Everyone doesn't play together in GW2. Remember when the game first launched and WvWvW had people phased differently into the same battles between the same servers? That isn't semantics, that is reality, that was a design choice they made. In PvE you don't sit there actively talking and coordinating with everyone you run into, it is a mindless drone for easy mode content that you are guaranteed to succeed at. Dynamic events are scripts, and they are just as regurgitated as quest scripts, that is the point, they are nothing new.
I don't care about the magical older manifesto you are talking about, I care about the one used to advertise the game and get it out there, the one where they intentionally misrepresented what their game was, and ultimately failed to deliver on. During game development everything is subject to change, an old outdated manifesto is nowhere near as relevant as one used to advertise the game nearer to its release.
Never happened. There were queues.
You sure you want to claim that? Considering devs confirmed it, and then they said they would work on changing it, when people were outraged that people were phased in the same wvwvw battle and looking at a different set of players from one another.
You literally have no reason to automatically claim it never happened, because it was already confirmed, so ask yourself why you immediately jumped to claim it never happened, without actually doing any research about whether it did or not.
Yes, I want to claim this.
But if it is confirmed I'm sure you can find links for it.
You just don't know what people are talking when they said "phased".
They were referring to culling, which meant people couldn't see the enemy and not that they were in a different instance of the same WvW battle.
And to the posters that actually play the game I've one word and a few images.
LIADRI!
Ah I see the problem here, you don't actually know what phasing is, phasing means you are in the same spot in the same persistent world but what you see is different than what others see. It has nothing to do with instances... So basically you are denying they did something, because you are defensive of anet, but you don't even know what you are denying.... lol
Nope.
You don't know what they were talking about and as expected you have no links to "the confirmed phasing".
You said people weren't playing together.
They were playing together.
The problem is that due to culling people would become invisible, especially those that could stealth (this is everyone via mesmer skill) and so you could be killed by an invisible army.
There was no phasing like in WoW - everyone was in the same spot and could kill each other, they just couldn't see each other due to culling, which meant that there would be a delay in drawing the models in the client side.
That is obvious since GW2 has no phasing system, but keep trying.
Although achieving these aims, Culling has led to numerous problems due to nearby players and NPCs becoming completely invisible. While this is considered a problem throughout both PvE and WvW, it has been a particular problem within WvW, where the number of players during many battles is considerably larger than the chosen limit, resulting in numerous enemy players not being visible to opposing forces.
Culling has been removed from WvW with the March 26, 2013 update.
[...]
As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth.
Nothing like someone not understanding the lingo of a game to know it hasn't played much of it.
Yep you definitely don't know what phasing is in mmorpgs... phasing is what anet calls culling... I am sorry but you are only digging yourself a deeper hole. While you are phased you aren't playing with other players that are phased outta your phase. Not that hard to understand....
This tells me you haven't actually played many mmorpgs very much, since you don't actually understand what phasing is.
Funny you would accuse me of not understanding lingo, when you are the one clearly guilty of it... go look up phasing for mmorpg game mechanics... a little research goes a long way buddy... I don't understand why you would insist on taking an argument when you don't even understand what is being talked about though... It seems silly to me.
Yep you definitely don't know what phasing is in mmorpgs... phasing is what anet calls culling... I am sorry but you are only digging yourself a deeper hole. While you are phased you aren't playing with other players that are phased outta your phase. Not that hard to understand....
This tells me you haven't actually played many mmorpgs very much, since you don't actually understand what phasing is.
Funny you would accuse me of not understanding lingo, when you are the one clearly guilty of it... go look up phasing for mmorpg game mechanics... a little research goes a long way buddy... I don't understand why you would insist on taking an argument when you don't even understand what is being talked about though... It seems silly to me.
Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
How it Works
Data on the location of game objects, players, and NPCs is not stored in the World of Warcraft client and must be sent from the server. Phasing, in a sense, decides not to send certain data based on criteria.
As an example, you may have a quest to get the head of a named NPC. After turning in the quest, the server records that it should not send data about that NPC to you. The next time you go there, even if the NPC is still there, you will not be able to see it.
By using combinations of phasing, entire areas can change from grasslands to a city by use of game object phasing and NPC phasing.
When a player character moves through the game world, any character (other players, NPCs, monsters) within a certain radius around the player (visible range) gets reported to the player's game client. This lets the game draw those characters, allows the player to select them, shoot at them, etc.
Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client. The aim of this limitation is to:
Limit server bandwidth and network resources.
Reduce client-side resource utilization and client side technology requirements.
Although achieving these aims, Culling has led to numerous problems due to nearby players and NPCs becoming completely invisible. While this is considered a problem throughout both PvE and WvW, it has been a particular problem within WvW, where the number of players during many battles is considerably larger than the chosen limit, resulting in numerous enemy players not being visible to opposing forces.
Culling has been removed from WvW with the March 26, 2013 update. WvW players are now expected to control the load on their systems in order to attain acceptable frame rates, by introducing limits themselves, using two new graphics settings:
WvW Character Limit: Five settings from Lowest to Highest. Controls the total number of character models that may be displayed in WvW. The remaining characters will appear as nameplates only. It is assumed that the farther they are, the more probable that only their nameplate will be visible. The exact number of characters corresponding to these settings is unknown.[verification requested]
WvW Character Quality: 3 settings from Lowest to Medium. Controls the number of high quality character models that may be displayed in WvW. Among the characters that are drawn (controlled using the setting above), this setting determines the number that is drawn normally, in high quality. The rest will appear as low quality character models which consume less resources on the player's computer.
Low quality models are faster to draw mainly due to lower detail, and because all characters wear one armour design per armour weight, and use one body model for both male and female Asura, one for Charr and one shared by Humans, Sylvari and Norn. The bodies and armour are also uniformly tinted using the team's color to improve performance.
Culling was observed to gradually increase in the PvE areas since the game's launch. The current observed limit is around 30 friendly NPC's and 12 monsters.[verification requested] As distant characters come closer, their bodies become visible some distance before their nameplates appear. Visible, but distant characters and monsters cannot be selected until they come within a minimum distance.
As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth.
If you’ve ever played World vs. World in a large group, you’ve probably noticed that there were some enemy players that you couldn’t see. That was an unfortunate side effect of a process calledculling. I’m pleased to announce that in the upcoming patch on March 26, we’re going to turn culling off completely in WvW. This will make invisible enemies (except those using invisibility skills, of course) a thing of the past.
How different of an experience will that be for WvW players? I think these before and after screenshots make it pretty clear:
Culling ON
Culling off.
So What Is Culling, Exactly?
Normally as you move through the world, any character (either an NPC or another player) within a fairly large circle around you gets reported to your client. This lets the client draw the character, allows you to select the character as an attack target, etc.
In order to cut down on the network resources that were used by the game and to reduce the client-side system requirements, we implemented a culling system, which imposed a limit on the number of characters that could ever be reported to your client. This meant that only the characters closest to you would actually get reported.
While this achieved our goal of limiting bandwidth and client-side resource utilization, it had the unfortunate side effect of causing large battles in WvW to be confusing, as there were sometimes many enemy players that were completely invisible. Additionally, there were side effects of culling which could result in stealth characters getting up to two seconds of additional invisibility when coming out of stealth. By removing culling, we’ve been able to eliminate these negative side effects and greatly increase the epic feel of large WvW battles.
For the sake of clarity, I want to make a distinction between our usage of the term “culling” in this post (meaning to limit the amount of data the server reports to the client) and other uses of the word “culling” related to graphics (discarding backward facing triangles in models, triangles or whole models that are occluded, etc.). Our changes are to the client/server culling and have no bearing on basic graphics operations in the GW2 client.
Got it?
With phasing you aren't playing together since you can't interact with each other.
With culling you are playing together, can shoot at each other and deal damage to each other, but one of you probably doesn't see the other (or both).
So in WvW there was never two battles happening at the same geographical place but in different phases - it was the same battle.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Everyone doesn't play together in GW2. Remember when the game first launched and WvWvW had people phased differently into the same battles between the same servers? That isn't semantics, that is reality, that was a design choice they made. In PvE you don't sit there actively talking and coordinating with everyone you run into, it is a mindless drone for easy mode content that you are guaranteed to succeed at. Dynamic events are scripts, and they are just as regurgitated as quest scripts, that is the point, they are nothing new.
I don't care about the magical older manifesto you are talking about, I care about the one used to advertise the game and get it out there, the one where they intentionally misrepresented what their game was, and ultimately failed to deliver on. During game development everything is subject to change, an old outdated manifesto is nowhere near as relevant as one used to advertise the game nearer to its release.
