WvW Performance and Map Cap Testing

[Cal Cohen.2358]

Hi Everyone,

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.

[Awesome Guild Wars Guy.463]

What is the current total number of players per map?Like legit, month or so ago, one of the devs said on stream that there can be nothing done to reduce the lags.And now doing the easiest shit possible - just lowering the amount of people that can get into the map, idk if that a solution to fix.We don't even know how many people per server can currently fit to map. Idk why it's even a secret

[Helicity.3416]

Nice.

Even longer queues for what will almost certainly not give a measurable performance increase.

[Mini Crinny.6190]

@Helicity.3416 said:Nice.

Even longer queues for what will almost certainly not give a measurable performance increase.

so you would rather them do nothing and people to continue to complain about it?

[Helicity.3416]

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@"Helicity.3416" said:Nice.

Even longer queues for what will

almost certainly

not give a measurable performance increase.

so you would rather them do nothing and people to continue to complain about it?

I would rather they actually look at what causes it (it's boons and condis) than attempt the lowest effort possible "fix" (really, it's boons and condis) to attempt to make things work better (it's the boons and condis, look at the boons and condis) yes.

[Blocki.4931]

I really hope this works out well! The lag makes it so hard to enjoy the game at times. Thank you for acknowledging the issue exists and looking into potentially fixing it.

[Ralesk.3215]

@"Helicity.3416" said:I would rather they actually look at what causes it (it's boons and condis) than attempt the lowest effort possible "fix" (really, it's boons and condis) to attempt to make things work better (it's the boons and condis, look at the boons and condis) yes.

I wonder, did you even read that OP wrote that this isn't a fix but how it's to see how it compares and what changes in the server's behaviour?

[Mini Crinny.6190]

Personally, good to see something being done.. but I don't think it will solve the issue, mainly on Eb

[Simo.6819]

EOTM and OS are a thing for fights bvb etc , reality is that noone wants to go there cuz theres no reward , those bvb in OS actually had better server performance than the ones on border...

[Helicity.3416]

@Ralesk.3215 said:

@"Helicity.3416" said:I would rather they actually look at what causes it (it's boons and condis) than attempt the lowest effort possible "fix" (really, it's boons and condis) to attempt to make things work better (it's the boons and condis, look at the boons and condis) yes.

I wonder, did you even read that OP wrote that this isn't a

fix

but how it's to see how it compares and what changes in the server's behaviour?

The thing there is, they should not have to test this in production, they should easily be able to determine exactly what this will do by looking at their server logs.

It's desperation.

[Hellfire.1679]

It's really nice seeing you guys doing improvements and optimizations and everything, BUT the thing I criticise alot is: Why now and not already a while ago?I know you cant do everything at once and there are other prioritys but too many people have performance issues for a very long time (especially in big events like Worldbosses) and that not only in WvW.I really hope you guys at ArenaNet can give us overall performance improvements and not only in WvW .

Cheers

[Eventine.8024]

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:Hi Everyone,

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.

I do not think that 7 players will be much an issue for the q. But as my experience is not "how many people are on the map" but actually "how many servers are fighting toghter". For example there is no skill lag with full map but the fights are kept just between 2 servers(even 60vs60), while even only 60 players in the map, but a 20vs20vs20 with 3 servers produce huge skill lags.Everyone knows that, and guilds exploit this behavior to win fights/points/castles or play fair, and go away from an already 20vs20 fight, waiting their turn.

[Eventine.8024]

And for everyone that is posting: please write only if you understand the difference between skill lag and fps-based lag, and if you tested the game with a basic ping <40

[Vova.2640]

thank you cmc.

If these tests prove successful please consider adding a 2nd EBG-like map to the mode to compensate the cap decrease on other maps.or even open a 2nd instance of ebg for prime hours (eg 8pm to midnight EST, 2 skirmishes).

ps. boons and condis dont cause skill lag. u can have 3x75+ blobs standing in close proximity doing absolutely nothing and the game will be unplayable.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Tomas.6092" said:What is the current total number of players per map?They wont say, they've never said no matter how much we ask lol.

I think thats its somewhere around 85-ish.

Anyway I highly doubt it will improve anything to reduce the cap - we know its been happening for years and its either some code change thats the cause or its AWS. PvE has been lagging as well and the cap there is much higher (150-ish I think) so a "reduction" to WvW cap dont help.

[Failchon.3247]

@Helicity.3416 said:

@Ralesk.3215 said:

@Helicity.3416 said:I would rather they actually look at what causes it (it's boons and condis) than attempt the lowest effort possible "fix" (really, it's boons and condis) to attempt to make things work better (it's the boons and condis, look at the boons and condis) yes.

