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Open Letter to ArenaNet regarding Server Latency


TheSun.4321

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Personally I have stopped playing WvW on reset because the skill lag ruins everything and I am no longer have fun. Running at other times is usually ok and only gets laggy once a bunch of people show up. You can usually feel the lag coming so you can get away from it if you don't want any fights aka fun. It feels mostly unavoidable on reset nights tho. I don't agree with a subscription to fix this, this is something that should be prevented in the first place.

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OP here

I understand y'all aren't fans of a subscription to pay model, and have suggested things like an option subscription. I understand that statement has rubbed a lot of you the wrong way and I apologize for that.

Nonetheless we appreciate all the support for the main issue here, which is resolving the tremendous server lag we're all facing, not just in WvW.

:3

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Guild leader of MAS - a WvW-ONLY guild. We decided 2 weeks ago to stop playing Friday resets, precisely because you actually CAN'T play on Friday resets because of the lag. Decided we'd try to find a night when our skills actually go off when we intend them to, as that would be a ton more fun than what we were experiencing. Support this post (with exception to subscriptions) and hope you'll communicate with the WvW community as to your plans to make things better.

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I give full support to this, being a player who has left a few years back and recently came back into the guild wars 2 community I have noticed a bigger calamity of what I call the invulnerable lag boss. I believe arena net should put full interest in this before anything else.. whats the point on new in-game development when the lag boss destroys you...

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@Kharturr.2794 said:There has absolutely been a steady decline in server performance. You don't even have to have two groups engaging each other anymore to lag out everything server side. They simply have to exist on the map together near each other and the servers cannot operate. Week in week out it's the same story and it's unfortunate, sapping the fun out of the gamemode.

Yeah in the past the only situation I knew where the servers got into its knees was when all 3 parties where in SN fighting and this was with quickness and alacrity. Then it started wherever 3 parties hit each other then without quickness and alacrity and now even 2 parties are enough to bring the server to its knees . Funny thing is eotm seems not effected by it ?

I don't know what the reason is but it certainly one of those : (1)too small server , (2)bad coding or(3) bad routingto:1.) well since the game started the hardware got more advanced(and cheaper) so giving worse hardware is pretty bad decision.2.) I'm a software developer too . So there are ways to make the same software more efficient, switch cases instead of if clauses , hashtables instead of arrays(for more then 10-15 items) , making things load at the right time, using threads, and using all kinds of compiler optimization down to using CPU extensions. VS has also tools for finding some hints of problems in the code but honestly I would start to look into eotm if its really less bad and if so looking at the code for gliding, mounts and everything else what is different.3.) Well if it is inside the serverfarm this can be fixed but not on the backbone or provider side.

EDIT: with tools in VS I meant codeanalyze but there are certainly some premium or custom tools which I don't know too . But what is new it hat the GCC also support this now in the newest version with gcc 10 and -fanalyzer which is still experimental but should show problems.

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WvW is on the brink of collapse. This is not a 50v50 or zerg vs zerg issue. If three 10 mans come upon each other, you have ability lag. Add greenies on top of that and you are spamming 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. As the OP stated, we WvW'ers are passionate about our play, about the communities we have developed. For many of us, this is our end game and a hellava end game it is! We are pleading to the developers to save this game mode before it becomes a forgotten memory for many.

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I actually moved to EU about a year ago and its been rough. On NA, I never logged out because of lag because it would often fix itself. Now I know distance and the speed of light are a thing but my ping spikes and the amount of lag on EU is unplayable. My 130 ping shoots up to 500+ and all of the sudden I can't move for seconds at a time. Now I can't even move back to NA because my server has been "full" since I left and I'm not about to drop hundreds of gold over relinks. That's not fair when I just want to play with my friends.

In short, moved to EU, lag to death, can't go back to NA because server I want to play on is "full" for months at a time. Makes me not even want to login and play anymore.

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Everyone here complaining about sub fees don't realize games like FF14 have $5 a month fees and perform lightyears better with better content too. Make it a WvW exclusive monthly reward box you have to buy that's available on the 1st of every month or something so people can PvE without a sub. I'd GLADLY pay for that if the revenue generated went towards improving the game mode."I pay more than that each month for shinies" well why do you pay for shinies in a game that lets all of its best features go to waste on bad lag and anemic support team?

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@"thealbatross.6853" said:Everyone here complaining about sub fees don't realize games like FF14 have $5 a month fees and perform lightyears better with better content too. Make it a WvW exclusive monthly reward box you have to buy that's available on the 1st of every month or something so people can PvE without a sub. I'd GLADLY pay for that if the revenue generated went towards improving the game mode."I pay more than that each month for shinies" well why do you pay for shinies in a game that lets all of its best features go to waste on bad lag and anemic support team?

