Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

Devata.6589:

Good MMO’s don’t really need to have an expiration-date, so 3 years is nothing.. but that only holds true in you indeed keep updating this sort of things. So the game only really ages if you let it age.

One of the reasons that WoW is so successful is because of this (they do use DX11 and will likely implement DirectX 12).

Are you honestly thinking that the reason WoW is successful is due to them using DX11?

You are aware that it was successful before they made that upgrade as well, right?

Not because they implemented DirectX 11 but because they “keep updating these sort of things.”, being it graphics in general, DirectX, 3D support and so on, and so on.

Yes WoW was successful when they implemented it, as they were successful pretty much from the start, but if they did not do what they did (including, updating these sorts of things) they might not have still been as successful as they are.

WoW was successfull because it used very low graphics that ran on every
outdated PC instead of having graphics like EQ2 that needed very good hardware.

Good Games having a choice inside the setup to choose what settings you want to play. If DX9, DX11, DX11.2 oder higher. So low machines having no problems and higher machines can run with the power the pay for. That would be the only fair choice for everyone

Beldin.5498:

Prototypemind.4026:

They can do as they like. There are a number of better optimized titles coming out in the next year. Player attention will be spread across a lot of other games in the near future, and GW2 is already behind as is.

What titles are you talking about ? Some more generic asian grinders with Unreal
or Crytec Engine ? Is maybe Cabal 2 the next Killer Game ?

The only game i am maybe interestet in at the moment is one with an Engine
das is even a lot more unoptimized that GW2, because it also uses a selfmade
Voxel Engine.

And even the game with Crytec or Unreal Engine had often massive performance
problems when there were massive blobs of players. Ever been in Giran in Lineage 2
or in big Abyss fights in AION ?

Nah, Cabal 2 doesn’t interest me in the least, but Black Desert, Blade & Soul, Kingdom Under Fire 2, Skyforge, Bless, Lost Ark, and whatever else may show up. There are just a lot of more visually pleasing, better optimized titles coming out. I’m not trying to claim that they’re perfect, but to pretend like GW2 is going to continue holding its own performance-wise when it’s not even holding its own currently is lying to yourself.

How about DirectX 11 at least………………………………………………

Prototypemind.4026:

Beldin.5498:

Prototypemind.4026:

They can do as they like. There are a number of better optimized titles coming out in the next year. Player attention will be spread across a lot of other games in the near future, and GW2 is already behind as is.

What titles are you talking about ? Some more generic asian grinders with Unreal
or Crytec Engine ? Is maybe Cabal 2 the next Killer Game ?

The only game i am maybe interestet in at the moment is one with an Engine
das is even a lot more unoptimized that GW2, because it also uses a selfmade
Voxel Engine.

And even the game with Crytec or Unreal Engine had often massive performance
problems when there were massive blobs of players. Ever been in Giran in Lineage 2
or in big Abyss fights in AION ?

Nah, Cabal 2 doesn’t interest me in the least, but Black Desert, Blade & Soul, Kingdom Under Fire 2, Skyforge, Bless, Lost Ark, and whatever else may show up. There are just a lot of more visually pleasing, better optimized titles coming out. I’m not trying to claim that they’re perfect, but to pretend like GW2 is going to continue holding its own performance-wise when it’s not even holding its own currently is lying to yourself.

I’ve heared from friends that Skyforge runs at maybe 40 FPs and that is a lot less
than what GW2 has, and no you can’t compare running around alone in another
game to a 100 person zerg in GW2. I wonder how Skyforge runs at a 100 man zerg.

From the past i only know how bad the oh so good Unreal and Crises engine
performed in MMOs like Lineage 2 and AION as soon as there were a big
number of players.

Prototypemind.4026:

Nah, Cabal 2 doesn’t interest me in the least, but Black Desert, Blade & Soul, Kingdom Under Fire 2, Skyforge, Bless, Lost Ark, and whatever else may show up. There are just a lot of more visually pleasing, better optimized titles coming out. I’m not trying to claim that they’re perfect, but to pretend like GW2 is going to continue holding its own performance-wise when it’s not even holding its own currently is lying to yourself.

