Open Letter to ArenaNet regarding Server Latency

[Maven.1690]

Adding my name and support to this.I for the longest time hadn't had much issue with this. But this year especially large scale events in wvw or even world bosses I am experiencing the skill lag.Please do what you can to address this and please communicate with us about it.Thanks

[UlarGila.3501]

I have played the Guild Wars games since late 2005 when I decided that I would not pay a monthly subscription for WoW. I purchased all the GW1 games (CDs still on my shelf), moved to GW2 and have purchased all the expansions. PVE is fun but typically a necessity to acquire skill level and certain items for WvW. Playing the various game modes has allowed me to acquire legendary weapons and armor to improve my WvW performance and enhance the fun. I work hard every day and Guild Wars is my relaxation. WvW is my "go to" game mode. I also regularly spend real money to buy gems for in-game utilities.

I usually play the game, WvW, every day. I have not logged in now for going on 3 weeks. The latency, high ping, has removed the fun from the game. When one or more skills simply continue to blink during a fight, all you can do is run away as you know you are likely already dead. This server latency issue must be remedied or I, like many others, will permanently move on to other sources of entertainment.

[XenesisII.1540]

Maybe you should have made a poll instead, because I sure as kitten wouldn't support a subscription for this game. Not when I play wvw 99% of the time but is the least important and least developed content for 8 years, not for waiting two years on alliances, not when you already have to pay for a lot of account upgrades that a sub would cover, not after it's taken them 4 years to start fixing the damage problems started with hot power creep but yet circle back around to boon balling that also started in hot again, and certainly not for destroying the chrono and mirage specs while other broken shit is still around. I'd rather throw sub money back to wow.

Lag isn't something you should have to pay a sub to take away, that should be a constant qol fix for a game, a sub is for access and content.

[Seto.8694]

Support here as well. Skill lag larger problem over the past 6 months -- tried 'fixing' it on my end. Dropped graphics down to lowest settings. No help. Reset is not fun. The game should be fun and as a player I should not be fighting to play your game. As others have said this used to be an issue when all players were concentrated in one area. Now it is noticeable being on the same map.

[King Latif.6903]

Severs have been horrible for a long time and we need a statement from anet on it now

[Tsu Le Voyou.9675]

I won't support a sub, but this post is mostly on-point.The lag is unreal in a way that makes the game feel unplayable by many of my comrades. I've also experienced it's devolving nature in recent times, but I lack the tools to properly measure it. Perhaps it's not to do with the game as much as the host servers? Leaving the community in the dark about what the actual challenges are, will only diminish the player base over time if the above mentioned issues aren't actually addressed. Please save us from the ambiguous lip-service, we are your clients, not a commodity to only fill the coffers. Thank-you.

[Gos.5816]

I love wvw and I feel like even more people would play it if it wasn't a massive lag fest (when I ask my pve friends to join me they often mutter something about lag). Last night in reset we had at least four people drop saying that the lag was too much. I was personally lagging as well with most skills locked out. I stopped playing a couple hours earlier than usual because I usually do a bit more in wvw than press 1 (sorry the meme is not true). This was not around SMC either but primarily in red BL, which has not been problematic in the past.

[Sapphic Savvy.8376]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@"TheSun.4321" said:-Do you lack the funds to pay for better servers or upgrade existing infrastructure?Many of us would gladly pay a subscription for a more supported gamemode, and there are many untapped parts of the game that could be monetized.

I'd like answers to all those questions too however this Subfee subject has been a very common one on these forums.While there may be a lot of people who would like one there is also very clearly a lot of people who would not.. and would even go as far as to stop supporting the game entirely if one was added.. optional or not.

If funds are one of the issues contributing to this problem then I would like Anet to confirm that.At least that way people who do want a Subfee can go and throw 20 Euros into the gemstore every month and pretend like they are paying for one.Many people have pointed this out in the past as a simple counterpoint to pushing a subfee on millions of other players who got into this franchise specifically because it had an anti-subfee business model.

Like an optional sub to those ridiculous "supply drop" packages they release every now and then could help. Give me a bundle with some utility boosters, wxp boosters, metabolic primers, etc. No need to add in anything that doesn't already exist.

OR in the alternative, do what you do with the rest of the game. FTP players get their playground/accessibility, paid accounts get expanded accessibility.

OR like how many metropolitan cities have paid express lanes and the non-paid lanes on major highways.

I'm sure we could all concoct multiple strategies that wouldn't substantially rustle the jimmies of the people who want things to stay free.

[RyuDun.7489]

+1 I made a similar post recently that gained no notice from the devs

[neven.3785]

YES to lag sucks

NO TO SUBSCRIPTION. The game is old, and resources for too long have been choked off from this game mode.Any money gained from a subscriptions will just be more PvE skins and money funneled to ncsoft. The illuminardy doesn't speak for all people, all guilds and all commanders.

