Guild Wars 2

There are two graphic settings in the game at the moment, Character Model Limit and Character Model Quality, that have the highest impact on performance, in crowded areas.

Character Model Limit controls the total number of character models that can be displayed, the lower the setting, the less players are rendered (nameplates always appear)

Character Model Quality controls the number of high quality models you can see. The lower the setting, the less high quality models you see and with the others that exceed this number you see them with placeholder graphics.

Here is the problem:
Both settings affect armor and facial details (including hair), replacing them with gray “basic” skins however Weapons, Miniatures and Backpacks are NOT affected. Those 3 affect the performance a lot, legendary weapons have lots of particle effects, while miniatures and backpacks can have loads of details.

Why is it that those two settings affect some skins and not others? It would be fair to make the settings reduce quality on everything, remove miniatures and backpacks completely and use “default” skins for weapons just like armor. That way many players will see a much needed performance boost in crowded areas

Oh look another thread about this. Some back items and 90% of minis come from the gem store, its free advertising in game for the items. Legendary weapons? ANet wants you to do gems to gold.to buy them, or help buy them. Take these things away, people don’t know they are there and ANet might lose out on some.money.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Oh look another thread about this. Some back items and 90% of minis come from the gem store, its free advertising in game for the items. Legendary weapons? ANet wants you to do gems to gold.to buy them, or help buy them. Take these things away, people don’t know they are there and ANet might lose out on some.money.

Really? It’s not “another thread” because it’s a completely different issue, or rather a different request / solution. If you went through the trouble of opening the gem store you would notice that there are some things called Outfits there, they are used to replace your current armor with a new look. Also it might surprise you, but Armor skins are also sold on the gem store. Moreover there is a great thing called a Total Makeover Kit which allows you to change the appearance of your character using unique faces and unique hair not available at character creation. All those items bought with gems, which means revenue for Anet.

Yet all those hard earned and paid for with cash items are getting culled by the lower graphic settings. Apparently the developers decided that they were bad for performance and allow players to reduce the amount of clutter on their screen to improve FPS. Why aren’t the Legendary weapons, fluffy quaggan backpacks and huge “miniature” dragons being culled by the graphic settings just like everything else?

No it’s the same issue asked about in a number of recent threads. It’s no different than this thread except for the suggested solution.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Can-we-get-an-option-to-hide

Basically the character model doesn’t consider those items as part of the character model. Period. Therefore those settings don’t affect them. It’s that simple. Asking for a means to selectively turn off displaying minis, backpacks and weapons, via one solution or another doesn’t alter the original complaint, the belief that these items are destroying frame rate so give us a way to shut it off.

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Oh look another thread about this. Some back items and 90% of minis come from the gem store, its free advertising in game for the items. Legendary weapons? ANet wants you to do gems to gold.to buy them, or help buy them. Take these things away, people don’t know they are there and ANet might lose out on some.money.

Really? It’s not “another thread” because it’s a completely different issue, or rather a different request / solution. If you went through the trouble of opening the gem store you would notice that there are some things called Outfits there, they are used to replace your current armor with a new look. Also it might surprise you, but Armor skins are also sold on the gem store. Moreover there is a great thing called a Total Makeover Kit which allows you to change the appearance of your character using unique faces and unique hair not available at character creation. All those items bought with gems, which means revenue for Anet.

Yet all those hard earned and paid for with cash items are getting culled by the lower graphic settings. Apparently the developers decided that they were bad for performance and allow players to reduce the amount of clutter on their screen to improve FPS. Why aren’t the Legendary weapons, fluffy quaggan backpacks and huge “miniature” dragons being culled by the graphic settings just like everything else?

I can explain it to you, I can’t understand it to you.

So if someone has a PC that’s not great, can’t enjoy the legendary they crafted, or the back pack they spent a load of time/money getting, or display a mini. That’s what you are asking for, if ANet took away those things people with said PC’s would not buy these items from the gem store, thus ANet potentially loses money.

Do you get it now?

Behellagh.1468:

No it’s the same issue asked about in a number of recent threads. It’s no different than this thread except for the suggested solution.

The other thread is asking for a way to hide minis and backpacks using an in-game setting. I’m asking for character model settings to affect everything, how are they the same? I completely disagree with adding an option (a checkbox) to remove them.

Basically the character model doesn’t consider those items as part of the character model. Period. Therefore those settings don’t affect them. It’s that simple. Asking for a means to selectively turn off displaying minis, backpacks and weapons, via one solution or another doesn’t alter the original complaint, the belief that these items are destroying frame rate so give us a way to shut it off.