LOOL because people care more about performance and graphics than content. All those games are just clones of other asian mmos with a bit better graphics, aka boring as hell. If you’re so pleased to take old, dull and repetitive mechanics because you cannot stand gw2 graphics and performance (which aren’t as bad as you feel), then leave…

Also, some of these games still have performance issues like Blade&Soul or Black Desert, and gw2 is quite more demanding than the rest games, full of instanced small not-crowded maps.

Did I not say I that I know that they aren’t without issues? But they are more visually fulfilling, higher res, better character customization in many cases, and in the case of Black Desert, have to potential to offer a lot of unique features if some of the original in-game options are reintroduced.

I’m sorry, but it’s out and out lying to say that those next gen games don’t look better than some of the squared off polys seen in this game. More so, I really don’t care about 100 man zergs. That kind of play never interested me. Small group content, instanced play, and 16-40 man is the largest scale battling I’d look for. There’s really not much enjoyment when things are faceroll because no one can even see what’s going on in a mass of 100 other players.

There’s a reason that WoW upgraded to DX11, that some newer titles did the work to become DX12 compatible before release; GW2 is behind the curve, and worse still is that some titles that came out around the same time look so much better because of more up-to-date engines. Regardless, the competition will be heavy in the coming year, but if people want to pretend that GW2 offering the same old content and one expansion will remain fully competitive, that’s your choice. I’ve logged in twice in the past three months because there’s nothing to do, so lets not act like this game is cutting edge when it comes to things to do. I got bored faster with this game than anything else I’ve played.

It’s not all about performance, but the performance of this game is going to hurt it. It’s not like this thread has gone on at length because no one gives a care how this game plays.

Don’t fool yourself.
This thread has gone out of length because now we have an official statement saying a newer API wouldn’t solve the performance. So dx11/12 would only bring new graphic options, which people doesn’t care that much.
That also explains why anet has so little interest in upgrading to a newer API.

And seriously, if you only care about pve and small scale fights, and you say the performance is really bad, then the problem is with your pc, not the game when an intel hd4400 can run the game easily at minimum 1080p.

XxsdgxX.8109:

How about DirectX 11 at least………………………………………………

i heard a rumor that they implemented it and only got a few percentage increase.

I guess beg for vulkan/dx12 support

Ansau.7326:

Don’t fool yourself.
This thread has gone out of length because now we have an official statement saying a newer API wouldn’t solve the performance. So dx11/12 would only bring new graphic options, which people doesn’t care that much.
That also explains why anet has so little interest in upgrading to a newer API.

And seriously, if you only care about pve and small scale fights, and you say the performance is really bad, then the problem is with your pc, not the game when an intel hd4400 can run the game easily at minimum 1080p.

Where did I say the performance is really bad? I just said it doesn’t match what I get in other titles. The apologists go out of their way like no other to read what they want to read it seems.

Prototypemind.4026:

Ansau.7326:

Don’t fool yourself.
This thread has gone out of length because now we have an official statement saying a newer API wouldn’t solve the performance. So dx11/12 would only bring new graphic options, which people doesn’t care that much.
That also explains why anet has so little interest in upgrading to a newer API.

And seriously, if you only care about pve and small scale fights, and you say the performance is really bad, then the problem is with your pc, not the game when an intel hd4400 can run the game easily at minimum 1080p.

Where did I say the performance is really bad? I just said it doesn’t match what I get in other titles. The apologists go out of their way like no other to read what they want to read it seems.

What is your pc specs? Because it sounds you have a weak one, and you sub-estimate the performance demanding of gw2, which is one of the highest of all mmo.

PD: Just because a game has more detailed graphics doesn’t mean it needs more power.

Have to agree, esp with how cpu bound the game is. that’s really ghetto. Seems like they should have been working on that since launch instead of just optimization through removing visuals.

Reading this thread was funnnny. Some people need to enable aero in gw2.exe compatibility tab “right click the .exe”. Espically the ones playing in windows mode.

But for reals Anet needs dx11. This game would be so much better

Beldin.5498:

Loli Ruri.8307:

But doesn’t Dx12 give you twice the frames per second to do the same exact stuff that Dx11 does but better? You should read up on how it gets better performance. My question is, what bottleneck of Dx12? Also, what difficulty to implement? Do you actually know? Not that it matters, as it’s a decision that ArenaNet needs to decide, or probably more their managers. But I will tell you this, there is a demand.