Never happened. There were queues.
You sure you want to claim that? Considering devs confirmed it, and then they said they would work on changing it, when people were outraged that people were phased in the same wvwvw battle and looking at a different set of players from one another.
You literally have no reason to automatically claim it never happened, because it was already confirmed, so ask yourself why you immediately jumped to claim it never happened, without actually doing any research about whether it did or not.
Yes, I want to claim this.
But if it is confirmed I'm sure you can find links for it.
You just don't know what people are talking when they said "phased".
They were referring to culling, which meant people couldn't see the enemy and not that they were in a different instance of the same WvW battle.
And to the posters that actually play the game I've one word and a few images.
LIADRI!
Ah I see the problem here, you don't actually know what phasing is, phasing means you are in the same spot in the same persistent world but what you see is different than what others see. It has nothing to do with instances... So basically you are denying they did something, because you are defensive of anet, but you don't even know what you are denying.... lol
Nope.
You don't know what they were talking about and as expected you have no links to "the confirmed phasing".
You said people weren't playing together.
They were playing together.
The problem is that due to culling people would become invisible, especially those that could stealth (this is everyone via mesmer skill) and so you could be killed by an invisible army.
There was no phasing like in WoW - everyone was in the same spot and could kill each other, they just couldn't see each other due to culling, which meant that there would be a delay in drawing the models in the client side.
That is obvious since GW2 has no phasing system, but keep trying.
Although achieving these aims, Culling has led to numerous problems due to nearby players and NPCs becoming completely invisible. While this is considered a problem throughout both PvE and WvW, it has been a particular problem within WvW, where the number of players during many battles is considerably larger than the chosen limit, resulting in numerous enemy players not being visible to opposing forces.
Culling has been removed from WvW with the March 26, 2013 update.
[...]
As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth.
Nothing like someone not understanding the lingo of a game to know it hasn't played much of it.
Yep you definitely don't know what phasing is in mmorpgs... phasing is what anet calls culling... I am sorry but you are only digging yourself a deeper hole. While you are phased you aren't playing with other players that are phased outta your phase. Not that hard to understand....
This tells me you haven't actually played many mmorpgs very much, since you don't actually understand what phasing is.
Funny you would accuse me of not understanding lingo, when you are the one clearly guilty of it... go look up phasing for mmorpg game mechanics... a little research goes a long way buddy... I don't understand why you would insist on taking an argument when you don't even understand what is being talked about though... It seems silly to me.
These are not the same. Anet isn't calling culling phasing because it's not.
From WoWwiki. Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
Culling from GW2Wiki; Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client.
edit: @Gaia you beat me to it! You have a much longer and more precise answer than mine, but the guy who is never wrong should be able to understand even my simple post!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
These are not the same. Anet isn't calling culling phasing because it's not.
From WoWwiki. Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
Culling from GW2Wiki; Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client.
It is based on the same principle of not reporting information, but the purpose of phasing is to create two or more independent places in the same spot, that cannot interact with each other.
In GW2 culling is used to improve performance and save bandwidth but it is the same place and everything interacts.
If he had played he would know what the problem was instead of trying to say that people were phased differently into the same battles between the same servers, as if there was battle 1, battle 2, battle 3, etc, and hence not playing together.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
These are not the same. Anet isn't calling culling phasing because it's not.
From WoWwiki. Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
Culling from GW2Wiki; Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client.
It is based on the same principle of not reporting information, but the purpose of phasing is to create two or more independent places in the same place, that cannot interact with each other.
In GW2 culling is used to improve performance and save bandwidth but it is the same place and everything interacts.
If he had played he would know what the problem was instead of trying to say that people were phased differently into the same battles and hence not playing together.
Well perhaps even he will accept this. I'm sure he will find a way for you, me, and the wiki's to be wrong.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
These are not the same. Anet isn't calling culling phasing because it's not.
From WoWwiki. Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
Culling from GW2Wiki; Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client.
It is based on the same principle of not reporting information, but the purpose of phasing is to create two or more independent places in the same spot, that cannot interact with each other.
In GW2 culling is used to improve performance and save bandwidth but it is the same place and everything interacts.
If he had played he would know what the problem was instead of trying to say that people were phased differently into the same battles between the same servers, as if there was battle 1, battle 2, battle 3, etc, and hence not playing together.
Wrong wrong and wrong... the purpose of phasing is to improve performance and save bandwidth, it is so players can experience the content with minimal hiccups and just because you are phased does not mean you can not impact someone in a different phasing's environment, if you had actually ever understood or experienced phasing you would know this.
As for gw2, it is phasing, it works the exact same way, they simply choose different parameters for when a player can and can't interact.
As I mentioned before, phasing happened in wvwvw, players were not able to fight each other despite standing right on the same spot in the same wvwvw instance. There was massive backlash for this horrible design decision for "persistent pvp" and anet simply chose to not call it phasing because it put too much sting behind what they were doing.
Again you don't seem to understand what phasing is, and apparently not even what your definition of it (which you call culling) is. Since you are trying to downplay it so much, when in reality it was so horrendous that anet knew they had to fix it asap when people discovered their little corner cutting.
As I said before, try to objectively do some research, understand what the words are saying, and not try to twist the meaning and explanations just to fit your pro-gw2 outlook.
Culling is Phasing, 2 people, same spot, can't see each other because they are in different phases, you can call it something else if you want, the way different games may use it or when they may use it may be different, but the principle and implementation technologically is the same. You are in the same world, but not... you can not see each other, until certain criteria are met, and then you can see each other, and then if you meet certain other criteria you might get phased out of each other again.
This desperation on your part is just digging you a deeper hole.
Notice how they talk about how culling phases you.... not that hard to understand.
"As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth." Just like WoW phasing, as you move and meet certain criteria, you start to see different/other players/npcs again. weeeeeeeeeeeee
Wrong wrong and wrong... the purpose of phasing is to improve performance and save bandwidth, it is so players can experience the content with minimal hiccups and just because you are phased does not mean you can not impact someone in a different phasing's environment, if you had actually ever understood or experienced phasing you would know this.
As for gw2, it is phasing, it works the exact same way, they simply choose different parameters for when a player can and can't interact.
As I mentioned before, phasing happened in wvwvw, players were not able to fight each other despite standing right on the same spot in the same wvwvw instance. There was massive backlash for this horrible design decision for "persistent pvp" and anet simply chose to not call it phasing because it put too much sting behind what they were doing.
Again you don't seem to understand what phasing is, and apparently not even what your definition of it (which you call culling) is. Since you are trying to downplay it so much, when in reality it was so horrendous that anet knew they had to fix it asap when people discovered their little corner cutting.
As I said before, try to objectively do some research, understand what the words are saying, and not try to twist the meaning and explanations just to fit your pro-gw2 outlook.
Culling is Phasing, 2 people, same spot, can't see each other because they are in different phases, you can call it something else if you want, the way different games may use it or when they may use it may be different, but the principle and implementation technologically is the same. You are in the same world, but not... you can not see each other, until certain criteria are met, and then you can see each other, and then if you meet certain other criteria you might get phased out of each other again.
This desperation on your part is just digging you a deeper hole.
Notice how they talk about how culling phases you.... not that hard to understand.
"As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth." Just like WoW phasing, as you move and meet certain criteria, you start to see different/other players/npcs again. weeeeeeeeeeeee
Ahahaha.
The purpose of phasing in WoW is to "create passage of time" by permanently changing a certain zone once you complete a certain questline.
You just don't understand that players were able to fight each other regardless of seeing each other or not because they were in the same phase since only one phase existed!
Again one player can see, the other can't, so you one player is killed by an invisible player. In fact many people started shooting AoE in front of them just in case some invisible army was there since they could damage it.
You just never played GW2 or you would see how this "culling phases" work - you enter the Lion's Arch Bank no one there, 1 second later you see 4 people popping up, 2 seconds later you see 40 people popping up into existence.
Well if you hurry you might still see it before culling is removed from the game for good with the next patch.
But please keep it up.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Wrong wrong and wrong... the purpose of phasing is to improve performance and save bandwidth, it is so players can experience the content with minimal hiccups and just because you are phased does not mean you can not impact someone in a different phasing's environment, if you had actually ever understood or experienced phasing you would know this.
As for gw2, it is phasing, it works the exact same way, they simply choose different parameters for when a player can and can't interact.