And that’s exactly my point. Why weapons, minis and backpacks not affected by character model settings? I’m not asking for a solution to selectively turn off displaying minis, backpacks or weapons, I’m asking for character model settings to affect them too. Which means even at lowest settings it won’t remove ALL of them

BrotherBelial.3094:

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Oh look another thread about this. Some back items and 90% of minis come from the gem store, its free advertising in game for the items. Legendary weapons? ANet wants you to do gems to gold.to buy them, or help buy them. Take these things away, people don’t know they are there and ANet might lose out on some.money.

Really? It’s not “another thread” because it’s a completely different issue, or rather a different request / solution. If you went through the trouble of opening the gem store you would notice that there are some things called Outfits there, they are used to replace your current armor with a new look. Also it might surprise you, but Armor skins are also sold on the gem store. Moreover there is a great thing called a Total Makeover Kit which allows you to change the appearance of your character using unique faces and unique hair not available at character creation. All those items bought with gems, which means revenue for Anet.

Yet all those hard earned and paid for with cash items are getting culled by the lower graphic settings. Apparently the developers decided that they were bad for performance and allow players to reduce the amount of clutter on their screen to improve FPS. Why aren’t the Legendary weapons, fluffy quaggan backpacks and huge “miniature” dragons being culled by the graphic settings just like everything else?

I can explain it to you, I can’t understand it to you.

So if someone has a PC that’s not great, can’t enjoy the legendary they crafted, or the back pack they spent a load of time/money getting, or display a mini. That’s what you are asking for, if ANet took away those things people with said PC’s would not buy these items from the gem store, thus ANet potentially loses money.

Do you get it now?

So it’s OK for Armor sets you spend loads of time/money getting to disappear but not weapons, minis and backpacks? Are you really saying that players with lower end PCs are not buying Outfits and Armors?

And that’s completely beside the point anyway. Even if you use the LOWEST possible settings you can still see YOUR items. And the items of your friends if you enter a dungeon. And the items of your party members, and the items of any guild members that are closer to you. The setting doesn’t remove everything, it’s not a check-box with the option to toggle them on or off.

Using lower settings just makes it so when loads of characters are around you some of them are using a “default/basic” skin so it saves resources. You will never notice it when you are alone or when surrounded by a small group, it only takes effect (Even at the lowest setting) when there are dozens of players around.

I doubt anyone is paying attention to legendary weapons or wings when they are inside a sea of players fighting Tequatl.

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Oh look another thread about this. Some back items and 90% of minis come from the gem store, its free advertising in game for the items. Legendary weapons? ANet wants you to do gems to gold.to buy them, or help buy them. Take these things away, people don’t know they are there and ANet might lose out on some.money.

Really? It’s not “another thread” because it’s a completely different issue, or rather a different request / solution. If you went through the trouble of opening the gem store you would notice that there are some things called Outfits there, they are used to replace your current armor with a new look. Also it might surprise you, but Armor skins are also sold on the gem store. Moreover there is a great thing called a Total Makeover Kit which allows you to change the appearance of your character using unique faces and unique hair not available at character creation. All those items bought with gems, which means revenue for Anet.

Yet all those hard earned and paid for with cash items are getting culled by the lower graphic settings. Apparently the developers decided that they were bad for performance and allow players to reduce the amount of clutter on their screen to improve FPS. Why aren’t the Legendary weapons, fluffy quaggan backpacks and huge “miniature” dragons being culled by the graphic settings just like everything else?

I can explain it to you, I can’t understand it to you.

So if someone has a PC that’s not great, can’t enjoy the legendary they crafted, or the back pack they spent a load of time/money getting, or display a mini. That’s what you are asking for, if ANet took away those things people with said PC’s would not buy these items from the gem store, thus ANet potentially loses money.

Do you get it now?

So it’s OK for Armor sets you spend loads of time/money getting to disappear but not weapons, minis and backpacks? Are you really saying that players with lower end PCs are not buying Outfits and Armors?

And that’s completely beside the point anyway. Even if you use the LOWEST possible settings you can still see YOUR items. And the items of your friends if you enter a dungeon. And the items of your party members, and the items of any guild members that are closer to you. The setting doesn’t remove everything, it’s not a check-box with the option to toggle them on or off.

Using lower settings just makes it so when loads of characters are around you some of them are using a “default/basic” skin so it saves resources. You will never notice it when you are alone or when surrounded by a small group, it only takes effect (Even at the lowest setting) when there are dozens of players around.

I doubt anyone is paying attention to legendary weapons or wings when they are inside a sea of players fighting Tequatl.

Well clearly the game dose not see weapons and back items as part of the model. If you look at the specs page, they do say than minimum specs might change over time and you will need to upgrade or buy a new system.