DX12 can also cure cancer o.O

In all honesty .. read this :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

In all honesty I dont think the dev is update and this link is gives good counter argument to his post. http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/460524/DirectX_11_vs_DirectX_12_oversimplified

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/directx-12-vs-directx-11-what-s-new

Fact is dx 9 is a bottle neck in itself where dx 12 removes those bottle necks

If there was an easy button, they would’ve pushed it already.

Although it would be nice having a 64bit game client optimized for DX12. Truth is Anet can barely handle fixing the bugs in this current client and giving us new content and balancing. I doubt we will see DX12 anytime soon if we ever see it at all.

JediYoda.1275:

Beldin.5498:

Loli Ruri.8307:

But doesn’t Dx12 give you twice the frames per second to do the same exact stuff that Dx11 does but better? You should read up on how it gets better performance. My question is, what bottleneck of Dx12? Also, what difficulty to implement? Do you actually know? Not that it matters, as it’s a decision that ArenaNet needs to decide, or probably more their managers. But I will tell you this, there is a demand.

DX12 can also cure cancer o.O

In all honesty .. read this :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

In all honesty I dont think the dev is update and this link is gives good counter argument to his post. http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/460524/DirectX_11_vs_DirectX_12_oversimplified

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/directx-12-vs-directx-11-what-s-new

Fact is dx 9 is a bottle neck in itself where dx 12 removes those bottle necks

Dude. The devs can profile the inner workings of the client so when they say that the bottle neck isn’t the rendering thread that includes the calls to Dx9, you can believe them. The render thread could be instantaneous and you will so no improvement in frame rate because the process of rendering the frame is already faster than the process of determining what will be in the frame to render.

If it was the rendering portion taking longer then everything those links say would matter but that isn’t the case. Not during the times players complain about most which is in WvW and Boss events. What difference would it make roaming on your own to get 100 fps vs 50 fps on a 60 Hz monitor when it would still be 25 fps at the next zerg?

Behellagh.1468:

JediYoda.1275:

Beldin.5498:

Loli Ruri.8307:

But doesn’t Dx12 give you twice the frames per second to do the same exact stuff that Dx11 does but better? You should read up on how it gets better performance. My question is, what bottleneck of Dx12? Also, what difficulty to implement? Do you actually know? Not that it matters, as it’s a decision that ArenaNet needs to decide, or probably more their managers. But I will tell you this, there is a demand.

DX12 can also cure cancer o.O

In all honesty .. read this :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

In all honesty I dont think the dev is update and this link is gives good counter argument to his post. http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/460524/DirectX_11_vs_DirectX_12_oversimplified

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/directx-12-vs-directx-11-what-s-new

Fact is dx 9 is a bottle neck in itself where dx 12 removes those bottle necks

Dude. The devs can profile the inner workings of the client so when they say that the bottle neck isn’t the rendering thread that includes the calls to Dx9, you can believe them. The render thread could be instantaneous and you will so no improvement in frame rate because the process of rendering the frame is already faster than the process of determining what will be in the frame to render.

If it was the rendering portion taking longer then everything those links say would matter but that isn’t the case. Not during the times players complain about most which is in WvW and Boss events. What difference would it make roaming on your own to get 100 fps vs 50 fps on a 60 Hz monitor when it would still be 25 fps at the next zerg?

Look there are people in every profession that don’t know jack and shouldn’t be in that job so excuse me for being not being a yes man believing everything a Dev says.

I bet you didn’t even read the info from those 2 sites? Go educate yourself instead going on a Dev’s post.

You are disagreeing with the programmer with both the code and runtime analysis of the where the bottleneck is in front of them and you are saying he’s wrong because of a magazine article. “No doctor your diagnosis is wrong because I have a magazine article that says so.”

Those two articles to a fair job explaining why yet you don’t understand why that doesn’t apply here. Heck Brad Wardell’s article makes it abundantly clear why it won’t work here yet you ignore that and insist it will.

Behellagh.1468:

You are disagreeing with the programmer with both the code and runtime analysis of the where the bottleneck is in front of them and you are saying he’s wrong because of a magazine article. “No doctor your diagnosis is wrong because I have a magazine article that says so.”

Those two articles to a fair job explaining why yet you don’t understand why that doesn’t apply here. Heck Brad Wardell’s article makes it abundantly clear why it won’t work here yet you ignore that and insist it will.