As I mentioned before, phasing happened in wvwvw, players were not able to fight each other despite standing right on the same spot in the same wvwvw instance. There was massive backlash for this horrible design decision for "persistent pvp" and anet simply chose to not call it phasing because it put too much sting behind what they were doing.
Again you don't seem to understand what phasing is, and apparently not even what your definition of it (which you call culling) is. Since you are trying to downplay it so much, when in reality it was so horrendous that anet knew they had to fix it asap when people discovered their little corner cutting.
As I said before, try to objectively do some research, understand what the words are saying, and not try to twist the meaning and explanations just to fit your pro-gw2 outlook.
Culling is Phasing, 2 people, same spot, can't see each other because they are in different phases, you can call it something else if you want, the way different games may use it or when they may use it may be different, but the principle and implementation technologically is the same. You are in the same world, but not... you can not see each other, until certain criteria are met, and then you can see each other, and then if you meet certain other criteria you might get phased out of each other again.
This desperation on your part is just digging you a deeper hole.
Notice how they talk about how culling phases you.... not that hard to understand.
"As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth." Just like WoW phasing, as you move and meet certain criteria, you start to see different/other players/npcs again. weeeeeeeeeeeee
Ahahaha.
The purpose of phasing in WoW is to "create passage of time" by permanently changing a certain zone once you complete a certain questline.
You just don't understand that players were able to fight each other regardless of seeing each other or not because they were in the same phase since only one phase existed!
Again one player can see, the other can't, so you one player is killed by an invisible player. In fact many people started shooting AoE in front of them just in case some invisible army was there since they could damage it.
You just never played GW2 or you would see how this "culling phases" work - you enter the Lion's Arch Bank no one there, 1 second later you see 4 people popping up, 2 seconds later you see 40 people popping up into existence.
Well if you hurry you might still see it before culling is removed from the game for good with the next patch.
But please keep it up.
Looks like you are still confusing things... this time you are confusing culling, with run-of-the-mill populating of an area around you.
I don't know what's worse, you just assuming I didn't play the game, or you playing it adamantly and not even understanding the systems they are using.
I gave you a link to the gw2 wiki, it talks about culling and how it phases players, aka phasing... You can choose to accept the gw2 wiki or not, but that won't change the fact that it is there, in plain english, explained clearly.
For some reason you want to downplay what culling is, and treat it is like load distances... it isn't...
Again, the wiki is right there, arguing with me is arguing against what the wiki itself explains culling as.... Dunno what to tell you, you are arguing with arenanet themselves at this point.
The purpose of phasing in WoW is to "create passage of time" by permanently changing a certain zone once you complete a certain questline.
You just don't understand that players were able to fight each other regardless of seeing each other or not because they were in the same phase since only one phase existed!
Again one player can see, the other can't, so you one player is killed by an invisible player. In fact many people started shooting AoE in front of them just in case some invisible army was there since they could damage it.
You just never played GW2 or you would see how this "culling phases" work - you enter the Lion's Arch Bank no one there, 1 second later you see 4 people popping up, 2 seconds later you see 40 people popping up into existence.
Well if you hurry you might still see it before culling is removed from the game for good with the next patch.
But please keep it up.
Looks like you are still confusing things... this time you are confusing culling, with run-of-the-mill populating of an area around you.
I don't know what's worse, you just assuming I didn't play the game, or you playing it adamantly and not even understanding the systems they are using.
I gave you a link to the gw2 wiki, it talks about culling and how it phases players, aka phasing... You can choose to accept the gw2 wiki or not, but that won't change the fact that it is there, in plain english, explained clearly.
For some reason you want to downplay what culling is, and treat it is like load distances... it isn't...
Again, the wiki is right there, arguing with me is arguing against what the wiki itself explains culling as.... Dunno what to tell you, you are arguing with arenanet themselves at this point.
Still waiting for those links talking about phasing.
That over there in the picture is culling, there was never different phases in WvW - all players in the same instance always could interact with each other leading to the deaths by invisible armies.
But since you can't come up with any links I'll keep burying in information, not that it will ever change your mind but it will allow impartial viewers to form their own opinions.
The REAL problem in WvWvW is the invisibility issue. I don’t care how unbalanced the match is if I’m getting killed by enemies who are not on my screen until they are right on top of me.
1. We need to be able to see enemies at a greater distance. Trebuchets are currently “fire and pray” siege weapons. Shoot, even cannons can fire to a distance where the enemy is invisible. It’s no fun to have all these defensive or offensive weapons if we are just firing at empty ground and hoping there are actually enemy players there.
2. Many times I have been running along minding my own business or heading to a fort that is under siege only to suddenly be surrounded by a swarm of enemy players and killed instantly. Sometimes I’ve even had warriors and guardians already hitting me as they just appear out of this air. If I had been able to see them, I seriously doubt I would have just charged in and died.
3. Occasionally, upon pushing back an assault, the enemy team will receive reinforcements. All we can see is the same players we’ve been routing so we press on. 30 additional troops start appearing on the screen and kill a bunch of us before we even realize we have become the hunted instead of the hunters.
This is what will kill WvWvW. We can’t fight an enemy we can’t see. My computer can handle this game on the highest settings in the most insane battles without ever dropping a frame (and it’s not a user problem anyway) so the idea that There is no distance slider or ability to adjust the number of players visible at any given time is ridiculous.
This is what needs to be fixed. If you want to complain about something, please make it this.
Culling in action, not "WoW type of phasing".
From Habib Loew,
Hi all,
For a variety of performance reasons we limit the number of characters that are reported to any given game client. This report limiting (or culling, as it’s also been referred to) is generally distance based and limits both the amount of bandwidth and client side processing (rendering, etc.) required to play the game. Ideally this shouldn’t be something that you notice happening as characters will simply fade in when they’re “far” away from you. In the best case this happens far enough away that even if you’re looking right at them when it happens it isn’t too visually distracting. Unfortunately, there are some situations in the game in which this setup doesn’t work as well as we’d like and it seems that those situations come up in WvW rather more often than in other parts of the game. The higher player densities that we see in large battles are an obvious example of where this system goes awry. If only the nearest N characters are reported to you but there are N+100 characters within effective battle range then many of those characters will be invisible. There’s never a great time to be dealing with invisible characters, but I think that it’s fair to say that during a large battle is one of the worst times.
In WvW one of the things that we see exacerbating the issue is this: From the moment a character is first reported to your client to the first moment that your client is able to render it a non-zero amount of time passes. During this time your client is doing things like loading textures from disk, which can be (at least in computer terms) fairly slow what with all that accessing of spinning, physical storage media. So that means that a character who is moving towards you can potentially appear first at a much closer point even than the one at which they were reported because, of course, they were still moving during that load time.
MajorKong’s screenshot doesn’t immediately look like the situation I just described so it may be that there’s some kind of bug lurking in there as well. We will certainly be looking into that possibility.
That was a lot of detail but really I’m posting to let you know that we’re aware of the issues associated with invisible enemies and we’re working on finding both the root causes and effective solutions. I understand that these experiences can be quite frustrating but please rest assured that we do care and we are working on improving the experience.
Thank you for reporting your issues here on the forums and for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve them.
Also, MajorKong, that really was a great screenshot even if it does show a bug and bugs make me sad.
Funny how Anet dude and the player talk about player density and drawing distance just after you said it isn't about populating an area and drawing distance.
Read how they say dealing with an invisible enemy.
Hi all, I think a little more explanation is in order.
First, let’s call the culling system that we’re switching to “affinity culling” just to make it easier to talk about. Under affinity culling the system handles enemies and allies independently. This means that the maximum number of allies that you can see under affinity culling is 1/2 the maximum number of characters (combined enemy & ally) that you could see under the original culling. Ditto for enemies. In exchange for that cost he benefit that we get is that running with (or through, or past) a large group of allies (e.g. a guild) won’t prevent you from seeing the enemies who are closest to you.
During the initial trial of affinity culling we found that a number of players reported asset loading issues that were highlighted by culling. Any time that your client is aware of another character at all (dot on the map, targetable in world, nameplate is visible, etc.) then culling is no longer a factor because that character has already been reported to your client. In that case if you can’t see the character the issue is one of asset load time. The fallback model feature which is shipping this month directly addresses those issues by providing a cached model to show immediately when the character is reported to the client.
The order of operations looks like this: 1) Character X enters player’s visibility 2) 3) Server reports character X to client 4) 5) Character X full model is visible on-screen to the player
Using fallback models we end up with this instead 1) Character X enters player’s visibility 2) 3) Server reports character X to client 4a) Character X fallback model is visible on-screen to the player 4b) 5) Character X full model is visible on-screen to the player
As you can see we’ve made the asset load delay unimportant (or at least less important) and allowed the player to be aware of character X sooner (in some cases quite a bit sooner).
