAN not wireless. I often wonder how much of these complaints are user side or something ANET can actually do about the games performance.
Reset on Green BL in T3 EU was like playing wvw before the player cap change.
It was literally unplayable, with the same skill lag you would get when two zergs clash, with a third Zerg standing nearby, who doesn't even use any or little skills.
shouldn't lags rather get better? they should slow but steady try to add more server capacity for the steam start, or do i understand sth wrong here thaha
EU T4
EB, server ip 18.157.214.248
So far it feels much smoother this reset. I am not experiencing the lag hell of the previous weeks, even in 3 ways. Will keep checking my other matchups too when I get to them.
Im pretty sure that since the target cap was reduced the skill lag has diminished a lot, even on 3-way blob fights. But reset still seems to have problems handling the large amount of players and we saw it yesterday as many persons got disconnected around 30 minutes into the matchup (NA servers), strangely from across all the servers. Maybe we should consider increasing the tiers in order to make reset less crowded, or something like a 2 hour event at EoTM to encourage guilds going there on resets.
@Omel.5204 said:
Im pretty sure that since the target cap was reduced the skill lag has diminished a lot, even on 3-way blob fights. But reset still seems to have problems handling the large amount of players and we saw it yesterday as many persons got disconnected around 30 minutes into the matchup (NA servers), strangely from across all the servers. Maybe we should consider increasing the tiers in order to make reset less crowded, or something like a 2 hour event at EoTM to encourage guilds going there on resets.
Considering NA has two servers linked that are both ‘full’ maybe we do that with a decreased threshold for ‘full’ and if a server goes full, relink immediately.
@Omel.5204 said:
Im pretty sure that since the target cap was reduced the skill lag has diminished a lot, even on 3-way blob fights. But reset still seems to have problems handling the large amount of players and we saw it yesterday as many persons got disconnected around 30 minutes into the matchup (NA servers), strangely from across all the servers. Maybe we should consider increasing the tiers in order to make reset less crowded, or something like a 2 hour event at EoTM to encourage guilds going there on resets.
Resets are resets, but you are still limited by map cap. Reducing server size wont matter. I mean Anet could just map cap to 10 too... but it'd be pretty boring.
Anyway, these months I've definetly noticed a distinct reduction in the warp and skill lag, but on the other hand you really notice the fps drops because of that. There's still lag with skills being slow/speeding up too.
gaggle - /ˈɡaɡ(ə)l/ - noun
A disorderly group of Asura. "The gaggle of Asura tried to agree on whether a phase-shifted thermonuclear energy matrix was sufficiently powerful for a device capable of heating bread"
Why the DOLAR of the smaller server Player worth less than the DOLAR of the full server player?
Simply terrible the bad idea of changing servers traffic, in the name of the BEST GAME EXPERIENCE.
Where smaller servers can only get half slots as big servers, low bandwich huge lag in any RESET, and I have 1mbit of internet, and all reset after this new BEST GAME EXPERIENCE in WVW give a huge lag, where is the BEST GAME EXPERIENCE IN THIS?
WVW servers allows a limit of 200 players, if a full server enters with 80, another with 80 and the smaller ones just will have 40 slots and already have queues before starting to enter players all reset is same huge queue without players inside server.
Would you like to understand where the SF player's DOLAR for example is worth less than YAQS, MAGUMA, or other FULL SERVER?
the name this is COST REDUCE, no BEST EXPERIENCE in GAME PLAY! I dont know why i back with my guild to GW2, why we expend 2,8K gems month per player to support company, if WVW player all time are punished per ARENANET, As the game's worst rewards, try survive just of WVW, i hate PVE, i hate JUMP PUZZLE, i dont like farm, grind, i dont have time to living inside GW2. I love play WVW but if i dont stay in FULL server, if we help small servers dont die, Arenanet punish us with 1/3 some times 1/2 capacity to put players in WVW. Any smart IT eng, said thats if you have much traffic in one, is this thats u need control no servers thats have low traffic, but arenanet people loves get small and sufocate this servers, of course small servers 500 gems transfer, very high 1,8k gems, more money.
