WvW is not playable

[DemonSeed.3528]

You have not experienced the beauty of lag, until you die coming out of red spawn bl portal. It happens more often if you try jumping through it.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

> @"Vegeta.2563" said:

> > @"Bigpapasmurf.5623" said:

> > That being said, were against a large WvW oriented server and last night (reset ofc) I havent seen skill lag like I had in a while

>

> How about lagging so bad.. having a 1 single burn stack on you that is blinking like it's going to go away but the timer doesn't actually count down, but yet you still take damage per second.. because the damage is local and not server side :(

 

Gonna try again tonight, but using my main gaming rig thats better than my gaming laptop which will tell me if the issue is local or server base (usually no issues WvWing from my laptop on wifi as long as I dont stream, however others I was running with had similar issue at the same time I did)

[Redseven.3985]

It's obviously on their end- as so, so many people have had issues with this, both skill lag and high ping in large groups. And it is getting worse. In the past I paid for a vpn every month as this was the only solution. Now, not even the vpn seems to work.

[Arctisavange.7261]

Did some commanding yesterday in a alpine bl. Was fighting GH blob and then an enemy Deso blob started appearing close by. During that moment me and atleast ~10 more players got immobilized by GH and given the lagg, the timer on condition durations completely vanished away when you hovered your mouse over to check. Couldnt cleanse, couldnt do nothing and i could have sworn we were standing on that 1 spot for atleast 10 seconds before the timer for condition duration kicked in again.

Should have recorded that moment, it was hilariously bad and unacceptable.

 

Lol gg anet servers.

[Taylan.2187]

> @"Bigpapasmurf.5623" said:

> > @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > > @"Teratus.2859" said:

> > > > @"spankyed.4735" said:

> > > > > @"Teratus.2859" said:

> > > > > I don't get lag on EU, problem is probably with your computer (CPU) or internet connection more than the servers.

> > > >

> > > > You dont play WvW, because EU has lag too. And its not cpu or gpu or internet its the server.

> > >

> > > Been playing WvW daily for a while now and no noticable lag.

> > > Maybe you're all getting diminished internet availablity issues from all the people stuck at home and streaming 4K netflix or something.

> > > I hear that has been noted a thing lately but it doesn't effect me atm as I live in a country with a significantly smaller population than most and things are mostly running as usual here for now.

> > > Hence no lag for me.. that's my best guess anyway.

> > >

> > >

> > Thats not how reality works. WvW has been a lagfest in 3-ways since GW2 release.

> >

>

> Actually, as someone who worked as a network admin, it def is a thing. Not all internet connections are dedicated. Some are essentially shared through neighborhoods. Less people who are using it, better the connection is and vice versa. Another actual thing is throttling.

>

> Luckily I have fibreop so I have a dedicated connection.

 

It doesn't matter how good your connection is when it's the server that can't respond.

 

What the WvW servers are suffering from is something like a DDoS. The amount of commands sent by clients plus the need of calculating everything that happens to each active player (tons of boons and condition ticks) overwhelms the server, so it fails to calculate everything / respond to clients. It has nothing to do with how good the connection of individual clients is.

 

Evidence for the issue being server side includes:

- The issue happens during 3-way zerg battles, not other times

- Certain actions (like players walking around) keep working while others (casting skills) don't, meaning it's not a connection issue but rather the server being unable to process certain actions (it probably prioritizes walking over skill casting for a less degraded gameplay experience)

- The issue happens for a large number of players at the same time, including ones with a good connection

- The amount of bandwidth required by the game is nothing compared to e.g. streaming a 4K video, which I can do fine at all times (400 Mbps connection)

- It's not about client-related lag either because then the actions would all just have a set delay, rather than not activating at all / activating selectively (walking vs. skills), activating at random later etc.

 

I'm a programmer and can assure you that what happens has all the signs of server overload, not client issues. (So not related to your CPU or GPU either.)

 

This post explains very well what's most likely happening:

 

> @"TinkTinkPOOF.9201" said:

> A good bit of guessing going on here by people.