The combination of affinity culling and fallback models provides a better experience than affinity culling alone. Even so, the affinity culling is not intended to be our last change to the system, but rather to hold players over until we can make more extensive updates to the system (which take time to implement and test). In future updates we’ll be making changes in an effort to eliminate the delay due to culling (step 2 above) and to tell each client about character X as soon as the server decides they have become visible again. We hope to do this by removing culling completely and preserving client performance though a mix of network and engine optimizations, the more extensive use of fallback models, and sundry wizardry.
As I’ve said in the past our ultimate goal is to remove culling and we’re pushing hard to make that happen. This update represents the first steps in that direction and much of what it accomplishes is to lay the groundwork for our upcoming updates. The next few months are an exciting time for us on the WvW team and we’re very excited about the changes are coming.
But I'm sure you have those links about Arenanet admitting phasing and will post them right away.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
The purpose of phasing in WoW is to "create passage of time" by permanently changing a certain zone once you complete a certain questline.
You just don't understand that players were able to fight each other regardless of seeing each other or not because they were in the same phase since only one phase existed!
Again one player can see, the other can't, so you one player is killed by an invisible player. In fact many people started shooting AoE in front of them just in case some invisible army was there since they could damage it.
You just never played GW2 or you would see how this "culling phases" work - you enter the Lion's Arch Bank no one there, 1 second later you see 4 people popping up, 2 seconds later you see 40 people popping up into existence.
Well if you hurry you might still see it before culling is removed from the game for good with the next patch.
But please keep it up.
Looks like you are still confusing things... this time you are confusing culling, with run-of-the-mill populating of an area around you.
I don't know what's worse, you just assuming I didn't play the game, or you playing it adamantly and not even understanding the systems they are using.
I gave you a link to the gw2 wiki, it talks about culling and how it phases players, aka phasing... You can choose to accept the gw2 wiki or not, but that won't change the fact that it is there, in plain english, explained clearly.
For some reason you want to downplay what culling is, and treat it is like load distances... it isn't...
Again, the wiki is right there, arguing with me is arguing against what the wiki itself explains culling as.... Dunno what to tell you, you are arguing with arenanet themselves at this point.
Still waiting for those links talking about phasing.
That over there in the picture is culling, there was never different phases in WvW - all players in the same instance always could interact with each other leading to the deaths by invisible armies.
But since you can't come up with any links I'll keep burying in information, not that it will ever change your mind but it will allow impartial viewers to form their own opinions.
The REAL problem in WvWvW is the invisibility issue. I don’t care how unbalanced the match is if I’m getting killed by enemies who are not on my screen until they are right on top of me.
1. We need to be able to see enemies at a greater distance. Trebuchets are currently “fire and pray” siege weapons. Shoot, even cannons can fire to a distance where the enemy is invisible. It’s no fun to have all these defensive or offensive weapons if we are just firing at empty ground and hoping there are actually enemy players there.
2. Many times I have been running along minding my own business or heading to a fort that is under siege only to suddenly be surrounded by a swarm of enemy players and killed instantly. Sometimes I’ve even had warriors and guardians already hitting me as they just appear out of this air. If I had been able to see them, I seriously doubt I would have just charged in and died.
3. Occasionally, upon pushing back an assault, the enemy team will receive reinforcements. All we can see is the same players we’ve been routing so we press on. 30 additional troops start appearing on the screen and kill a bunch of us before we even realize we have become the hunted instead of the hunters.
This is what will kill WvWvW. We can’t fight an enemy we can’t see. My computer can handle this game on the highest settings in the most insane battles without ever dropping a frame (and it’s not a user problem anyway) so the idea that There is no distance slider or ability to adjust the number of players visible at any given time is ridiculous.
This is what needs to be fixed. If you want to complain about something, please make it this.
Culling in action, not "WoW type of phasing".
From Habib Loew,
Hi all,
For a variety of performance reasons we limit the number of characters that are reported to any given game client. This report limiting (or culling, as it’s also been referred to) is generally distance based and limits both the amount of bandwidth and client side processing (rendering, etc.) required to play the game. Ideally this shouldn’t be something that you notice happening as characters will simply fade in when they’re “far” away from you. In the best case this happens far enough away that even if you’re looking right at them when it happens it isn’t too visually distracting. Unfortunately, there are some situations in the game in which this setup doesn’t work as well as we’d like and it seems that those situations come up in WvW rather more often than in other parts of the game. The higher player densities that we see in large battles are an obvious example of where this system goes awry. If only the nearest N characters are reported to you but there are N+100 characters within effective battle range then many of those characters will be invisible. There’s never a great time to be dealing with invisible characters, but I think that it’s fair to say that during a large battle is one of the worst times.
In WvW one of the things that we see exacerbating the issue is this: From the moment a character is first reported to your client to the first moment that your client is able to render it a non-zero amount of time passes. During this time your client is doing things like loading textures from disk, which can be (at least in computer terms) fairly slow what with all that accessing of spinning, physical storage media. So that means that a character who is moving towards you can potentially appear first at a much closer point even than the one at which they were reported because, of course, they were still moving during that load time.
MajorKong’s screenshot doesn’t immediately look like the situation I just described so it may be that there’s some kind of bug lurking in there as well. We will certainly be looking into that possibility.
That was a lot of detail but really I’m posting to let you know that we’re aware of the issues associated with invisible enemies and we’re working on finding both the root causes and effective solutions. I understand that these experiences can be quite frustrating but please rest assured that we do care and we are working on improving the experience.
Thank you for reporting your issues here on the forums and for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve them.
Also, MajorKong, that really was a great screenshot even if it does show a bug and bugs make me sad.
Funny how Anet dude and the player talk about player density and drawing distance just after you said it isn't about populating an area and drawing distance.
Read how they say dealing with an invisible enemy.
Hi all, I think a little more explanation is in order.
First, let’s call the culling system that we’re switching to “affinity culling” just to make it easier to talk about. Under affinity culling the system handles enemies and allies independently. This means that the maximum number of allies that you can see under affinity culling is 1/2 the maximum number of characters (combined enemy & ally) that you could see under the original culling. Ditto for enemies. In exchange for that cost he benefit that we get is that running with (or through, or past) a large group of allies (e.g. a guild) won’t prevent you from seeing the enemies who are closest to you.
During the initial trial of affinity culling we found that a number of players reported asset loading issues that were highlighted by culling. Any time that your client is aware of another character at all (dot on the map, targetable in world, nameplate is visible, etc.) then culling is no longer a factor because that character has already been reported to your client. In that case if you can’t see the character the issue is one of asset load time. The fallback model feature which is shipping this month directly addresses those issues by providing a cached model to show immediately when the character is reported to the client.
The order of operations looks like this: 1) Character X enters player’s visibility 2) 3) Server reports character X to client 4) 5) Character X full model is visible on-screen to the player
Using fallback models we end up with this instead 1) Character X enters player’s visibility 2) 3) Server reports character X to client 4a) Character X fallback model is visible on-screen to the player 4b) 5) Character X full model is visible on-screen to the player
As you can see we’ve made the asset load delay unimportant (or at least less important) and allowed the player to be aware of character X sooner (in some cases quite a bit sooner).
The combination of affinity culling and fallback models provides a better experience than affinity culling alone. Even so, the affinity culling is not intended to be our last change to the system, but rather to hold players over until we can make more extensive updates to the system (which take time to implement and test). In future updates we’ll be making changes in an effort to eliminate the delay due to culling (step 2 above) and to tell each client about character X as soon as the server decides they have become visible again. We hope to do this by removing culling completely and preserving client performance though a mix of network and engine optimizations, the more extensive use of fallback models, and sundry wizardry.
As I’ve said in the past our ultimate goal is to remove culling and we’re pushing hard to make that happen. This update represents the first steps in that direction and much of what it accomplishes is to lay the groundwork for our upcoming updates. The next few months are an exciting time for us on the WvW team and we’re very excited about the changes are coming.
But I'm sure you have those links about Arenanet admitting phasing and will post them right away.
I told you he would try and be right again. He is just one of those people that can't be told they are wrong. Go through his history.
edit: Really no need discussing it with him. Everyone else on the forum can read and comprehend what you have linked. You Sir are correct and he is as incorrect.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I told you he would try and be right again. He is just one of those people that can't be told they are wrong. Go through his history.
edit: Really no need discussing it with him. Everyone else on the forum can read and comprehend what you have linked. You Sir are correct and he is as incorrect.
