Guild Wars 2

Hi, I have one of the crappiest graphics cards and a Micro ATX motherboard in my computer that causes problems when I want to upgrade my graphics card. So, I’m sitting at 8 FPS stable (on a good day, not in a city) and 5 FPS stable in a city when I play. I have ALL the graphics options turned to bottom low, but I noticed there is soooooooooooooooooooooooo much more that could be turned down for those players on the bare basic computers that over 70% of the population of U.S.A. owns in their personal household. I have done, literally, everything that I can possibly do to improve the performance, and 8 FPS stable is the max I can push it to – and that’s overclocking my Graphics Card!

Here are my suggestions to add the ability to increase or decrease the way particular things in the game may appear:

1) Characters and NPCs. I play a game on and off called “Entropia Universe,” and this game allows you to reduce the way you view a character or an NPC all the way down to a freakin CLAY MOLD – no joke. That Clay Mold alone buys me 5 FPS on Entropia Universe.

2) I also used to play World of Warcraft for 5 years straight before quitting before Cataclysm release. World of Warcraft allows you to knock down soooooo many more graphical items. Such as, character spell effects – what do you need to see these for if you can’t even run away from the boss’s spell effect? Sure, you need to see the boss’s spell effect, but you don’t need to see your own. All you need to know is that it’s going to hit the boss and do some damage, or it’s going to heal your allies. Another example is that W.o.W. allows you to turn off certain effects made by the environment around you – such as, water and splash effects, leaves blowing, etc.

3) On top of this, W.o.W. also allows you to turn off Sound Quality effects, music reverb, music loop, etc. Sound quality and performance can go a long way to increasing your performance – I tried turning “off” my music and sound effects, but there’s no button for it. Sure, I can turn it all the way down, but after 5min I saw 0 FPS increase or decrease. It should have a box at the top of the Sound menu to be a main override switch – that way upon clicking it, it’ll shut off ALL possible sound effects, with minor exceptions.

All in all, it is in my honest opinion, that you can increase your amount of players by giving the ability to decrease your game farther than it currently is capable of. Plus, I’ve read some articles on here suggesting to increase the Graphics Detail – so, why not add another layer of performance options and another layer of quality options. Both would provide higher satisfactions to your customers – those with a beastly computer capable of handling almost anything, and those with a bare basic computer, barely capable of sustaining a straight path when running in the game.

I would prefer more image quality options. GW2 already performs well.

Malediktus.9250:

I would prefer more image quality options. GW2 already performs well.

You consider 8FPS Stable to be “doing well”??? Heck, my computer is slightly upscaled than the average basic user’s computer, and mine is still doing crappy in terms of performance.

On World of Warcraft, I get 45 FPS Stable. On Entropia Universe, I get 20 FPS Stable. On here I get 8 FPS Stable. Now, I realize that that’s due to the heavy graphics detail that is on my crappy Graphics Card, but if they enabled the ability to tone down that heavy graphic load, then it would make it much easier for my Graphics Card to run GW2.

I hope this doesn’t come off too unsympathetic to your issue because I’m sure it’s a lousy situation to be in with a game you want to play, but perhaps your computer has finally reached the point where you can no longer expect to be able to play new release PC games on it. If you were only running WoW at 45fps — a game that released 8 years ago — that suggests that your specs were fairly mid-range even among PCs from 4-5 years back. Anyway, I hope you’re able to find an acceptable balance so that you can play sometime soon.

Until ArenaNet signs the game off to Nvidia, this will not happen. Nvidia will ‘not’ support the game (mostly because it is not a First Person Shooter game) with better performance.

ArenaNet has to fork out tons of money to Nvidia to get that performance, then AMD/ATI can follow suit.

Welcome to Corporate America

I’m running 40-60 fps in “NORMAL” conditions (city, spvp, dungeons).

In WvW during zerg fights the fps drops to below 15, and stays in that range no matter how high or low I set my settings.

This game NEEDS more graphical options, ESPECIALLY on spell effects, looks to me like that is the main fps leak.

Just fyi, I’m running a rig that can still be considered good enough to power latest games: i3-2100, 8GB RAM, HD 5770.

Shifted.6912:

I’m running 40-60 fps in “NORMAL” conditions (city, spvp, dungeons).

In WvW during zerg fights the fps drops to below 15, and stays in that range no matter how high or low I set my settings.

