14 replies to this topic

[PvPD00R]

Is it confirmed the WvW cap has been lowered to 50 or 60 per Map?

It has seemed that there are fewer people in each BL these days. Not sure about EB, I rarely go there.

I suppose lowering the cap is a good way to make lower tier servers more competitive, but it will come at the cost of higher pop servers (The WvW T1ers) rage quitting. Maybe a good idea if Anet is trying to get the hard core WvWers to quit.

Already had 5 people I know quit with this patch. Though, they may have been let down by what they expected to be the PvP patch.

[raspberry jam]

There's not much to do in the borderlands, that's probably why there are less people there...

[Tyrantscreed]

PvPD00R, on 04 February 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

Maybe a good idea if Anet is trying to get the hard core WvWers to quit.

What, why? Since when is WvW casual? Lol, it's a competition to see which server is more dominant given the current match-up.

Also to your question, I have no idea...I've never heard of ANet lowering caps, but I heard of queue bugs.

[Var]

WvW pop is bugged, people logging in WvW appear as if they are still in WvW.

[MaLeVoLenT_1]

Tyrantscreed, on 04 February 2013 - 04:40 PM, said:

What, why? Since when is WvW casual? Lol, it's a competition to see which server is more dominant given the current match-up.

Also to your question, I have no idea...I've never heard of ANet lowering caps, but I heard of queue bugs.

Anet Designed WvW to be casual and imbalanced form of Pvp in GW2. We just take it and play hardcore. Unless they've changed what they were doing that's what they stated before the game came out.

[Hennet]

Reports from EU servers show that max pop is ~50 to 60 players instead of the ~166 it should be according to anet.

[Global_GW2]

Hennet, on 04 February 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

Reports from EU servers show that max pop is ~50 to 60 players instead of the ~166 it should be according to anet.

I don't know if anyone at Anet ever said that 166 was the number. If they did, it may have been back in beta, which was picked up by some of the wiki sites. Here is what Mike Ferguson stated recently when asked what the map limits are:

Quote

As many as we can fit without causing too much stress on the servers. We can’t be more specific than that, but I can assure everyone that the cap is definitely split equally between all three worlds.

It does appear that something definitely changed with last Monday's patch though, which may not have been noticed since we were already passed the weekend, and player activity may have been reduced due to the rating reset announcement that same night. Where the problem really lies is anyone's guess. I wouldn't be surprised if we hear from Habib on what's going on sometime this week.

[fathamburger]

My conspiracy theory, not a bug. Stealth test to see if they can easy fix culling by just reducing numbers to the point where it doesn't really show up that much anymore.

What they should really do is make a test bed in Kansas, Chattanooga or Korea where everyone is on fiber where culling isn't needed and use this as an opportunity to push for better broadband standards. Clearly we are hitting the limits on current tech and for everyone that says "there's nothing that needs fiber", this could be one of the obvious cases.

[Voradors]

fathamburger, on 04 February 2013 - 06:02 PM, said:

Clearly we are hitting the limits on current tech and for everyone that says "there's nothing that needs fiber", this could be one of the obvious cases.

I find it hard to believe that this game requires fiber.  I am not sure you realize how little bandwidth something like this really requires on the client's end....

I take it that most cable connections should be sufficient, and just like with PC min specs, they are planning for worst cast scenarios like people stuck with low end DSL.  Testing with fiber networks is overkill....

[Hennet]

I thought the new "placeholder" models were supposed to help with the culling, I guess the placeholder was reducing the total # of players on the map

[fathamburger]

Voradors, on 04 February 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

I find it hard to believe that this game requires fiber.  I am not sure you realize how little bandwidth something like this really requires on the client's end....

I take it that most cable connections should be sufficient, and just like with PC min specs, they are planning for worst cast scenarios like people stuck with low end DSL.  Testing with fiber networks is overkill....

Yeah I do actually. In most cases you are just sending pointers/indexes to data and actions but I do remember them saying they are constrained at the server bandwidth level and also to a small extent "burst" upload ability on the client end. Most consumer broadband connections have very constrained or delayed upstream that doesnt' have much room for doing more than one thing at once, add in the greater prioritization of cable channels on a typical cable connection and you start seeing lag server side too waiting for our piddly client end to get going. Fiber offers symmetrical and dedicated upstream which can alleviate this in a not insignificant way I suspect

[Veltoss]

Hennet, on 04 February 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

Reports from EU servers show that max pop is ~50 to 60 players instead of the ~166 it should be according to anet.

Everyone on Blackgate (NA server) has also been experiencing about the same numbers lately.

[ChuckS117]

It feels really empty at times.

I was on EB and JQ BL and there wasn't a lot of action going on.

[PariahX]

Hennet, on 04 February 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

Reports from EU servers show that max pop is ~50 to 60 players instead of the ~166 it should be according to anet.

Just to reiterate, because I see this number tossed around all the time as if it were fact, ANET said 166 per side was a target goal, not a map cap number.  We've never seen anything above 100 except maybe in the later beta's where we had huge lag issues.  Post release 60 to 80 was more typical.

EB maps can still get over 70 regularly, commanders can see numbers of players around them.  I have to admit, it never looks like as many players as they say but now with friendly culling I am not ever sure how many we are.  Stacks of green dots are damn had to count.

I don't doubt there are queue problems for some people but we have not been giving ANET data in way they can test and repeat.  Pretty sure these are still the same issues that have always been there but not noticeable when the WvW populations are better balanced.  If they were going to lower the map caps for culling testing they really should have done it before they closed free transfers.  But even so, still tons to kill with 60v60v60 battles so if it fixes culling I don't mind lower caps, just don't care for the queues.  ><

[Major_Disaster]

80 vs 80 vs 80 seems to be the norm at reset, when logged-out players and jumping puzzle carebears aren't filling up the map.

Considering how many millions of players the game has, the caps being this low is slightly embarrassing. The only thing stopping there being 5-6 hour queues on every server is that the game is really bad with the heavy culling, so most people don't want to play.

I'm not sure why Mike Ferguson feels unable to tell us what the real cap is, maybe he's scared of the truth?

Hennet, on 04 February 2013 - 06:22 PM, said:

I thought the new "placeholder" models were supposed to help with the culling, I guess the placeholder was reducing the total # of players on the map

Yes and no, placeholder models only helped people with slow hard drives display characters when they have been un-culled. You still get the same number of players culled by the server in the first place. People with fast SSDs very rarely see the placeholders, because our computers load and render the real player models pretty much instantly after they are un-culled.