I thought going on a crusade against a game was forbidden on these forums, I guess I was wrong. Actually, the history shows that the account was created with the sole purpose of bashing this game.
I used to find that kind of people mildly annoying, now I can only pity them. Imagine that, while we post on the forum of a game we enjoy a lot and we play, they are bitter day after day, bashing a game they don't care about instead of finding one they enjoy.
See you in game today for the patch guys!
Yes, I'm sure that the forum Moderators can't keep track of everything, they are very busy. But his history truly shows his intentions on this site.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
And don't forget the process of installing.. do they use all that time to download it, reinstall and log in just for 10 minutes? Or do you keep it installed just to log in for 10 minutes? Lmao, either way, talk about questionable.
Also I agree.. apparently "don't play this like WoW" isn't an acceptable excuse, the game must be crappy and confusing and you will deal!! But honestly playing it the way you said brings out the potential in the game. It's very no-rails and that's how I like it. Very fun.
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
And don't forget the process of installing.. do they use all that time to download it, reinstall and log in just for 10 minutes? Or do you keep it installed just to log in for 10 minutes? Lmao, either way, talk about questionable.
Also I agree.. apparently "don't play this like WoW" isn't an acceptable excuse, the game must be crappy and confusing and you will deal!! But honestly playing it the way you said brings out the potential in the game. It's very no-rails and that's how I like it. Very fun.
My wife and I, and many from our guild in lots of games do as well. We all played it, hated it, and still log in from time to time to see if it s better. We probably will for a long time. I m sure a lot of people do this. Just because we hate it now, doesn t mean it can t improve. On that note, the world is in no way as busy as it was from release to 3 months after. No way in hell is it still growing.
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
And don't forget the process of installing.. do they use all that time to download it, reinstall and log in just for 10 minutes? Or do you keep it installed just to log in for 10 minutes? Lmao, either way, talk about questionable.
Also I agree.. apparently "don't play this like WoW" isn't an acceptable excuse, the game must be crappy and confusing and you will deal!! But honestly playing it the way you said brings out the potential in the game. It's very no-rails and that's how I like it. Very fun.
My wife and I, and many from our guild in lots of games do as well. We all played it, hated it, and still log in from time to time to see if it s better. We probably will for a long time. I m sure a lot of people do this. Just because we hate it now, doesn t mean it can t improve. On that note, the world is in no way as busy as it was from release to 3 months after. No way in hell is it still growing.
I'm sure folks do. But it wouldn't be enough to make the population rise so much they need to raise the server cap, or even make a server fluctuate enough that it would make a difference.
To be honest, and this is not intended towards you, but logging into anything for 10 minutes to see if it is better is rather pointless imho. /shrug
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
And don't forget the process of installing.. do they use all that time to download it, reinstall and log in just for 10 minutes? Or do you keep it installed just to log in for 10 minutes? Lmao, either way, talk about questionable.
Also I agree.. apparently "don't play this like WoW" isn't an acceptable excuse, the game must be crappy and confusing and you will deal!! But honestly playing it the way you said brings out the potential in the game. It's very no-rails and that's how I like it. Very fun.
My wife and I, and many from our guild in lots of games do as well. We all played it, hated it, and still log in from time to time to see if it s better. We probably will for a long time. I m sure a lot of people do this. Just because we hate it now, doesn t mean it can t improve. On that note, the world is in no way as busy as it was from release to 3 months after. No way in hell is it still growing.
I'm sure folks do. But it wouldn't be enough to make the population rise so much they need to raise the server cap, or even make a server fluctuate enough that it would make a difference.
To be honest, and this is not intended towards you, but logging into anything for 10 minutes to see if it is better is rather pointless imho. /shrug
I don t agree at all. Theres many games that have improved over time. GW2 B2P model makes it easier for people to check back and see. Not many people will pay a sub to check. That said, I am willing to bet theres a lot more then you think that do what we do.
Yep you definitely don't know what phasing is in mmorpgs... phasing is what anet calls culling... I am sorry but you are only digging yourself a deeper hole. While you are phased you aren't playing with other players that are phased outta your phase. Not that hard to understand....
This tells me you haven't actually played many mmorpgs very much, since you don't actually understand what phasing is.
Funny you would accuse me of not understanding lingo, when you are the one clearly guilty of it... go look up phasing for mmorpg game mechanics... a little research goes a long way buddy... I don't understand why you would insist on taking an argument when you don't even understand what is being talked about though... It seems silly to me.
Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
How it Works
Data on the location of game objects, players, and NPCs is not stored in the World of Warcraft client and must be sent from the server. Phasing, in a sense, decides not to send certain data based on criteria.
As an example, you may have a quest to get the head of a named NPC. After turning in the quest, the server records that it should not send data about that NPC to you. The next time you go there, even if the NPC is still there, you will not be able to see it.
By using combinations of phasing, entire areas can change from grasslands to a city by use of game object phasing and NPC phasing.
When a player character moves through the game world, any character (other players, NPCs, monsters) within a certain radius around the player (visible range) gets reported to the player's game client. This lets the game draw those characters, allows the player to select them, shoot at them, etc.
Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client. The aim of this limitation is to:
Limit server bandwidth and network resources.
Reduce client-side resource utilization and client side technology requirements.
Although achieving these aims, Culling has led to numerous problems due to nearby players and NPCs becoming completely invisible. While this is considered a problem throughout both PvE and WvW, it has been a particular problem within WvW, where the number of players during many battles is considerably larger than the chosen limit, resulting in numerous enemy players not being visible to opposing forces.
Culling has been removed from WvW with the March 26, 2013 update. WvW players are now expected to control the load on their systems in order to attain acceptable frame rates, by introducing limits themselves, using two new graphics settings:
WvW Character Limit: Five settings from Lowest to Highest. Controls the total number of character models that may be displayed in WvW. The remaining characters will appear as nameplates only. It is assumed that the farther they are, the more probable that only their nameplate will be visible. The exact number of characters corresponding to these settings is unknown.[verification requested]
WvW Character Quality: 3 settings from Lowest to Medium. Controls the number of high quality character models that may be displayed in WvW. Among the characters that are drawn (controlled using the setting above), this setting determines the number that is drawn normally, in high quality. The rest will appear as low quality character models which consume less resources on the player's computer.
Low quality models are faster to draw mainly due to lower detail, and because all characters wear one armour design per armour weight, and use one body model for both male and female Asura, one for Charr and one shared by Humans, Sylvari and Norn. The bodies and armour are also uniformly tinted using the team's color to improve performance.
Culling was observed to gradually increase in the PvE areas since the game's launch. The current observed limit is around 30 friendly NPC's and 12 monsters.[verification requested] As distant characters come closer, their bodies become visible some distance before their nameplates appear. Visible, but distant characters and monsters cannot be selected until they come within a minimum distance.
As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth.
If you’ve ever played World vs. World in a large group, you’ve probably noticed that there were some enemy players that you couldn’t see. That was an unfortunate side effect of a process calledculling. I’m pleased to announce that in the upcoming patch on March 26, we’re going to turn culling off completely in WvW. This will make invisible enemies (except those using invisibility skills, of course) a thing of the past.
How different of an experience will that be for WvW players? I think these before and after screenshots make it pretty clear:
Culling ON
Culling off.
So What Is Culling, Exactly?
Normally as you move through the world, any character (either an NPC or another player) within a fairly large circle around you gets reported to your client. This lets the client draw the character, allows you to select the character as an attack target, etc.
In order to cut down on the network resources that were used by the game and to reduce the client-side system requirements, we implemented a culling system, which imposed a limit on the number of characters that could ever be reported to your client. This meant that only the characters closest to you would actually get reported.
While this achieved our goal of limiting bandwidth and client-side resource utilization, it had the unfortunate side effect of causing large battles in WvW to be confusing, as there were sometimes many enemy players that were completely invisible. Additionally, there were side effects of culling which could result in stealth characters getting up to two seconds of additional invisibility when coming out of stealth. By removing culling, we’ve been able to eliminate these negative side effects and greatly increase the epic feel of large WvW battles.
For the sake of clarity, I want to make a distinction between our usage of the term “culling” in this post (meaning to limit the amount of data the server reports to the client) and other uses of the word “culling” related to graphics (discarding backward facing triangles in models, triangles or whole models that are occluded, etc.). Our changes are to the client/server culling and have no bearing on basic graphics operations in the GW2 client.