>

> The lag is skill lag, which is not the same as FPS lag, I have FPS plots and trace routes going at the same time, FPS will still be over 100FPS, however responses from the server, and I DON'T mean the back bone, but the actual anet servers, now hosted with AWS is where the response time will sky rocket. Along with it being the only online game I play that has this issue. 9900k@5.2GHz, custom water cooled, 2070 super, etc etc, 1Gbps/1Gbps fiber. Do some people have FPS lag that is 100% client side related? Yes. However many people and those here are talking about SKILL LAG, you push a button and have time to stand there and watch an insta cast skill just blink, and blink and blink and then never cast, or cast at random LONG after using the skill.

>

> This is due to how skills, boons and dmg are calculated by the servers, it is back end related, and they had someone come in to find out where the bottlenecks were, and boons and dmg calculations were at the top. This could also be further exacerbated by how much they are willing to spend on hosting, AWS has about all the processing power you could want, and scales with load....However you have to be willing to pay for it, if you put a cap on how much you are willing to pay in high load situations, well, performance is going to be even worse. You have a bottleneck, so new skills and events are being sent to the servers by all the connected clients, that bottleneck causes those new actions to go into a queue in RAM, once that fills up things start timing out, as it can't add anything else to the queue and you get large sections of time where it's like everyone disconnected (everyone else running in straight lines or into walls etc etc) when it gets really bad and then it's like someone hits fast forward as all those queued actions get processed.

>

> And I will say like I do at the end of most of these posts, if someone from anet has more or new information on these issues and willing to share, PLEASE DO. If this information is no longer accurate due to changes that might have happened, please let us know, we all would like some updated information on the problems, even if in the end the final answer is "we are not going to do anything", at least people will know then and not see posts every day about it.

 

 

 

[Teratus.2859]

> @"Taylan.2187" said:

> - The amount of bandwidth required by the game is nothing compared to e.g. streaming a 4K video, which I can do fine at all times (400 Mbps connection)

 

Only issue I have with your comment is this bit.

 

There was a controversy not long ago about this subject which resulted in a lot of articles providing data about video streaming services like Netflix vs online games.

They were all pretty consistent that streaming services use significantly more bandwith than online games do.

We're talking the difference between MB and GB per hour comparing the two.

The amount of data usage does vary by game but nowhere near enough to say gaming uses up more data than streaming.

 

A common statistic you will get just by googling this information is that streaming HD Netflix will be using around 30 times more data than playing an online game.. streaming 4K is going to be even more.

[DemonSeed.3528]

I think they meant the same thing you are saying, that the game doesn't require excessive bandwidth to perform. They meant it's not the bandwidth going to/from server, it's the processing server side. At least that's what I am understanding.

In terms of data, gw2 is very kind up/down transferred bytes. You can even enjoy it with not a big mobile data quota (for playing game, not including patching/updates). That was another thing I liked about this game.

[Taylan.2187]

Yes, I was saying that the bandwidth needed by the game is probably nothing compared to streaming videos, so if I had bandwidth-related issues I'd experience it while watching Netflix.

[anduriell.6280]

> @"Taylan.2187" said:

> Yes, I was saying that the bandwidth needed by the game is probably nothing compared to streaming videos, so if I had bandwidth-related issues I'd experience it while watching Netflix.

 

Bandwidth is a not issue here, i have played this game using metered connections and 7 hours of play in WvW consumes around 700MB. Right now i'm using 1Gbit home fiber.

 

It is a server issue, related to all the calculations made when a blob heavy in Condi/boon spam is in the map. We have been having a HORRIBLE lag during this weekend as soon as we were close to gunnar's blob. Not even 3 way, just our blob (heavy in boon spam but power) against theirs (heavy in boon and condi spam).

 

As i play ranger main even on those bob fights I can appreciate how the lag is decreased when i get further from their blob, which seems is something related to how the server handles every single player.

Anet SysAdmins are saying : _"We don't appreciate an overload of the server"_ but players are saying _"We are having a horrible lag every single time we are close (not even fighting) to other blob"_.

 

This is making me think this is simply how they are logging the data of the player events. Is it possible the server lag when they can't store the player events (boons,damage taken, damage done...) fast enough? Do they store the data in synchronous connection (validate and store the data and then allow the player to perform next operation) instead have an asynchronous queue (perform the operation and validate the data when available) ?