Since when is ff14 $5 a month sub? it's $12.99-14.99 a month, this also doesn't make the game immune to lag. If you start charging a sub fee to "eliminate lag" you're putting yourself into a very bad spot and I would expect customer service to blow up every time a lag spike happens, regardless if it originates with the game or not. I don't think any company is foolish enough to do this. Also gw2 is already known to have skill lag problems which doesn't look like it's fixable, in the 8 years it's been around.

If a company wants to charge a sub, they better be pumping out better content because that's what they should be charging for, and alliances better be out the door the next day at this point. Not a cash grab for a game mode they let rot for so long.

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@Jayden Reese.9542 said:

@Jayden Reese.9542 said:When you think if you get your entire zerg to come in here to comment and inflate your thread is going to make a diff over the 45 other same exact threads. This one will fix lag fo sure

Maybe whatever group of employees monitors/examines the forums are not the most reliable for communicating function related issues to the appropriate parties. Perhaps we should send in support tickets instead. Employees who examine these forums are more than likely programmed to tune everything out because 95% + of the forums is comprised of complaints or suggestions.

Think of how they ruined the leveling-up experience in the game because they had received too many support tickets from confused new players. Now you get one skill at a time, so it's not too hard. smh

I'm sure many of us can provide the support staff with direct evidence of server-side skill lag. When my game is running stupid smoothly during these zerg fights, and the only things that are not working are any skills other than "1" ... not much else it can be. Not sure what the forum rules are on posting links but I'm willing to post links to youtube after uploading clips for reference/evidence.

Tickets won't fix lag either. What do you think it's some ez fix? That they just need a certain amount of players to complain 100 times? Like they have a switch to decrease lag and just can't get a guy there to flip it because of covid. Every game with massive battles aion eso etc all have this issue when 100 plus converge. The obsession with having to be in ebg doesn't help because you converge way more often there. I never exp lag in NA and my guess is most these threads are EU but idk for sure. I also go to other maps so maybe if I just camped ebg at reset everytime I'd lag too idk. I also like the people that chime in w the "I support less lag too" like theres someone who supports more lag out there. Beating a dead horse with these threads just thinking anet can fix this overnight.

If they are using AWS for hosting WvW and they are paying for a less than optimal subscription, then yes, it is just a matter of "a switch". AWS subscriptions are tiered and if you upgrade you get better performance but it costs more. Same as almost everything else in life.

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I agree with the OP. The server issue has been an issue for years but lately it’s become unplayable. When you can be in the middle of a fight and spam 1 and the other Zerg completely wipes because 1 is the only skill you can get off, there is a serious problem. We experienced this last week in SMC. All 30+ of us just stood still and watched the enemy melt. They clearly didn’t have lag on there side. This is not what WVW is suppose to be.. attrition by spamming 1. ?

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I agree with the OP. I used to WvW frequently and run with large groups, experiencing little to no issues with lag back in the day. As of maybe 4(?) months ago I dipped back into WvW after an extended break and was dismayed to learn that even going near large battles is hell now. The skill lag is so bad it is literally impossible to participate in fights of this scale. Heck, everything slows down if a zerg is just peacefully frolicking in in a nearby field.

It comes to a point when you wonder if it's better for your server if you simply don't log in; might as well give your queue spot to someone whose skillbar is working.

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Lag is hardly new thing. It was small issue most of the years. Started to be main issue about 2 years ago. There must be some explanation on why Anet just ignoring this issue. Why cant they share with us the struggle of dealing with the issue? if there is a problem I know for myself that I want to know about it.

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I play both NA and EU and lately there has been a marked increase in latency for the game overall. I believe one of the reasons was the damaged undersea cable which should have been repaired by now, but i can't find the current status, many sources say it is still pending repairshttps://subtelforum.com/apcn2-submarine-cable-has-been-damaged/

There are also other sources who have mentioned that currently the AWS (Amazon Web Services) servers are prioritizing speed and load and hence, pings have been given lower priority.

This or any other reason, the point here is i wish this company had a # server health page to check where the issue lies with, if it was a local issues, i.e. AWS servers or and international, i.e. APCN2. Anet used to once give more priority to server health, but since the move to AWS it has always been treated second rate.

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Last night there was lag, even while a small 20 or so group was poking at us, while two zergs clashed on the Borderlands, not on EB and inside SM.

At the moment it's pretty much unplayable at times, although you can still move and dodge, unless it gets as bad as when everybody starts rubberbanding.

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