Got it?
With phasing you aren't playing together since you can't interact with each other.
With culling you are playing together, can shoot at each other and deal damage to each other, but one of you probably doesn't see the other (or both).
So in WvW there was never two battles happening at the same geographical place but in different phases - it was the same battle.
Please read the culling wiki, please note how it talks about phasing... please don't just deny the official gw2 wiki.
The practically instant overflows in every single map holding Clockwork Chaos events, on at LEASt the top 6 servers (Probably more) suggests that there's probably more than 5 people playing.
I can see around 50 people in Lion's Arch just from where I'm standing now. The lack of culling is crazy. Divinity's Reach was really amazing with all the people around.
I won't say if it's growing or shrinking, but there's a LOT more people than the 'everybody quit GW2' people seem to think there is.
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
And don't forget the process of installing.. do they use all that time to download it, reinstall and log in just for 10 minutes? Or do you keep it installed just to log in for 10 minutes? Lmao, either way, talk about questionable.
Also I agree.. apparently "don't play this like WoW" isn't an acceptable excuse, the game must be crappy and confusing and you will deal!! But honestly playing it the way you said brings out the potential in the game. It's very no-rails and that's how I like it. Very fun.
My wife and I, and many from our guild in lots of games do as well. We all played it, hated it, and still log in from time to time to see if it s better. We probably will for a long time. I m sure a lot of people do this. Just because we hate it now, doesn t mean it can t improve. On that note, the world is in no way as busy as it was from release to 3 months after. No way in hell is it still growing.
I'm sure folks do. But it wouldn't be enough to make the population rise so much they need to raise the server cap, or even make a server fluctuate enough that it would make a difference.
To be honest, and this is not intended towards you, but logging into anything for 10 minutes to see if it is better is rather pointless imho. /shrug
I don t agree at all. Theres many games that have improved over time. GW2 B2P model makes it easier for people to check back and see. Not many people will pay a sub to check. That said, I am willing to bet theres a lot more then you think that do what we do.
My wife and I do exactly what you guys do. We want to like the game. The world is really well done. The only other game that comes close is Final Fantasy 14, which is our new home. We still have GW2 installed in hopes that it adapts into something with more of a sense of longevity. Hard drive space is cheap and it is B2P, so why wouldn't more people take that approach?
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
Please read the culling wiki, please note how it talks about phasing... please don't just deny the official gw2 wiki.
It uses the word phasing, because that actually has a meaning outside of what they're talking about when you specifically mean MMORPG phasing, which has an actual definition.
Sort of like if I talk about culling my guild members list, that doesn't mean I'm causing some of them to not render. :T
Originally posted by MrSalty people who quit ,who log back in for 10 minutes to see the game is still trash doesnt mean the population is growing.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
And don't forget the process of installing.. do they use all that time to download it, reinstall and log in just for 10 minutes? Or do you keep it installed just to log in for 10 minutes? Lmao, either way, talk about questionable.
Also I agree.. apparently "don't play this like WoW" isn't an acceptable excuse, the game must be crappy and confusing and you will deal!! But honestly playing it the way you said brings out the potential in the game. It's very no-rails and that's how I like it. Very fun.
My wife and I, and many from our guild in lots of games do as well. We all played it, hated it, and still log in from time to time to see if it s better. We probably will for a long time. I m sure a lot of people do this. Just because we hate it now, doesn t mean it can t improve. On that note, the world is in no way as busy as it was from release to 3 months after. No way in hell is it still growing.
I'm sure folks do. But it wouldn't be enough to make the population rise so much they need to raise the server cap, or even make a server fluctuate enough that it would make a difference.
To be honest, and this is not intended towards you, but logging into anything for 10 minutes to see if it is better is rather pointless imho. /shrug
I don t agree at all. Theres many games that have improved over time. GW2 B2P model makes it easier for people to check back and see. Not many people will pay a sub to check. That said, I am willing to bet theres a lot more then you think that do what we do.
My wife and I do exactly what you guys do. We want to like the game. The world is really well done. The only other game that comes close is Final Fantasy 14, which is our new home. We still have GW2 installed in hopes that it adapts into something with more of a sense of longevity. Hard drive space is cheap and it is B2P, so why wouldn't more people take that approach?
I think the reason I responded was that Mrsalty had mentioned that the game has more players in it just from people logging in and out. That makes no sense because I can see folks playing and they are not logging in and then out. /shrug
The sub-thread got a bit side tracked with the idea that logging into a game for 10 minutes to see if it had changed was a bit strange to me. Anything I try a second, third, or even forth time I give it a real try. 10 minutes isn't enough to really look at anything and judge a good or bad change.
I understand how some people think though, I was and still am like them in most games. I was attached to the notion you have to clear out an area of all tasks ie. quest chains, before moving onto the next. That was how I was trained ever since EQ and WoW. In GW2 I found that doing something until I feel like moving on works best for me. PvE gets slow I go sPvP, or maybe do the living/personal stories. I rarely stay in the same zone when I do PvE, I go from one racial area to the next so it doesn't seem like a burden to clear an area. But, I'm not trying to tell anyone how to play, it's just what I do and it works great for me. Maybe next time you and the wife login you can try my method. You paid for the games, it can't hurt!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Please read the culling wiki, please note how it talks about phasing... please don't just deny the official gw2 wiki.
Let me remind of what you said.
Originally posted by caetftl
Originally posted by caetftl
Everyone doesn't play together in GW2. Remember when the game first launched and WvWvW had people phased differently into the same battles between the same servers? That isn't semantics, that is reality, that was a design choice they made
What you were talking is people being in different phases. They weren't in different phases.
Culling inPvE
Culling was observed to gradually increase in the PvE areas since the game's launch. The current observed limit is around 30 friendly NPC's and 12 monsters.[verification requested] As distant characters come closer, their bodies become visible some distance before their nameplates appear. Visible, but distant characters and monsters cannot be selected until they come within a minimum distance.
As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth.
Are you telling me that phasing in WoW is me not seeing the other player because there is too many players around making him not render in my screen because tt reached the limit of characters reported and rendered?
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Please read the culling wiki, please note how it talks about phasing... please don't just deny the official gw2 wiki.
Let me remind of what you said.
Originally posted by caetftl
Originally posted by caetftl
Everyone doesn't play together in GW2. Remember when the game first launched and WvWvW had people phased differently into the same battles between the same servers? That isn't semantics, that is reality, that was a design choice they made
^ I thought this was due to problems with overflow servers not syncing right, not culling. Here is an article.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Comments
Yep you definitely don't know what phasing is in mmorpgs... phasing is what anet calls culling... I am sorry but you are only digging yourself a deeper hole. While you are phased you aren't playing with other players that are phased outta your phase. Not that hard to understand....
This tells me you haven't actually played many mmorpgs very much, since you don't actually understand what phasing is.
Funny you would accuse me of not understanding lingo, when you are the one clearly guilty of it... go look up phasing for mmorpg game mechanics... a little research goes a long way buddy... I don't understand why you would insist on taking an argument when you don't even understand what is being talked about though... It seems silly to me.
Hehe, you are funny.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Phasing
Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
How it Works
Data on the location of game objects, players, and NPCs is not stored in the World of Warcraft client and must be sent from the server. Phasing, in a sense, decides not to send certain data based on criteria.
As an example, you may have a quest to get the head of a named NPC. After turning in the quest, the server records that it should not send data about that NPC to you. The next time you go there, even if the NPC is still there, you will not be able to see it.
By using combinations of phasing, entire areas can change from grasslands to a city by use of game object phasing and NPC phasing.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Culling
Culling
When a player character moves through the game world, any character (other players, NPCs, monsters) within a certain radius around the player (visible range) gets reported to the player's game client. This lets the game draw those characters, allows the player to select them, shoot at them, etc.
Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client. The aim of this limitation is to:
Although achieving these aims, Culling has led to numerous problems due to nearby players and NPCs becoming completely invisible. While this is considered a problem throughout both PvE and WvW, it has been a particular problem within WvW, where the number of players during many battles is considerably larger than the chosen limit, resulting in numerous enemy players not being visible to opposing forces.
Culling has been removed from WvW with the March 26, 2013 update. WvW players are now expected to control the load on their systems in order to attain acceptable frame rates, by introducing limits themselves, using two new graphics settings:
Low quality models are faster to draw mainly due to lower detail, and because all characters wear one armour design per armour weight, and use one body model for both male and female Asura, one for Charr and one shared by Humans, Sylvari and Norn. The bodies and armour are also uniformly tinted using the team's color to improve performance.