 

 

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > @"Burnfall.9573" said:

> > > @"Bigpapasmurf.5623" said:

> > > > @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > > > > @"Teratus.2859" said:

> > > > > > @"spankyed.4735" said:

> > > > > > > @"Teratus.2859" said:

> > > > > > > I don't get lag on EU, problem is probably with your computer (CPU) or internet connection more than the servers.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > You dont play WvW, because EU has lag too. And its not cpu or gpu or internet its the server.

> > > > >

> > > > > Been playing WvW daily for a while now and no noticable lag.

> > > > > Maybe you're all getting diminished internet availablity issues from all the people stuck at home and streaming 4K netflix or something.

> > > > > I hear that has been noted a thing lately but it doesn't effect me atm as I live in a country with a significantly smaller population than most and things are mostly running as usual here for now.

> > > > > Hence no lag for me.. that's my best guess anyway.

> > > > >

> > > > >

> > > > Thats not how reality works. WvW has been a lagfest in 3-ways since GW2 release.

> > > >

> > >

> > > Actually, as someone who worked as a network admin, it def is a thing. Not all internet connections are dedicated. Some are essentially shared through neighborhoods. Less people who are using it, better the connection is and vice versa. Another actual thing is throttling.

> > >

> > > Luckily I have fibreop so I have a dedicated connection.

> >

> > isn't it very expensive?

> Keep in mind that many developed EU countries have like 80% of households on fiber, unlike undeveloped backwater countries such the United States. Its not really expensive when its the baseline access.

>

 

Many in the EU are much higher population density, as well as much smaller land mass....Significantly less in many cases. As such deployments are easier, it is why some very small or island nations can have almost 100% coverage of higher end networking (FTTH).

 

The US has vast rural areas that contain a huge part of the population and running fiber is just not possible to these households for the time being. However, an example would be the UK, where last data was 2019 and 7% of the population had access to fiber (pretty bad)....You talk to people online however and they think everyone in the EU has access to fiber. Which is not a good description either, as fiber can be anything, it doesn't mean 1gbps/1gbps is being allocated to each end user. However the EU as a whole, averages out to about 30% fiber access (NOT 80%), and the US is about 25%, not exactly "backwater", particularly when you consider land mass.

 

Myself, in Texas of all places, which is VERY spread out as far as states go and I have fiber to the home, 1gbps/1gbps for $80/mo.

 


 

[Ashantara.8731]

> @"Teratus.2859" said:

> I don't get lag on EU, problem is probably with your computer (CPU) or internet connection more than the servers.

 

Sure! Massive skill lags _for the entire squad_ during big battles, and other lag issues, are _not_ a server-sided issue but client-sided. :lol: Good one.

[Teratus.2859]

> @"Taylan.2187" said:

> Yes, I was saying that the bandwidth needed by the game is probably nothing compared to streaming videos, so if I had bandwidth-related issues I'd experience it while watching Netflix.

 

My mistake, misread.

[Dawdler.8521]

> @"anduriell.6280" said:

> This is making me think this is simply how they are logging the data of the player events. Is it possible the server lag when they can't store the player events (boons,damage taken, damage done...) fast enough? Do they store the data in synchronous connection (validate and store the data and then allow the player to perform next operation) instead have an asynchronous queue (perform the operation and validate the data when available) ?

As devs have described it there is a global skillqueue for all players in an instance and when skills stop working its getting choked and cant process it fast enough. Then you got the movement and such, thats a seperate system. Thats why the things can individually lag.

 

IMO before they started using Amazon, it felt like it was 80% an issue with the skill queue. Yeah lag happened and skills could be broken for minutes, but not commonly warping all over the place. After, its both things that chokes in heavy zerg fights (but not always).

 

Whether the root cause is all the changes to skills and such over the years.... Who knows. I dont think Anet knows.

 

[phokus.8934]

Sure you can throw more resources on a server level but the fundamental issue of handling increased players is still a problem (from a programming perspective).

 

My one step plan to reduce skill lag is unmatched and foolproof: the more players you kill the less it’ll lag.