This game NEEDS more graphical options, ESPECIALLY on spell effects, looks to me like that is the main fps leak.

Just fyi, I’m running a rig that can still be considered good enough to power latest games: i3-2100, 8GB RAM, HD 5770.

Sounds like you’re running a laptop, but a nice one nonetheless. But, yes, it does need more graphical options and apparently WvW hasn’t been perfected in terms of performance – at 15 FPS you could easily be killed before your computer is able to react to the keyboard buttons that you’ve pressed. Anybody knows that in PvP combat and PvE dungeon combat (hardcore mode games) can be severely ruined in your attempts at success just from a little bit of lag – and even worse if your game freezes due to an extremely heavy load in-take. If you’re able to run at 40-60FPS Normal (and I assume that’s not Vertically synced due to the 20 FPS range, either that or 60 FPS is when doing nothing and 40 FPS is when fighting enemies), then imagine if someone was running at approx. 20 FPS Stable and then decided to join WvW – that’s a near guaranteed freeze of the game system due to heavy load in-take.

Some toggle options I would like to see:
1, Tone down Spell Effects. Example: Fire skills, Burning Condition on mobs, Mesmer skills (these I have noticed boggle my fps down, in WvW it gets worse)
1.2, Tone down OTHER PLAYERS Spell Effects, cause we do like spell effects, especially our own.
2, Disable Fog. Now I realize this is an atmosphere changer, but foggy areas tend to reduce my fps soo much that I(and others) experience (fps)lag. The only good fog I came across is in the Godlost Swamp in Queensdale.

There are specific areas that have FPS problems, and it usually only takes 1 step back and forth to see the difference in performance, there is a Compilation Thread in the Bug Forums.

WvW has a problem where enemy player models/skins don’t get loaded, including their names if you have ‘show enemy names’ enabled, which resulted in my untimely death due to not being aware of a zerg approaching (mind you I was looking in the direction they were comming from too), while all the time I was able to see my allies.

Generally I don’t have too many problems enjoying the game on medium settings with a stable 45 fps avarega, but when I come across a hurdle it’s no less annoying.

Yikes. I played a World Boss yesterday and it dropped to 7-8FPS so I wanna know how in the world are you playing on an 8 fps? I have a pretty bad laptop too.
I’m running say…Mostly 20-27fps? Sometimes 15+, and I am only PvEing. I wasn’t even suppose to run this game, but I agree with you on more performance options…
Try running Gamebooster too, it might help. Also, play window mode and make the window a little smaller and make text box larger. It buffs up a few. FPS.
Some suggestions to possibly help you out at the moment. In the end, a NEW PC is in order to be honest with you

i don’t think it your computer i mean i switch my computer from max setting to low setting my fps does not change in a dramatic way i gain like 10+ fps at max. i run i7 950 3.1ghz 12gb ddr3 2xgtx 580 nvidea cards on single display. it abit over kill but i am only getting 30 – 40 fps in WvW. i gone to Zone event such as Crystal Dragon where my fps has drop to 5 fps Stable on the lowest settings. this game just need a simple option to turn off viewing ally around you it would fix everything.

Bear in mind it’s not just graphics rendering that impacts frame rates. All the events taking place within the game take CPU cycles to compute and if your CPU isn’t up to scratch, then lowering graphics settings will likely have little impact. There’s a good chance that your CPU is the bottleneck.

When I first played GW2 I had an Intel Core 2 Q6600 and a NVidia Geforce 560 Ti. I was using medium settings and getting poor frame rates (< 30 fps). I was a bit disappointed seeing as other modern games (e.g. CoD:MW3) played very well on my system. I recently upgraded my MB/memory/CPU to include an Intel Core i7 3770K while sticking with the 560 Ti. I got a massive boost in the performance. This goes to show how CPU intensive GW2 is. Allowing for even lower graphical setting will probably have little if any impact for you.

Deathdealers.2108:

Sounds like you’re running a laptop, but a nice one nonetheless.

It’s not a laptop…

Well yes, but for both extremes.

I would like more options to tweak for better performance at the price of image quality and overall details. But I would also like new options which would provide better-than-current-highest settings provide (higher resolution textures, shadows, more diverse particle effects, more detailed bump mapping, etc).

Accommodating both extremes, and thus more players, therefor more happy faces!

Gallian.7630:

Accommodating both extremes, and thus more players, therefor more happy faces!