Culling was observed to gradually increase in the PvE areas since the game's launch. The current observed limit is around 30 friendly NPC's and 12 monsters.[verification requested] As distant characters come closer, their bodies become visible some distance before their nameplates appear. Visible, but distant characters and monsters cannot be selected until they come within a minimum distance.
As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-vs-worldthe-end-of-culling/
If you’ve ever played World vs. World in a large group, you’ve probably noticed that there were some enemy players that you couldn’t see. That was an unfortunate side effect of a process calledculling. I’m pleased to announce that in the upcoming patch on March 26, we’re going to turn culling off completely in WvW. This will make invisible enemies (except those using invisibility skills, of course) a thing of the past.
How different of an experience will that be for WvW players? I think these before and after screenshots make it pretty clear:
So What Is Culling, Exactly?
Normally as you move through the world, any character (either an NPC or another player) within a fairly large circle around you gets reported to your client. This lets the client draw the character, allows you to select the character as an attack target, etc.
In order to cut down on the network resources that were used by the game and to reduce the client-side system requirements, we implemented a culling system, which imposed a limit on the number of characters that could ever be reported to your client. This meant that only the characters closest to you would actually get reported.
While this achieved our goal of limiting bandwidth and client-side resource utilization, it had the unfortunate side effect of causing large battles in WvW to be confusing, as there were sometimes many enemy players that were completely invisible. Additionally, there were side effects of culling which could result in stealth characters getting up to two seconds of additional invisibility when coming out of stealth. By removing culling, we’ve been able to eliminate these negative side effects and greatly increase the epic feel of large WvW battles.
For the sake of clarity, I want to make a distinction between our usage of the term “culling” in this post (meaning to limit the amount of data the server reports to the client) and other uses of the word “culling” related to graphics (discarding backward facing triangles in models, triangles or whole models that are occluded, etc.). Our changes are to the client/server culling and have no bearing on basic graphics operations in the GW2 client.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
These are not the same. Anet isn't calling culling phasing because it's not.
From WoWwiki. Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is "phased" it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with.
Culling from GW2Wiki; Culling is a network design used by ArenaNet to limit the number of characters within visible range that are reported by the server to your game client. Once reached, this limit results in only the characters/NPCs closest to the player being reported to the client.
edit: @Gaia you beat me to it! You have a much longer and more precise answer than mine, but the guy who is never wrong should be able to understand even my simple post!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
It is based on the same principle of not reporting information, but the purpose of phasing is to create two or more independent places in the same spot, that cannot interact with each other.
In GW2 culling is used to improve performance and save bandwidth but it is the same place and everything interacts.
If he had played he would know what the problem was instead of trying to say that people were phased differently into the same battles between the same servers, as if there was battle 1, battle 2, battle 3, etc, and hence not playing together.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Well perhaps even he will accept this. I'm sure he will find a way for you, me, and the wiki's to be wrong.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Wrong wrong and wrong... the purpose of phasing is to improve performance and save bandwidth, it is so players can experience the content with minimal hiccups and just because you are phased does not mean you can not impact someone in a different phasing's environment, if you had actually ever understood or experienced phasing you would know this.
As for gw2, it is phasing, it works the exact same way, they simply choose different parameters for when a player can and can't interact.
As I mentioned before, phasing happened in wvwvw, players were not able to fight each other despite standing right on the same spot in the same wvwvw instance. There was massive backlash for this horrible design decision for "persistent pvp" and anet simply chose to not call it phasing because it put too much sting behind what they were doing.
Again you don't seem to understand what phasing is, and apparently not even what your definition of it (which you call culling) is. Since you are trying to downplay it so much, when in reality it was so horrendous that anet knew they had to fix it asap when people discovered their little corner cutting.
As I said before, try to objectively do some research, understand what the words are saying, and not try to twist the meaning and explanations just to fit your pro-gw2 outlook.
Culling is Phasing, 2 people, same spot, can't see each other because they are in different phases, you can call it something else if you want, the way different games may use it or when they may use it may be different, but the principle and implementation technologically is the same. You are in the same world, but not... you can not see each other, until certain criteria are met, and then you can see each other, and then if you meet certain other criteria you might get phased out of each other again.
This desperation on your part is just digging you a deeper hole.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Culling
Notice how they talk about how culling phases you.... not that hard to understand.
"As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth." Just like WoW phasing, as you move and meet certain criteria, you start to see different/other players/npcs again. weeeeeeeeeeeee
Ahahaha.
The purpose of phasing in WoW is to "create passage of time" by permanently changing a certain zone once you complete a certain questline.
You just don't understand that players were able to fight each other regardless of seeing each other or not because they were in the same phase since only one phase existed!
Again one player can see, the other can't, so you one player is killed by an invisible player. In fact many people started shooting AoE in front of them just in case some invisible army was there since they could damage it.
You just never played GW2 or you would see how this "culling phases" work - you enter the Lion's Arch Bank no one there, 1 second later you see 4 people popping up, 2 seconds later you see 40 people popping up into existence.
Well if you hurry you might still see it before culling is removed from the game for good with the next patch.
But please keep it up.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Looks like you are still confusing things... this time you are confusing culling, with run-of-the-mill populating of an area around you.
I don't know what's worse, you just assuming I didn't play the game, or you playing it adamantly and not even understanding the systems they are using.
I gave you a link to the gw2 wiki, it talks about culling and how it phases players, aka phasing... You can choose to accept the gw2 wiki or not, but that won't change the fact that it is there, in plain english, explained clearly.
For some reason you want to downplay what culling is, and treat it is like load distances... it isn't...
Again, the wiki is right there, arguing with me is arguing against what the wiki itself explains culling as.... Dunno what to tell you, you are arguing with arenanet themselves at this point.
Still waiting for those links talking about phasing.
That over there in the picture is culling, there was never different phases in WvW - all players in the same instance always could interact with each other leading to the deaths by invisible armies.
But since you can't come up with any links I'll keep burying in information, not that it will ever change your mind but it will allow impartial viewers to form their own opinions.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/The-real-problem-here-is-invisible-enemies-Give-their-algorithms-time-to-match-servers-properly
The REAL problem in WvWvW is the invisibility issue. I don’t care how unbalanced the match is if I’m getting killed by enemies who are not on my screen until they are right on top of me.
1. We need to be able to see enemies at a greater distance. Trebuchets are currently “fire and pray” siege weapons. Shoot, even cannons can fire to a distance where the enemy is invisible. It’s no fun to have all these defensive or offensive weapons if we are just firing at empty ground and hoping there are actually enemy players there.
2. Many times I have been running along minding my own business or heading to a fort that is under siege only to suddenly be surrounded by a swarm of enemy players and killed instantly. Sometimes I’ve even had warriors and guardians already hitting me as they just appear out of this air. If I had been able to see them, I seriously doubt I would have just charged in and died.
3. Occasionally, upon pushing back an assault, the enemy team will receive reinforcements. All we can see is the same players we’ve been routing so we press on. 30 additional troops start appearing on the screen and kill a bunch of us before we even realize we have become the hunted instead of the hunters.
This is what will kill WvWvW. We can’t fight an enemy we can’t see. My computer can handle this game on the highest settings in the most insane battles without ever dropping a frame (and it’s not a user problem anyway) so the idea that There is no distance slider or ability to adjust the number of players visible at any given time is ridiculous.
This is what needs to be fixed. If you want to complain about something, please make it this.
Culling in action, not "WoW type of phasing".
From Habib Loew,
Hi all,
For a variety of performance reasons we limit the number of characters that are reported to any given game client. This report limiting (or culling, as it’s also been referred to) is generally distance based and limits both the amount of bandwidth and client side processing (rendering, etc.) required to play the game. Ideally this shouldn’t be something that you notice happening as characters will simply fade in when they’re “far” away from you. In the best case this happens far enough away that even if you’re looking right at them when it happens it isn’t too visually distracting. Unfortunately, there are some situations in the game in which this setup doesn’t work as well as we’d like and it seems that those situations come up in WvW rather more often than in other parts of the game. The higher player densities that we see in large battles are an obvious example of where this system goes awry. If only the nearest N characters are reported to you but there are N+100 characters within effective battle range then many of those characters will be invisible. There’s never a great time to be dealing with invisible characters, but I think that it’s fair to say that during a large battle is one of the worst times.