 

Problem solved. I take Mystic Coin donations.

[reddie.5861]

> @"phokus.8934" said:

> Sure you can throw more resources on a server level but the fundamental issue of handling increased players is still a problem (from a programming perspective).

>

> My one step plan to reduce skill lag is unmatched and foolproof: the more players you kill the less it’ll lag.

>

> Problem solved. I take Mystic Coin donations.

 

but but i would just love to play again like u can actually THINK u made a difference in this blob fight :P instead of well we managed to get more skills tru so we won :D

[aspirine.6852]

Stop blobbing...

[Senqu.8054]

> @"aspirine.6852" said:

> Stop blobbing...

 

People need motivation to fight small scale but since everything rewards running in a blob I don’t see a change here. No one can tell me that in a 40v40v40, 120 people think this is the best experience you can get out of this wonderful game, not with this kind of combat. Running around as one dot pressing key 1 80% of the time is not the Guild wars I knew.

[primatos.5413]

Blob fighting once was fun... lag and balancing issues killed it.

[anduriell.6280]

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > @"anduriell.6280" said:

> > This is making me think this is simply how they are logging the data of the player events. Is it possible the server lag when they can't store the player events (boons,damage taken, damage done...) fast enough? Do they store the data in synchronous connection (validate and store the data and then allow the player to perform next operation) instead have an asynchronous queue (perform the operation and validate the data when available) ?

> As devs have described it there is a global skillqueue for all players in an instance and when skills stop working its getting choked and cant process it fast enough. Then you got the movement and such, thats a seperate system. Thats why the things can individually lag.

>

> IMO before they started using Amazon, it felt like it was 80% an issue with the skill queue. Yeah lag happened and skills could be broken for minutes, but not commonly warping all over the place. After, its both things that chokes in heavy zerg fights (but not always).

>

> Whether the root cause is all the changes to skills and such over the years.... Who knows. I dont think Anet knows.

>

then then it must be that, probably they don't queue the skills (as it does not make sense) but the effects (damage, healing, output damage, boons incoming) on every player.

It seems to be separated by player as well, as i can stop having bad lag when step back from the enemy zerg while the squad can't do anything (still suffering lag but not as bad) . Before Amazon it was very bad, activating the healing combat log would cause to suffer lag.

Calculations don't seems to be so complex as such i would think the bottleneck is the database logging. They should know better.

 

 

 

 

[Blackarps.1974]

I moved to EU from NA and while obviously my ping is higher, the lag on EU is extremely bad sometimes. EU people would dream to have the NA servers but that's not to say it still doesn't lag in NA either sometimes. You still can't 3 way blob in NA but the random lag on NA is basically non-existent compared to EU.

[DemonSeed.3528]

I'm not sure what changed on servers end, but playing on EU just then against blobs I wasn't getting any lag spikes so far. Checking NA region atm to see how I fare there.

I forgot to add, even though *I* was not getting any lag spikes, other players were still getting them.

Some maps in pve/wvw is ok so far, but pvp lobby is spiking like hell for me.

T2 NA my avg ping is stable, no lag spikes in general, but skill lag is present and really bad. Had to rely just on AA because hardly any skills worked.

[Tao.5096]

EU is lagging sometimes as well, when blobs do clash. The funniest thing is that sometimes it's just one borderland that's lagging.

Your ping is about 50ms and to use a skill it takes about 3-5 seconds.

 

Problems with lagging servers started with change to Stability - old one was a single stack which could be removed only by boon corrupt/removal.

 

I can imagine that the culprit here is actually Stability and some other boons like Resistance maybe?

 

Mind you, that fights in terms of sizes didn't change that much compared to several years ago.

But certain mechanics did like mentioned Stability, and that already has proven to be an issue.

 

It still makes me amazed why they didn't revert that change, since it is causing the issues with lagging since it's first day of implementation....

[DemonSeed.3528]

T3 NA is horrible for me atm, the lag is unstable, the skill lag is bad, and the lag spikes are through the roof to 4k. Had to log out because it was so lagged after waiting for almost 4mins for the game to catch up. Also people from NSP should report that guy from their server on mesmer that was hacking, I'm pretty sure they know who it is.