It does apply here and I haven’t ignored anything, DX 9 is bottle neck even the dev said so in round about way and dx 12 removes it.

also for your wise crack “No doctor your diagnosis is wrong because I have a magazine article that says so.” It happens all the time Dr’s are wrong http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/16/cancer-doc-admits-scam-giving-patients-unneeded-chemo/15754535/

Anyways I’m done talking to you

Sure, that’s equivalent. He states engineering reasons why it wouldn’t matter much in that reddit link so your counter is that he’s just like a doctor who was scamming the insurance system.

And here I am not addressing you but why Dx12 isn’t the godsend people claim for this game.

First, read this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

The dev has stated the lack of CPU scaling is because the data objects are not thread safe so until they are the workload can’t divide across multiple threads. It’s almost a side issue that Dx9 itself isn’t remotely thread safe.

Those Dx12 articles that JediYoda linked all assumed the renderer is multithreaded which multiplies the improvement moving from Dx11 to 12 by shifting more of the driver code from single threaded Kernel Mode section to a thread safe User Mode section which can be multithreaded for additional performance benefits.

Then there’s the faster execution of the Dx API and kernel due to less abstraction. This is the only thing that Dx12 could affect this game today. But it was stated in the Brad Wardell article, it’s the multicore distribution of the driver code that gives you the biggest gains over Dx11 and not the “closer to the metal” speed improvements.

So until the game client is coded to make data objects thread safe, the client can’t be made scaleable with additional threads to distribute the work load which in turn means the gains going to Dx11 or 12 will be minimal. We have the cart before the horse here in this API argument. Until the code is made to be scaleable to additional cores, gains from supporting additional APIs will be minimal.

Just read that the new Final Fantasy XIV expansion Heavensward got an direct x11 upgrade. So it’s possible. So, are you really gonna stay with this 10+ year old renderer for the next couple of years? It’s ridiculous.

I’m not saying it’s not possible. I’m saying it’s more work than ANet is willing to invest in for minimal rewards. Unless you can show them that more people will buy the game with Dx11/12 support or that players who are buying loads of gems will leave without adding support, nothing is going to happen.

And once again someone compares a company with numerous products generating income with a company with one game currently for sale. Also Square Enix last year had $1.5 Billion USD in income, 61% from console/pc/mobile gaming. ANet had income of roughly $80 Million.

And as for the impact of Dx11 on that game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/340z5w/psa_directx11_is_not_meant_to_bring_fps_gains/

Prototypemind.4026:

I’m sorry, but it’s out and out lying to say that those next gen games don’t look better than some of the squared off polys seen in this game. More so, I really don’t care about 100 man zergs. That kind of play never interested me. Small group content, instanced play, and 16-40 man is the largest scale battling I’d look for. There’s really not much enjoyment when things are faceroll because no one can even see what’s going on in a mass of 100 other players.

There’s a reason that WoW upgraded to DX11,

Wow .. don’t you see the irony in your post ? Talking about better looking Asia games
and then talk about WoW .. the most ugly MMO ever that nonetheless has the
most players ?
If good looking was such a big thing then everybody would have ignored WoW
and played Lineage 2 and later they would maybe have all gone to AION.

The Koreans have done that .. the western audience however not.

FF14 introduced DX11 with its Heavensward expansion. It now uses vastly less CPU and performs far better on any DX11 card, and it looks incredibly nice with the new ambient and direct lighting models. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but Square Enix seems to understand — together with other far smaller devs, like CCP of EVE Online that keep updating their engine and also recently implemented DX11 — that keeping your engine more up-to-date, improving visuals and not least performance for the playerbase actually /makes people enjoy it more/. You can’t balance it on a spreadsheet, so maybe this is why arenanet’s recent actions are so atrocious; maybe the beancounters are running the operation a bit too tightly?

FFXIV Heavensward got dx11 because it has also been launched for consoles. If they stayed with dx9, pc version would have looked been the limitation platform, while being the most powerful.

CCP added dx11 but it’s exactly the same as dx9, no new features and no performance improvement. They have not even implemented Tessellation and Physx, and more than half people is running the game in dx9.

I see nothing news about the posts from the Devs than Reddit one.