If you or someone you know is having that big a problem, then they need to upgrade or buy a new system. And if you say not everyone can afford to upgrade or buy a new system, well that’s a tough brake, and it happens.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Well clearly the game dose not see weapons and back items as part of the model.

And that’s the whole point of this thread, to request that character model settings are affecting weapons, minis and backpacks just like they do armor. It has nothing to do with gem store, cash bought items, showing off of fashion wars, it’s just that I think they miscalculated and omitted those items from being affected for some unknown reason.

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Well clearly the game dose not see weapons and back items as part of the model.

And that’s the whole point of this thread, to request that character model settings are affecting weapons, minis and backpacks just like they do armor. It has nothing to do with gem store, cash bought items, showing off of fashion wars, it’s just that I think they miscalculated and omitted those items from being affected for some unknown reason.

If they do not see them.as part of the.model, then at this point it probably can’t be done. I like how you ignore the whole, having to up date your system to keep playing. This is ANets way of saying, we don’t want to waist time and money on making the game working on your junk PC.

BrotherBelial.3094:

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Well clearly the game dose not see weapons and back items as part of the model.

And that’s the whole point of this thread, to request that character model settings are affecting weapons, minis and backpacks just like they do armor. It has nothing to do with gem store, cash bought items, showing off of fashion wars, it’s just that I think they miscalculated and omitted those items from being affected for some unknown reason.

If they do not see them.as part of the.model, then at this point it probably can’t be done. I like how you ignore the whole, having to up date your system to keep playing. This is ANets way of saying, we don’t want to waist time and money on making the game working on your junk PC.

Culling couldn’t be done either but it happened. At release we didn’t even have the character model limits, yet they implemented them. Nothing is impossible unless someone from the developer team comes on and says “I’m afraid that can’t happen.”

As for the update PC comment, I can redirect you to the many DirectX 11/12 threads, if they really wanted to ignore junk PCs we would have DX11/12 or even DX10 by now. Yet they try their best to use only DX9 features, like trying hard to implement a complex shader like the Wyvern fire using an ages old rendering system so it can be used by older PCs. That shows a lot about how much they don’t want to waste time to make the game work on lower end systems.

IF they didn’t care about older PCs why did they add the character model settings? Why are they trying to implement complex shaders using a very old API? I think you got it backwards, they DO care about making the game playable by as many PCs as possible, including older ones, it’s good for their business.

So is there actually any good reason NOT TO add Weapons, Minis and Backpacks to the character model settings?

It all boils down to how the code and data is structured. As they replaced the actual player model with a generic one they would then, key on the fact the generic model is being used, switch to a generic weapon of that class with no pretty effects. But on systems with slow graphics and popping into a crowded location (waypoint by the bank/TP in DR) I’ve seen weapons and backbacks materialize before even the generic player model. This seems to indicate that those items are processed before the player model is processed.

See I can understand why weapons are not part of a character model, weapon swap, a combat feature on most professions. Also weapons have their own effects, sounds, animations, etc. While all Warriors of the same gender/race swing a sword the same way, animation on the rig, the weapon may have it’s own animations that need to be processed separately (chain sword comes to mind).

And backpacks are probably an offshoot on the original engineer kit which can also be changed during combat which is why they aren’t quite processed the same as the rest of the player model.

But I’m just using my software archaeology skills to guess at the structure and inferring the reasons that may be behind it.

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

maddoctor.2738:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Well clearly the game dose not see weapons and back items as part of the model.

And that’s the whole point of this thread, to request that character model settings are affecting weapons, minis and backpacks just like they do armor. It has nothing to do with gem store, cash bought items, showing off of fashion wars, it’s just that I think they miscalculated and omitted those items from being affected for some unknown reason.

If they do not see them.as part of the.model, then at this point it probably can’t be done. I like how you ignore the whole, having to up date your system to keep playing. This is ANets way of saying, we don’t want to waist time and money on making the game working on your junk PC.

Culling couldn’t be done either but it happened. At release we didn’t even have the character model limits, yet they implemented them. Nothing is impossible unless someone from the developer team comes on and says “I’m afraid that can’t happen.”

As for the update PC comment, I can redirect you to the many DirectX 11/12 threads, if they really wanted to ignore junk PCs we would have DX11/12 or even DX10 by now. Yet they try their best to use only DX9 features, like trying hard to implement a complex shader like the Wyvern fire using an ages old rendering system so it can be used by older PCs. That shows a lot about how much they don’t want to waste time to make the game work on lower end systems.

IF they didn’t care about older PCs why did they add the character model settings? Why are they trying to implement complex shaders using a very old API? I think you got it backwards, they DO care about making the game playable by as many PCs as possible, including older ones, it’s good for their business.