Sugestion:
A) MERGE: get all small and make one big too LIMIT BIG SERVERS PLAYERS INSIDE WVW: to same capacity of small or half of small servers.
there is a lot of queue and the waiting time is not healthy for the game.
Death is Energy [DIE] & Bongbong [BB] in FoW server
Leg champ., champ. magus, champ. phantom & champ. hunter
Envoy's Herald, EAoA, CoZ, VitV, DD, SS, The Eternal, LNHB, DoD, DwD.
Game feels much more smooth & responsive to me. Even in the few 3-way battles i've been in recently, i cant actually claim to have noticed any of the old type of rubber-banding, latency spikes or responsiveness issues. (Feels like it can prolly handle more stuffs).
_/_ [SSSh] Secret Society Service _/_
[Respect Ur Opponents, We All Provide Eachothers Fun]
Blackgate Since Season 1
The key feedback that we’ll need from all of you is to get a sense of how the maps feel with fewer players. We still want WvW to feel like WvW, and we realize that any reduction to player counts will have a negative impact on the overall gameplay experience.
@corwin.8356 said:
tldr: it's most likely server-side influx traffic and the servers can't compensate fast enough to keep from having delayed packets back to the clients. What we see as users are skills "blinking" and what the client is waiting for is the packet from the server to say it got the skill "send", once this cascades (as in big fights with scores of players sending bundles of skill activations) it gets worse until one side is dead. Once the fight is over, the packet queues clear and the latency returns to normal.
Thanks for the tech analysis Corwin! Since packet delay or loss has become exacerbated by software or hardware issues, what do you think of the below scenario where instancing & population control are borrowed from Edge of the Mist (legacy map design & code)? Would that alleviate issues in terms of packet bloating & server relay latency spikes?
Current EBG Map:
Server resource fixed due to map on 24/7
No instancing
No timer for matches
Players wait for Queue during peak times
Skill lags due to Blob clashes
Current EOTM Map: (from wiki)
Each match is 4 hours in duration broken up into 5 minute ticks.
The scoring portion has a duration of 3 hours and 52 minutes when a winner is decided.
This is followed by a 5-minute grace period to allow players to finish up.
Players are removed from the map while the map is resetting. The next match starts 3 minutes afterwards.
Questions from a packets' perspective:
Based on the current EOTM's map design where focus is on divide & conquer + capping points instead of blobbing, would instancing with a timer minimize packets loss & relays from the client side?
Would server resources then be easier to balance with micro-'instances'? (some minimal server-side coding probably required)
In terms of Amazon's servers, would a 50 vs 50 (something Amazon is using for their own upcoming game for example) segmented in instances with 4 hour durations run better while decreasing packet loss?
Any thoughts welcomed! thanks!
TBH, I have only been in EotM a handful of times.
But from a purely networking/server standpoint the problem is a simple in/out queue issue. The Virtual Machine (instance or VM, you pick) has a specific allocation of resources which is in part determined by the Tier of server they are paying for. Reallocation of those resources is handled by software which must also use those same hardware resources, so there is innate latency there. So you have the star network where a single interface or group of interfaces (Link Aggregation) is talking to every client out there. When they all "hit" the server with inputs at once it queues each request and resolves it as it can. It also has to compute everything that request creates on the world and then return those back to the clients. So obviously AOE bombs create a much heavier load from both a computational and return standpoint (part of why target count on Shade Savant was reduced, IMO).
The optimization comes down to how many individual calls can they process at any point in time reliably? You have to either slow down the rate or reduce the number of inputs. This can be handled any number of ways. Longer cast times, fewer players in any instance, few targets on all AOEs or possibly no AOEs at all. I think the hard work is trying to balance the existing skill set, and player population to maintain that "epic" feeling of large scale battles while still having them run smoothly with their setup.
@Anchoku.8142 said:
What has changed in the code to create such problems with lag?
Considering that there hasn't been any announced performance and optimization passes to the new skills and traits introduced and old skills modified since the last time they've done it (after HoT), one could say everything's changed.