So new patch adds new graphic options – new AA and Ambient Occlusion, Do You think is this the first step to new DX 11/12 ?

From another thread on DX12:

The main bottleneck of GW2 performance is the so called “Main Thread”. DirectX 12 will provide many performance boosts, however it won’t help the “Main Thread” at all, as DX12 optimizations will only affect the “Render Thread” which is NOT the bottleneck in Guild Wars 2 Performance.

Since each core can only run one thread at a time, it’s obvious why one of the CPU cores appears to be doing much of the work while others sit idle. That CPU core is taking care of the Main Thread which does most of the important work (and is the bottleneck). Using DX12, the Render Thread will become faster and better use the multiple cores of your CPU, however, that won’t make the game itself run any faster because the real problem is that the Main Thread is doing too much work and DX12 won’t help with that. Meaning even with DX12 one of your cores will STILL be doing way too much and no amount of DirectX/API work can change that.

What needs to be done is off-load some of the work from the Main Thread on other threads as possible. Which is usually on the range of non-trivial to very hard

Having a 64-bit client might help with some crash issues (at Tequatl for example) because a 64-bit client has a much higher memory limit and allow the game to avoid crashes due to memory fragmentation.

So everyone understands what I’m saying, here is what DX12 is going to do:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-20-72/2806.cpucompare.png

The “Bottleneck” in Guild Wars 2 is the Green part, that’s what is not being used in an efficient way. Even if the rest of it is better split among cores with DX12, if the green part is still slow, the game will be slow.

Think of it like most of the “Green” part is on Thread 0 and bits of it are on the other threads. Although we might see some gains with DirectX 12 it won’t be as high as people believe and maybe not even worth the effort.

Source for more info:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

yeah but how about dx11/12 features like HBAO, PBR, TXAA etc ? If game want to be live for many years they need to constantly upgrade it’s engine to meet current gen standards, when in the same time keeping old rendering systems for older PC configs. WoW is a great example, and I bet Blizz will add DX12 pretty soon with next expansion.

I takes a tremendous amounts of time and money to rework the engine for DX12. They simply will not do it.

Your best hope is that some of the DX12 improvements are introduced into DX9 through backwards compatibility, but that is entirely on M$ side. But even that will be marginal and anectdotic at best.

Apolo.5942:

I takes a tremendous amounts of time and money to rework the engine for DX12. They simply will not do it.

Your best hope is that some of the DX12 improvements are introduced into DX9 through backwards compatibility, but that is entirely on M$ side.

So You are telling me that Anet don’t have resources to upgrade their engine ? I doubt it, they are keeping over 300 people for a single game ! Blizzard’s WoW have less employees dedicated to WoW and they are upgrading their engine very often

Apolo.5942:

I takes a tremendous amounts of time and money to rework the engine for DX12. They simply will not do it.

Your best hope is that some of the DX12 improvements are introduced into DX9 through backwards compatibility, but that is entirely on M$ side. But even that will be marginal and anectdotic at best.

Anet updated GW1 DX8 to DX 9 so they could do it again, at some point they will have to upgrade and not cater to really old low end systems from 10 years ago with GW1 specs.

Wilendar.1450:

So You are telling me that Anet don’t have resources to upgrade their engine ? I doubt it, they are keeping over 300 people for a single game ! Blizzard’s WoW have less employees dedicated to WoW and they are upgrading their engine very often

This is off topic but Blizzard entertainment has 4700 employees working on World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Heroes of the Storm franchises plus the upcoming Overwatch. If only 300 people are working on World of Warcraft, what are the other 4500 employees working on? I don’t think Hearthstone of Heroes of the Storm requires a very large development team, at least similar games do it with the less than 50 developers… So this means Diablo and Startcraft games must require 2000 employees each, which I seriously doubt.

Although they could upgrade their engine, if it’s not worth it, which according to the dev post I quoted it isn’t worth it, then why do it?

No, it’s the step that tells everyone dx11/12 won’t come.
HBAO is not needed with the ambient occlusion they just added. and TXAA is not needed when they added SMAA that’s better and works in all gpus.
Other possible technologies would only mean much higher specs needed to run the game, since the way it’s dsigned, the gpu work also affects cpu.