I wonder, did you even read that OP wrote that this isn't a

fix

but how it's to see how it compares and what changes in the server's behaviour?

The thing there is, they should not have to test this in production, they should easily be able to determine exactly what this will do by looking at their server logs.

It's desperation.

First of all, how do you know they aren't trying to rework how the boons n condis apply? They might do it right now, but this temporary solution might help WvW a little.

They have to test it in production, they need to overburden the server somehow, and doubt they can do it with their team.

[DutchRiders.2871]

Can we name the elephant in the room? Its the low end amazon servers, which are still relatively expensive compared to other server providers. Also if anything we should test how the servers run without mounts.

[GalvinWolf.3284]

MAKE EoTM VIABLE AGAIN, Treat EoTM as if it were a 5th BL that people can fight over,OR get rid of EoTM so you can impalement 'OverFlow' maps to EBG and all the BLs

it's alos weird that you would sstress test lowering the cap by7, why not go lower 10 or 20 players, then add to the cap to see where it throttles

[Panicbutton.9426]

Look, there's very very little good will left towards Anet from WvW players at all, like close to zero for many of us.

1. Telling us "this may take a while" is triggering as **** because of ALLIANCES. So, are we talking a few months here or should we start planning for our children to benefit from this investigation? As a company you have completely trashed our trust that you can deliver anything WvW related in a reasonable timeline. So you tell me how we should receive that information if not with a huge amount of skepticism? Telling us something may "take a while" is tantamount to telling us it will never happen because of Alliances. So address that issue please.
2. I can absolutely guarantee that most WvW players will NOT want a reduction in the number of people on a map -> on the contrary if it were possible we'd want more. This is a terrible place to start if you wish to build bridges with the most frustrated section of your playerbase. ESPECIALLY if you cannot tell us why you think it might be worth investigating - if you said "this is the fastest way to test if a reduction in boons/condis impacts performance" then we could perhaps receive the experiment more favourably - instead this feels like you're going for the fastest, lowest effort fix, that has huge collateral damage consequences for the players i.e. play with less people we want to, more queues (reset will be a shit show with +7 to queues per map for some servers), less targets etc. There is NOTHING good about reducing the number of players on a map from our perspective.

This feels like a missfire against a backdrop of exceedingly poor relations and catastrophic neglect of this game mode - everything you do needs to be in the context that you have destroyed our trust over the past five years. For god's sake get a communications or change management consultant on board for a few months, you lot have zero idea of how to interact with your player base.

[Arctisavange.7261]

How about do something that you should have done years ago - rather the cutting corners on a game mode thats the last straw for keeping people playing GW2, get some better servers.Everything went to the dumpster when anet decided to use trash amazon servers. The servers we had before that were WAY far better.

[Slow Lightning.4592]

its great that you are atlast taking skill lag seriously - its only taken 7 years of players compalining that this is their #1 issue.

[gloflop.3510]

Although I would prefer having a full map without lags, I appreciate that you at least take efforts in tackling the problem. In my eyes, you should test if you can also do less animations or less skills possible. In the end, I would rather like to have a working wvw than a beautiful but laggy one.

[Chance.2346]

I think most or all of us lack the knowledge of the back end infrastructure, how many physical processors/cpus/servers serve each "map" and if separate instances are on separate servers/cpus etc to try and backseat design the GW2 environment. I'm glad they are taking some steps to measure metrics with some relatively minor changes to see if it's a direction they can work in or they need to work in another direction. Likewise, opening more instances may or may not help, depending on the back end structure. This is what Anet's engineers are there to do. We do our part by sharing our experiences, they do their part by asking, listening, and measuring more objective metrics. Thanks Anet for giving a shot and seeing what might be causing the issue.

[Phanen.2085]

Thank you for communicating with us and "trying" to solve the issues.But its been 10 month since this post from "DrStephenCW (Studio Tech Director) about WvW lag and Server/CPU requirements-> [reddit post]

...but this is not a quick process and is going to take some time.

Aslong as it doesnt take aslong as alliances :)

[juno.1840]

The whole point of WvW is large amounts of players. This seems like a poor investigation because there are really two possible outcomes:

• Number of players didn't affect performance as expected, so leave current player caps alone
• Reducing player cap improved performance significantly so reduce player caps permanently

I don't think anyone wants WvW with fewer players -- if anything we want more players. Maybe look at optimizing the data stream between server and client.