So is there actually any good reason NOT TO add Weapons, Minis and Backpacks to the character model settings?

Because they are not part of the model! That is the reason right there. Unless you know something about the engine that we don’t how do you know it can be added? Support for older system will stop at some point. It happened with GW1. After a few years they stopped supporting the game on any OS below XP. Once they look at what people are using and desire that the old hardware is now such a small amount that it’s not coat effective to keep supporting it they’ll stop.

As for the old API, they are doing all this as the game is not correctly optimised. We all know the game uses your CPU more than your GPU. They are doing it so the game will run better for everyone. Not just old systems. New systems struggle with fps drops. So if they are having problems with new tech, how much help do you think they can really give to old systems. The answer is you’ve probably had all the help they can give. There comes a time where you just have to accept you need a new system. And if you cant afford one, yeah that sucks. I had to wait from December last year till middle of may for.my system. I bought what I could afford when I could afford it to get my new system. In that time, my game time consisted of grabbing my daily log in, and home instance nodes.

Behellagh.1468:

It all boils down to how the code and data is structured. As they replaced the actual player model with a generic one they would then, key on the fact the generic model is being used, switch to a generic weapon of that class with no pretty effects. But on systems with slow graphics and popping into a crowded location (waypoint by the bank/TP in DR) I’ve seen weapons and backbacks materialize before even the generic player model. This seems to indicate that those items are processed before the player model is processed.

See I can understand why weapons are not part of a character model, weapon swap, a combat feature on most professions. Also weapons have their own effects, sounds, animations, etc. While all Warriors of the same gender/race swing a sword the same way, animation on the rig, the weapon may have it’s own animations that need to be processed separately (chain sword comes to mind).

And backpacks are probably an offshoot on the original engineer kit which can also be changed during combat which is why they aren’t quite processed the same as the rest of the player model.

But I’m just using my software archaeology skills to guess at the structure and inferring the reasons that may be behind it.

^This. Right here sound like how and why ita not done, and probably can not be done.

Behellagh.1468:

<snip>

BrotherBelial.3094:

<snip>

As I said earlier character model settings, culling and others were also impossible before they “fixed” them. You are making it sound like it’s impossible to add any new engine functions after a game is released! But GW2 is a living proof of the opposite.

And btw there is an option used in PVP called Standard Enemy Models which, if enabled, uses a standard model to display enemies, their armor, and their weapons. So there is already a system to replace Weapons with basic ones, they have to activate this based on the number of people around you (called Character Model Limit) and how many should appear with high details (called Character Model Quality)

We already have the graphical options – Character model settings. We already have the tech to replace WEAPONS, it’s being used in PVP. All that needs to be done is combining them and adding them to the PVE part of the game.

I’m not sure and can’t remember what Standard Enemy Models does for Backpacks. Minis are the least issue because they are affected by the character model limit (they count as players). I hope it does give much much higher priority to remove minis rather than players, I haven’t tested how it works

maddoctor.2738:

Behellagh.1468:

<snip>

BrotherBelial.3094:

<snip>

As I said earlier character model settings, culling and others were also impossible before they “fixed” them. You are making it sound like it’s impossible to add any new engine functions after a game is released! But GW2 is a living proof of the opposite.

And btw there is an option used in PVP called Standard Enemy Models which, if enabled, uses a standard model to display enemies, their armor, and their weapons. So there is already a system to replace Weapons with basic ones, they have to activate this based on the number of people around you (called Character Model Limit) and how many should appear with high details (called Character Model Quality)

We already have the graphical options – Character model settings. We already have the tech to replace WEAPONS, it’s being used in PVP. All that needs to be done is combining them and adding them to the PVE part of the game.

I’m not sure and can’t remember what Standard Enemy Models does for Backpacks. Minis are the least issue because they are affected by the character model limit (they count as players). I hope it does give much much higher priority to remove minis rather than players, I haven’t tested how it works

Minis can not be used during a PvP match. PvP is a completely different system to PvE. You’re armor and weapons are just skins. They do not function the same as PvE. Standard models use human models for every race, so you do not have to learn the tells for each races skills and what not. I do not remember what happens with back items and weapons.

This is a simple you spending.money vs ANet spending money. You would rather ANet spend time and money on helping aging systems, that are getting older and closer to braking. Everything you are saying is ignoring the fact that you are unwilling to entertain the idea of something’s are down to a systems being old and just unable to play the game now. Removing back items and minis will not give that big a fps boost. You seem to think this will help fps. On my old system that was 8 years old when I binned it, going from max settings to lowest possible only gave a 10fps difference.