Perhaps; there could have been server hardware and/or network connection changes, too. Cost reductions, including traffic prioritization changes could have happened. It would be a shame if a cost-saving choice resulted in reduced performance but it has been known to happen.
You're right. There were those changes too when they moved to Amazon servers. I'm pretty sure they moved some time after the last major look at optimization. It's good they're looking into this again.
In short the game almost unplayable now in WvW, everytime I meet zerg it's always skill lag so bad, VPN not helping and anet didn't do kitten about this
Comments
Hmm...I agree...that would be nice.
Yours truly,
Diku
Credibility requires critical insight & time.
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/89449/wvg-world-vs-globes/p1
Since we're looking at Adjusting Capacity...Can we make it part of a larger plan to fix the WvW game mode?
A ) REBOOT - Can we Reboot WvW before we start?
Let's go back to the basics that made WvW uniquely server community based - For full context - Click - WvW-Reboot
B ) REDESIGN - Then Redesign & Replace the game mode by swapping the old one for a new one to minimize risk.
Match-Ups redesigned to be Player Driven, but Anet Controlled - For full context - Click - WvW-Redesign
C ) REOPEN - Then let the New Redesigned game mode adjust capacity to impact both performance & competition in a healthy way.
Examples to adjust capacity:
Redesign should be built-in & naturally allow capacity to scale based on player demand - For full context - Click - WvW-Match-Up
We ought to have A Serious Step-by-Step Road Map & Vision to save the WvW game mode by transforming it...imho
Yours truly,
Diku
Credibility requires critical insight & time.
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/89449/wvg-world-vs-globes/p1
What has changed in the code to create such problems with lag?
Considering that there hasn't been any announced performance and optimization passes to the new skills and traits introduced and old skills modified since the last time they've done it (after HoT), one could say everything's changed.
Perhaps; there could have been server hardware and/or network connection changes, too. Cost reductions, including traffic prioritization changes could have happened. It would be a shame if a cost-saving choice resulted in reduced performance but it has been known to happen.
You're right. There were those changes too when they moved to Amazon servers. I'm pretty sure they moved some time after the last major look at optimization. It's good they're looking into this again.
I'm just deathly scared if there will be no follow through since this is my biggest issue with the game. I just hope they are going through the results of the test and working on a next stage, and letting us know about it. I still wish they'd give people an option to tunnel through a closer geolocated aws to connect to the main server (seperate issue from skill lag). In some cases it would help with latency/ping stability/routing issue.
Queue isnt necessarily a bad thing. It means more people are enjoying WvW due to reduced lags. If it keeps up, some of The guilds and pugs will just go to a server with less qs.
Also reset as overhyped event shouldnt be measurement for issues. How were qs on saturday Prime?
Ri Ba - Charr of logic
twitch.tv/ribatime
~Key to fixing WvW with minimal effort resides in my post history~
Sounds to me like Amazon pushed back and told them it wasn't they fault, so then Anet has decided to look in to it or at least do something, which is good. Lag has always been here, even since pre launch. It reached the height of its problem during the WvW seasons when guilds would run up to take an objective and have absolutely no control over there abilities for roughly a min straight and then when everything caught up would either be standing over bodies or were actually the bodies on the ground. It happened all the time and caused loads and loads for frustration. In the past Anet has tried culling with various efforts to cull players in the field which lead to invisible zergs, they finally got that to a reasonably balanced state. Hope they figure it out and fix it.
Let's nerf everything, so that we don't need any skill to play.
The Truth sometimes hurts but it is good for you.
It's laggy this week compared to the last, feels like they undid something. No word from them about the tests.
I've been having so much stop and go lag since this has came into place. Most times, it's not a ping issue. It gets worse every week, I've literally seen very little change but that could also be my internet as well, but most times when I do have issues, it's not from my side.
Get rid of commander tags
The lag does seem better. I only had a one moment on Reset, where I couldn't pop any skills for a few seconds.
Desolation WvW Main for 9 years.
If they shut it down to do work do you honestly think it'll get turned back on again ?.
They bought the budget Amazon server package with no roll back feature.