In WvW one of the things that we see exacerbating the issue is this: From the moment a character is first reported to your client to the first moment that your client is able to render it a non-zero amount of time passes. During this time your client is doing things like loading textures from disk, which can be (at least in computer terms) fairly slow what with all that accessing of spinning, physical storage media. So that means that a character who is moving towards you can potentially appear first at a much closer point even than the one at which they were reported because, of course, they were still moving during that load time.
MajorKong’s screenshot doesn’t immediately look like the situation I just described so it may be that there’s some kind of bug lurking in there as well. We will certainly be looking into that possibility.
That was a lot of detail but really I’m posting to let you know that we’re aware of the issues associated with invisible enemies and we’re working on finding both the root causes and effective solutions. I understand that these experiences can be quite frustrating but please rest assured that we do care and we are working on improving the experience.
Thank you for reporting your issues here on the forums and for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve them.
Also, MajorKong, that really was a great screenshot even if it does show a bug and bugs make me sad.
Funny how Anet dude and the player talk about player density and drawing distance just after you said it isn't about populating an area and drawing distance.
Read how they say dealing with an invisible enemy.
And here is how they talked about the fix.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/January-WvW-culling-loading-changes/page/2#post1275878
Hi all, I think a little more explanation is in order.
First, let’s call the culling system that we’re switching to “affinity culling” just to make it easier to talk about. Under affinity culling the system handles enemies and allies independently. This means that the maximum number of allies that you can see under affinity culling is 1/2 the maximum number of characters (combined enemy & ally) that you could see under the original culling. Ditto for enemies. In exchange for that cost he benefit that we get is that running with (or through, or past) a large group of allies (e.g. a guild) won’t prevent you from seeing the enemies who are closest to you.
During the initial trial of affinity culling we found that a number of players reported asset loading issues that were highlighted by culling. Any time that your client is aware of another character at all (dot on the map, targetable in world, nameplate is visible, etc.) then culling is no longer a factor because that character has already been reported to your client. In that case if you can’t see the character the issue is one of asset load time. The fallback model feature which is shipping this month directly addresses those issues by providing a cached model to show immediately when the character is reported to the client.
The order of operations looks like this:
1) Character X enters player’s visibility
2)
3) Server reports character X to client
4)
5) Character X full model is visible on-screen to the player
Using fallback models we end up with this instead
1) Character X enters player’s visibility
2)
3) Server reports character X to client
4a) Character X fallback model is visible on-screen to the player
4b)
5) Character X full model is visible on-screen to the player
As you can see we’ve made the asset load delay unimportant (or at least less important) and allowed the player to be aware of character X sooner (in some cases quite a bit sooner).
The combination of affinity culling and fallback models provides a better experience than affinity culling alone. Even so, the affinity culling is not intended to be our last change to the system, but rather to hold players over until we can make more extensive updates to the system (which take time to implement and test). In future updates we’ll be making changes in an effort to eliminate the delay due to culling (step 2 above) and to tell each client about character X as soon as the server decides they have become visible again. We hope to do this by removing culling completely and preserving client performance though a mix of network and engine optimizations, the more extensive use of fallback models, and sundry wizardry.
As I’ve said in the past our ultimate goal is to remove culling and we’re pushing hard to make that happen. This update represents the first steps in that direction and much of what it accomplishes is to lay the groundwork for our upcoming updates. The next few months are an exciting time for us on the WvW team and we’re very excited about the changes are coming.
But I'm sure you have those links about Arenanet admitting phasing and will post them right away.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I told you he would try and be right again. He is just one of those people that can't be told they are wrong. Go through his history.
edit: Really no need discussing it with him. Everyone else on the forum can read and comprehend what you have linked. You Sir are correct and he is as incorrect.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Big day today!
Culling goes away. I caught L.A. being tested without culling but didn't get a screenshot... it was rather impressive the number of people there.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Yes, I'm sure that the forum Moderators can't keep track of everything, they are very busy. But his history truly shows his intentions on this site.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Shouldn't they be playing game they actually enjoy if they know the game is trash or did it turn into an obsessive way of thinking up ways to bash it on forums?
My question is why would you buy a game, play it and find out you don't like it, merely to log back in for 10 minutes. I'm sure there are thousands of people doing this all the time, and that is why it looks like the population is increasing! /sarcasm
I think the population is increasing, at least it is from my point of view. The Living Story keeps getting better imho, and that may be a small part of why. Just overall, the game is fascinating, and there is always something different to do. If players that are on the fence about playing it can just brake away from the quest chain mentality, and explore I believe they will understand it and enjoy it more.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
And don't forget the process of installing.. do they use all that time to download it, reinstall and log in just for 10 minutes? Or do you keep it installed just to log in for 10 minutes? Lmao, either way, talk about questionable.
Also I agree.. apparently "don't play this like WoW" isn't an acceptable excuse, the game must be crappy and confusing and you will deal!! But honestly playing it the way you said brings out the potential in the game. It's very no-rails and that's how I like it. Very fun.
My wife and I, and many from our guild in lots of games do as well. We all played it, hated it, and still log in from time to time to see if it s better. We probably will for a long time. I m sure a lot of people do this. Just because we hate it now, doesn t mean it can t improve. On that note, the world is in no way as busy as it was from release to 3 months after. No way in hell is it still growing.
I'm sure folks do. But it wouldn't be enough to make the population rise so much they need to raise the server cap, or even make a server fluctuate enough that it would make a difference.
To be honest, and this is not intended towards you, but logging into anything for 10 minutes to see if it is better is rather pointless imho. /shrug
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I don t agree at all. Theres many games that have improved over time. GW2 B2P model makes it easier for people to check back and see. Not many people will pay a sub to check. That said, I am willing to bet theres a lot more then you think that do what we do.
Please read the culling wiki, please note how it talks about phasing... please don't just deny the official gw2 wiki.
The practically instant overflows in every single map holding Clockwork Chaos events, on at LEASt the top 6 servers (Probably more) suggests that there's probably more than 5 people playing.
I can see around 50 people in Lion's Arch just from where I'm standing now. The lack of culling is crazy. Divinity's Reach was really amazing with all the people around.
I won't say if it's growing or shrinking, but there's a LOT more people than the 'everybody quit GW2' people seem to think there is.
My wife and I do exactly what you guys do. We want to like the game. The world is really well done. The only other game that comes close is Final Fantasy 14, which is our new home. We still have GW2 installed in hopes that it adapts into something with more of a sense of longevity. Hard drive space is cheap and it is B2P, so why wouldn't more people take that approach?
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
It uses the word phasing, because that actually has a meaning outside of what they're talking about when you specifically mean MMORPG phasing, which has an actual definition.
Sort of like if I talk about culling my guild members list, that doesn't mean I'm causing some of them to not render. :T
I think the reason I responded was that Mrsalty had mentioned that the game has more players in it just from people logging in and out. That makes no sense because I can see folks playing and they are not logging in and then out. /shrug
The sub-thread got a bit side tracked with the idea that logging into a game for 10 minutes to see if it had changed was a bit strange to me. Anything I try a second, third, or even forth time I give it a real try. 10 minutes isn't enough to really look at anything and judge a good or bad change.
I understand how some people think though, I was and still am like them in most games. I was attached to the notion you have to clear out an area of all tasks ie. quest chains, before moving onto the next. That was how I was trained ever since EQ and WoW. In GW2 I found that doing something until I feel like moving on works best for me. PvE gets slow I go sPvP, or maybe do the living/personal stories. I rarely stay in the same zone when I do PvE, I go from one racial area to the next so it doesn't seem like a burden to clear an area. But, I'm not trying to tell anyone how to play, it's just what I do and it works great for me. Maybe next time you and the wife login you can try my method. You paid for the games, it can't hurt!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Let me remind of what you said.
Originally posted by caetftl
What you were talking is people being in different phases. They weren't in different phases.
Culling in PvE
Culling was observed to gradually increase in the PvE areas since the game's launch. The current observed limit is around 30 friendly NPC's and 12 monsters.[verification requested] As distant characters come closer, their bodies become visible some distance before their nameplates appear. Visible, but distant characters and monsters cannot be selected until they come within a minimum distance.
As you move your character in a direction, new characters/NPCs will gradually phase into the scene (taking a few seconds) while those behind you disappear. This phasing in was one of the issues affecting WvW stealthy characters, and providing them with a few seconds of extra invisibility as they came out of stealth.
Are you telling me that phasing in WoW is me not seeing the other player because there is too many players around making him not render in my screen because tt reached the limit of characters reported and rendered?
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.