And far more development, support and maintenance issues for Anet. Never gonna happen – just look at WoW, same cartoonish look for several years now. Once the graphics are locked in that’s it.

Adriolan.8126:

Gallian.7630:

Accommodating both extremes, and thus more players, therefor more happy faces!

And far more development, support and maintenance issues for Anet. Never gonna happen – just look at WoW, same cartoonish look for several years now. Once the graphics are locked in that’s it.

Yeah, graphics locked… Because Blizzard didn’t add dynamic shadows, better fire effects and more realistic water..

Guild Wars Alpha : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJn9GhF8TI0
Guild Wars Proph graphics : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkMVKF3u3f8
Guild Wars EOTN graphics : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItnNlGX9UWc

Graphics do change and improve over time.

Doomy.9526:

Bear in mind it’s not just graphics rendering that impacts frame rates. All the events taking place within the game take CPU cycles to compute and if your CPU isn’t up to scratch, then lowering graphics settings will likely have little impact. There’s a good chance that your CPU is the bottleneck.

When I first played GW2 I had an Intel Core 2 Q6600 and a NVidia Geforce 560 Ti. I was using medium settings and getting poor frame rates (< 30 fps). I was a bit disappointed seeing as other modern games (e.g. CoD:MW3) played very well on my system. I recently upgraded my MB/memory/CPU to include an Intel Core i7 3770K while sticking with the 560 Ti. I got a massive boost in the performance. This goes to show how CPU intensive GW2 is. Allowing for even lower graphical setting will probably have little if any impact for you.

It’s not my CPU, when I play GW2 I always set the CPU setting to deem GW2 as High priority over other programs, and it only uses 40% of my CPU.

Also, for those trying to give me advice, thanks, but no thanks. I’m like 3 steps ahead of you. I’ve been playing MMOs for a long time now (8 years) and I know just about every trick in the book – including Leatrix Latency Fix (which runs a script on your computer to reduce latency lag between the game server and your computer). However, I did not know of Game Booster, so thank you for that (to the person who told me of it).

Here are my specs that I’m currently running at for the game:

Windows XP 32-bit
Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE 64mb (latest Driver Update is 306.81 WHQL)
4GB Dual-Channel DDR2 RAM (but only 3.6GB is read-able due to 32-bit)
Intel Core2 Duo E6400 @ 2.13GHz
Leatrix Latency Fix 3.00

I use CCleaner and Defraggler daily to keep my computer running as fast as possible (typically 100mb/s random read-write speed).

I’m running the game at:
Bottom low graphics
Enabled Vertical Sync to increase Stable FPS by 1
Windowed Mode – Shrank a bit

Good News:

I did some more research in the past few weeks and found out that the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT is the mid-high ranged card of the 7 series. I sent messages to sellers on Ebay and they all confirm the size, so it should fit! It should double and possibly triple my current graphics performance, so we’ll see how things go when it arrives. Hopefully, it’ll boost me to at least 20-30 FPS in-game.

Also, running Game Booster and checking as many things as I could (except important things like MBAM, MSE, etc.) I was able to acquire 1 more FPS Stable while in-game! Woot!

Many of the specs listed above… You realize you just purchased a $60.00 drink coaster?
I’m being forward and honest.

With that said, even recently built systems (i7 quad, 2gb+cards,16gb ram & good cable providers) are having trouble keeping up with:

1) fire & smoke effects – whether environmental or player casting.
2) liquid/liquid pour effects
3) Other environmental bells & whistles ambience.
4)players close together fighting in pve or wvwvw AOE bombing.

This is not new. A lot of us played slideshows in games like Shadowbane, that had largescale pvp siege battles and massive AOE. It’s not new.

But they’re designing online rpgs with more twitchy action that requires more movement, but not taking into consideration the massive lag, disorientation and spell effects that make those particular movements hard to accomplish.

This is the cost of online play.

But at least you’re spared a $10-$15 a month charge

PC gaming has been an expensive hobby since the 80s.

I was about to say I am running on a 3 year old computer, nothing special on the processor side but the memory has been upgraded to 8 gig’s and my graphics card has been upgraded to the best on the market about a week before GW2 launch. I currently run
IN LA and Major events around 40 FPS
World and events in world 60 FPS
WvWvW not sure never checked.

I was going to say upgrade your computer and graphics card more so than anything but looks like your doing that