Emphasis on the underlined word:
See link - for full context:
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1064948/#Comment_1064948
WvW will continue to be used with no changes until it's replaced by a New game mode.
Weekend events are held to test a New Parallel game mode.
THR - 11:59 pm - WvW is removed from service.
FRI - New game mode is put into service & temporarily replaces WvW.
SAT - New game mode is tested for proof of concept
SUN - 11:59 pm - New game mode is removed from service.
MON - WvW is put back into service
Repeat above weekend event until Parallel New game mode is fully tested & ready to replace WvW.
I'd like to emphasize the need for design mechanics that help to create Match-Ups that encourage Healthy Competition that's "Wholesome" for the players...imho
Redesign should be built-in & naturally allow capacity to scale based on player demand - For full context - Click - WvW-Match-Up
Examples to adjust capacity:
Yours truly,
Diku
Credibility requires critical insight & time.
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/89449/wvg-world-vs-globes/p1
Lag is back again during weekend at least: while ping is under 50ms, the skill lag is about 2000ms. This was today on EU Gunnar/FoW during US morning, midday EU.
Even in 10 vs. 30 fight, which is an almost "empty" EBG map.
This looks like bad service from Amazon side, because if it was from the Guild Wars 2 code then would be almost constant.
Good for a turn based game maybe, not WvW.
I've also been Wiresharking my connection while playing wvw during reset and I never see my upload rate for gw2 go over 70kbps, and my download rate never got over 1.8Mbps, even in a zerg on zerg in EBG. What I did see was a spike in round trip time between when a packet is sent and acknowledged, almost 1.5 seconds for each packet. Only during big zerg fights.
It is also important to remember that FPS drops, lag , and server latency are not the same thing. The have similar effects on your experience because of the way the client tries to compensate. Just know that using your FPS as a troubleshooting tool for this particular problem is misleading.
Since GW2 is using AWS EC2 instances I'm going to have to assume they are using the cheaper T2 variety to save costs. The main problem with the EC2 platform is general is that it's software load balancing instead of hardware and this is how bottlenecks happen. The load balancing application has to compensate for burst traffic and that performance is predicated on how good the hardware resources are to begin with, then how much has been earmarked for that Virtual Machine. In all honesty, even the T3 servers would have problems. You almost have to move to dedicated hardware with very powerful hardware load balancing to address this. WvW would have to be a cash cow to facilitate this kind of change because that solution is expensive. It's not.
Also there is no difference in the packet on the transport side between a targeted skill and an aoe skill. The FPS drops people have due to those are client side. What I imagine does happen on the server side is making sets of multiple dmg calculations from an aoe bomb. It's most likely why the scourge aoes had targets reduced; it wasn't a balance problem so much as a computational problem.
Note: this is all conjecture using what I can see easily from my end and my knowledge of how AWS EC2 servers work. I have no in depth knowledge of how the code is structured, but I make my living as a network design engineer so I have a better than average grasp of how data flows.
tldr: it's most likely server-side influx traffic and the servers can't compensate fast enough to keep from having delayed packets back to the clients. What we see as users are skills "blinking" and what the client is waiting for is the packet from the server to say it got the skill "send", once this cascades (as in big fights with scores of players sending bundles of skill activations) it gets worse until one side is dead. Once the fight is over, the packet queues clear and the latency returns to normal.
//bad joke incoming
You aren't expected to play with your "friends", only to kill the enemy....when they show up
//end of joke
The key feedback that we’ll need from all of you is to get a sense of how the maps feel with fewer players. We still want WvW to feel like WvW, and we realize that any reduction to player counts will have a negative impact on the overall gameplay experience.
Thanks for the tech analysis Corwin!
Since packet delay or loss has become exacerbated by software or hardware issues, what do you think of the below scenario where instancing & population control are borrowed from Edge of the Mist (legacy map design & code)? Would that alleviate issues in terms of packet bloating & server relay latency spikes?
Current EBG Map:
Current EOTM Map: (from wiki)
Questions from a packets' perspective:
Any thoughts welcomed!
thanks!
NA Server: Henge of Denravi
WvW Builds: https://tiny.cc/wvw2
Anet, can we get some updates on this please?