[AngelusApatrida.3605]

All support from [AQUA] <3

[Roxory.9854]

Full support here, I love this game and everything that has been put into it but wvw is almost unplayable with the skill lag atm. Sadly a lot of our guild is forgoing ralies and resets because we are just not having fun anymore. There is no balance in servers, a lot of empty alliance promises and now we can't even run a reset in T4. We ran EoTM last night and didn't run WvW because we are just not having fun anymore in WvW and we are a WvW based guild, please fix or like the op said you doing yourselves a disservice because a lot of us are playing another game this morning.

[Neverender.9381]

I don't WvW very often, but the times I do the instances of skill lag/server latency are seemingly ever-present and incredibly frustrating to watch play out when every second counts in a fight. I can also say with certainty that such hiccups/full-on-chokes are only becoming more commonplace in PvE environments as well, and, as others have said, this is not exclusively an issue in the maps with larger-scale metas.

[Treebeard.9724]

WvW is where I spend the bulk of my time and my gems. And the skill lag has become more and more of an issue. It needs to be addressed.

[Ljuarez.9526]

We are having a very big problem, within the week it is difficult to play wvw and in the reset it is practically impossible. Those of us from Latin America are worse. They are not short or medium periods of time in which the skills stick, they are hours and if we continue like this we will continue to lose people. Please do something about it. All my support and [DQ] support for that thread and thanks for the conversation thread

ty google traslate

Death to the enemies, Glory to those from the southatte: CmdLionPlz

[Nameless.2598]

I usually do run with a smaller group and when we fight another small group then yes it's manageable. But now as soon as there's a bigger group, then all it turns into is 1 skills firing. Guess who wins a fight where only 1 skills will fire: small group vs big group? Weirdest thing is that even the skill lag is starting to carry over in sPVP over the past few months. I like to PVE, but I know there are a lot of people (especially people on this post) that would rather not play if all they have to play without lag is PVE.

[Hoxworth.7318]

Amongst these laggy ruins, A dps class will find a reason to blame their support for the lack of said support

[aleymau.5342]

Agreed to all the expressed before this, it has been imposible to play the only gamemode I'm really interested in, I don't know the cause, I can only supose it but eitherway Anet should be able to find a solution for it -server, programing, whatever- we didnt choose this bussines strategy but for sure you have many ppl in here playing wvw for making working. Please do your best for finding a solution to it.

[meri.9187]

Played WvW since 2013, never been worse than this. Absolute garbage especially on reset night, even in T2 with our pug tag vs AR's pug tag. When it takes you 10 seconds to cast Facet of Light passive in a small skirmish halfway across the map from where the OJs are, there's something seriously wrong, and it's been deteriorating consistently.

There is no excuse. Fix it.

[Delirious.3108]

We always had lag on wvw but right now it is ridiculous and to be honest a joke. You don't need to be near the fight to get a 10s lag on every skill, doesn't need to be a 3way fight, or smc, nah, pretty much existing on wvw makes you lag.

I'm not sure what anet wants to do about wvw, but looks like they don't care about this game mode and this thread will be ignored like all the others since beta.

All i expected was to at least be able to use my skill on the game I chose to play.

[Some Call Me Tim.2319]

I support this with the exception of a subscription fee. I would drop the game in a heartbeat if I had to pay a monthly fee. I pay more than that each month for shinies so if I also had to pay a set fee just to play that would be the end of it for me. NO FEES!!!

[Blixem.2486]

+1

It's so bad now people are planning their gameplay / when they play around it... can't enjoy reset night anymore as fights are no longer based on skill, just whoever lags the least. So anti-fun.

There's little to no lag on the Chinese servers for WvW... I'm not very technically knowledgeable, bu doesn't this make it less likely to be a coding issue, and more likely to be a simple issue of capacity?

I'm making a ticket as well, I encourage you all to do the same. I know it won't do much, but sheer volume there too might make them sit up and notice.

[JOO TOO.5193]

I wholeheartedly agree with the open letter. My guild is on the verge of no longer running on reset purely due to the skill lag and rubber banding. We are not asking for a quick fix, we are not expecting someone to flick the lag switch back off, we just want some transparency.
How much is known about this issue? How feasible is any sort of fix?
Then, what sort of timeline, if any, are we looking at? What kind of changes should we expect on the user end?I know that this will likely just get lost in the cacophony of voices, or worse get twisted into someone else's less nuanced shouting/memeing, but it's better to try than do nothing at all.

[Leima.2640]

Can always tell there is a big clash going on, even if you don't see the orange swords on the map, you get to face the upto 5 second delay run through a portal the opposite side of the map.

I uderstand that after all this time the servers will be struggling and starting to feel old, so please update the servers so the players can enjoy the game mode.

[justsoelmo.7068]

PREACH.

I'd also like to chime in and say this isn't a WvW-exclusive issue. The amount of times I've ran into this in WvW, PvE, instanced content...it's staggering.

All the beauty of the maps you're creating, all the rich story in the world, doesn't mean anything if we can't experience it. Make sure your clients have bare-bones functionality like this first, then add on to it.