Now tonight's reset seemed quite bad even though it wasn't bad as usual, was anything changed?
Desolation WvW Main for 9 years.
For me the following week after the initial test was when I felt like they undid something, and now it's fluctuating especially after the new episode.
Skill lag was back tonight, fat 3 way in garrison.
Also in fat 3 way in open field around swt.
Also stuttering stepping in one instance.
But not as bad as before... I guess.
^ Another derailing post - Anet
Perma stealth is needed to outrun zergs. - Thieves
/Stomps Mirage-Scourge-Warclaw, boon ball balance! - Anet
No expansion money as long as Mesmers are trash. - Me
Dismal performance right now in EU T1, getting 2-4k pings
Last night on EB (Eu Desolation) anywhere near a meta blob and my ping would skyrocket between 3000 - 4000. Move away from the blob and back to 200ms. kitten ridiculous that you would build classes that literally kitten boons non-stop. You want to fix the lag? Absolutely gut every single boon-share / corrupt / condi spam meta build there is. Your hardware just can't handle it.
Deso since 2012. Elementalist for life.
[EXG][TAG]
Yeah I'll just say the game was fun while it lasted but its pretty much done and over with now the whole send of season 4 was basically the game coming to a close. I'm just not big on playing another version of condi wars 2 with massive lag the first few times was enough but I'm not about to keep playing this trash.
I was never a fan of EotM, and having recently taken a little walk around in it (I got killed by some random, surprise champ), it felt SO old no mounts. It's really amazing what mounts did for the game.
This post contains my opinion.
Que times have pretty much killed my desire to play WvW waited 35 minutes to get into EBG last night I normally just play 45 minutes to an hour after I get off work. When I am in I do not see a performance difference however I have have very little performance issues in GW2 any game type. East coast USA decent PC & about 150mbp internet service hardwired to LAN not wireless. I often wonder how much of these complaints are user side or something ANET can actually do about the games performance.
Hello, any word yet on this? Please?
Thank you for the update!
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/111982/an-update-on-game-performance-issues
Reset on Green BL in T3 EU was like playing wvw before the player cap change.
It was literally unplayable, with the same skill lag you would get when two zergs clash, with a third Zerg standing nearby, who doesn't even use any or little skills.
Desolation WvW Main for 9 years.
T1 Is nightmare, as soon as you see blob you immediately got skill lag and can't cast anything.
Lag is reverting back to the "pre-performance testing" kind of lag. This is really bad. Please. Do. Something. Unplayable.
maybe it's amazon trying to get rid of mmo competition
shouldn't lags rather get better? they should slow but steady try to add more server capacity for the steam start, or do i understand sth wrong here thaha
Once again, Reset was really, really bad tonight on the EU side, mostly in T3.
Desolation WvW Main for 9 years.
I felt it both eu (T1/T4) and na, right now na (T2/T3/T4)side hitting 1k pings.
At time of this post, lag in T2 is kind of clearing up a little.
EU T4
EB, server ip 18.157.214.248
So far it feels much smoother this reset. I am not experiencing the lag hell of the previous weeks, even in 3 ways. Will keep checking my other matchups too when I get to them.
Im pretty sure that since the target cap was reduced the skill lag has diminished a lot, even on 3-way blob fights. But reset still seems to have problems handling the large amount of players and we saw it yesterday as many persons got disconnected around 30 minutes into the matchup (NA servers), strangely from across all the servers. Maybe we should consider increasing the tiers in order to make reset less crowded, or something like a 2 hour event at EoTM to encourage guilds going there on resets.
Considering NA has two servers linked that are both ‘full’ maybe we do that with a decreased threshold for ‘full’ and if a server goes full, relink immediately.
Thank You for the {MEME}
Resets are resets, but you are still limited by map cap. Reducing server size wont matter. I mean Anet could just map cap to 10 too... but it'd be pretty boring.
Anyway, these months I've definetly noticed a distinct reduction in the warp and skill lag, but on the other hand you really notice the fps drops because of that. There's still lag with skills being slow/speeding up too.
gaggle - /ˈɡaɡ(ə)l/ - noun
A disorderly group of Asura.
"The gaggle of Asura tried to agree on whether a phase-shifted thermonuclear energy matrix was sufficiently powerful for a device capable of heating bread"
Yeah, it's definitely not great on reset night at least.
Desolation WvW Main for 9 years.
It is somewhat backwards for me, where on resets it's kind of smooth but as the weekday starts it progresses back to skill lags.
Why the DOLAR of the smaller server Player worth less than the DOLAR of the full server player?
Simply terrible the bad idea of changing servers traffic, in the name of the BEST GAME EXPERIENCE.
Where smaller servers can only get half slots as big servers, low bandwich huge lag in any RESET, and I have 1mbit of internet, and all reset after this new BEST GAME EXPERIENCE in WVW give a huge lag, where is the BEST GAME EXPERIENCE IN THIS?
WVW servers allows a limit of 200 players, if a full server enters with 80, another with 80 and the smaller ones just will have 40 slots and already have queues before starting to enter players all reset is same huge queue without players inside server.
Would you like to understand where the SF player's DOLAR for example is worth less than YAQS, MAGUMA, or other FULL SERVER?
the name this is COST REDUCE, no BEST EXPERIENCE in GAME PLAY! I dont know why i back with my guild to GW2, why we expend 2,8K gems month per player to support company, if WVW player all time are punished per ARENANET, As the game's worst rewards, try survive just of WVW, i hate PVE, i hate JUMP PUZZLE, i dont like farm, grind, i dont have time to living inside GW2. I love play WVW but if i dont stay in FULL server, if we help small servers dont die, Arenanet punish us with 1/3 some times 1/2 capacity to put players in WVW. Any smart IT eng, said thats if you have much traffic in one, is this thats u need control no servers thats have low traffic, but arenanet people loves get small and sufocate this servers, of course small servers 500 gems transfer, very high 1,8k gems, more money.
Sugestion:
LIMIT BIG SERVERS PLAYERS INSIDE WVW: to same capacity of small or half of small servers.
A) MERGE: get all small and make one big too
there is a lot of queue and the waiting time is not healthy for the game.
Death is Energy [DIE] & Bongbong [BB] in FoW server
Leg champ., champ. magus, champ. phantom & champ. hunter
Envoy's Herald, EAoA, CoZ, VitV, DD, SS, The Eternal, LNHB, DoD, DwD.
Game feels much more smooth & responsive to me. Even in the few 3-way battles i've been in recently, i cant actually claim to have noticed any of the old type of rubber-banding, latency spikes or responsiveness issues. (Feels like it can prolly handle more stuffs).
_/_ [SSSh] Secret Society Service _/_
[Respect Ur Opponents, We All Provide Eachothers Fun]
Blackgate Since Season 1
TBH, I have only been in EotM a handful of times.
But from a purely networking/server standpoint the problem is a simple in/out queue issue. The Virtual Machine (instance or VM, you pick) has a specific allocation of resources which is in part determined by the Tier of server they are paying for. Reallocation of those resources is handled by software which must also use those same hardware resources, so there is innate latency there. So you have the star network where a single interface or group of interfaces (Link Aggregation) is talking to every client out there. When they all "hit" the server with inputs at once it queues each request and resolves it as it can. It also has to compute everything that request creates on the world and then return those back to the clients. So obviously AOE bombs create a much heavier load from both a computational and return standpoint (part of why target count on Shade Savant was reduced, IMO).
The optimization comes down to how many individual calls can they process at any point in time reliably? You have to either slow down the rate or reduce the number of inputs. This can be handled any number of ways. Longer cast times, fewer players in any instance, few targets on all AOEs or possibly no AOEs at all. I think the hard work is trying to balance the existing skill set, and player population to maintain that "epic" feeling of large scale battles while still having them run smoothly with their setup.
Hopefully that helped?
We should be getting pips while we wait in que.
In short the game almost unplayable now in WvW, everytime I meet zerg it's always skill lag so bad, VPN not helping and anet didn't do kitten about this