And finally, WoW is the worst example. That game had horrible cartoonish graphics when it was launched and even now, gw1 has more detailed world than it.
The day WoW catches gw2 graphics then we will talk.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Here’s another funfact about current state of graphics (unless you have G/Free-Sync GPU/screen). Did you know that when your fps goes below 60 fps, even if it is 55, your screen automatically goes down to 30Hz refresh rate? Thus tearing without V-Sync.

That’s when you have kittenty ingame Vsync enabled. Stock Vsync is completely obsolete technology and has been for many years, IMO games should stop adding that stupid option. It does no one any good. Also that’s 30fps, not hz. Your hz stay the same. Fps will always half when dropping beneath the even threshold (120/60/30/15 etc).

You either want to use dynamic Vsync (I think AMD has something like this now, Nvidia call it Adaptive Vsync) or a frame rate limiter. Most good engines have built in frame rate limiters instead of kittenty vsync. As long as they run in exclusive fullscreen mode (like GW2 does) you can force Nvidia/AMD settings.

DX12! DX12! DX12! DX12!

with windows 10 release, there will be games releasing with dx12 support, we may see those games at end of 2015. this include mutiplayer games. some new mmos that are under development is also now utilising dx12 and a few existing mmos already begin to implement dx12~

gw2 is so gonna be so out of competition when all these games are ready with the better graphics and gameplay experience possible with the high drawcall.

this is a mmo video released a few months ago, is a f2p game fyi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=44&v=--UD4iHJP-k

Who the heck buys a game simply because of what version of Dx it supports? Gamers have gotten too brainwashed into thinking graphics and photo realism is more important than actual game play or enjoyment.

you don’t really understand what DX 12 signify or should i say, bother to understand it.

a lot of graphical things depend on this thing called drawcalls. to put it on simple terms, the things that you see on your screen are made up of tons of drawcalls

dx9 support up to 6k, dx11 support up to 10k iirc and finally dx12 support up to 600k drawcalls request.

so what happen when you exceed the drawcall limit? your cpu has to work harder to handle the extra drawcalls which naturally lead to cpu bottleneck.

so why is gw2 cpu intensive? gw2 has made a lot of drawcall requests and not only that, gw2 is a MMO which means the more characters on your screen, the more drawcall requests it will make.

if gw2 is to implement dx12, all players who use dx12 machines will see a significant improvement over fps in large scale event as the cpu and gpu will be utilised more efficiently. that is to say, even with a bad cpu, as long your gpu is dx12 compatible, you will see a significant boost in performance.

having better performance also mean your gameplay will improve, isnt it?

dx12 is the start of new era of gaming since the old era has been limited by drawcalls. the korea mmo try to enter the new era by pushing for action-based mmo but still, it is limited by the drawcall from reaching its greatest potential. the new high end hardwares is what pushing the game then. now, dx12 is here, the huge amount of possibility open due to it pushes the games to an new era.

You still didn’t read what the Anet dev posted on reddit. GW2 is CPU intensive because the Main Thread of the game is doing way too much, and doesn’t split the load. The Main Thread has nothing to do with the Render Thread (which is what DX12 affects). Even if DX12 is implemented, it will optimize the Render Thread but the Main Thread (which is the CPU bottleneck) will remain the same.

The Performance gains of DX12 are nothing compared to the performance gains of splitting the Main Thread, that’s why they focus on that and not on DX12.

SkyShroud.2865:

you don’t really understand what DX 12 signify or should i say, bother to understand it.

a lot of graphical things depend on this thing called drawcalls. to put it on simple terms, the things that you see on your screen are made up of tons of drawcalls

dx9 support up to 6k, dx11 support up to 10k iirc and finally dx12 support up to 600k drawcalls request.

so what happen when you exceed the drawcall limit? your cpu has to work harder to handle the extra drawcalls which naturally lead to cpu bottleneck.

so why is gw2 cpu intensive? gw2 has made a lot of drawcall requests and not only that, gw2 is a MMO which means the more characters on your screen, the more drawcall requests it will make.

if gw2 is to implement dx12, all players who use dx12 machines will see a significant improvement over fps in large scale event as the cpu and gpu will be utilised more efficiently. that is to say, even with a bad cpu, as long your gpu is dx12 compatible, you will see a significant boost in performance.

having better performance also mean your gameplay will improve, isnt it?

dx12 is the start of new era of gaming since the old era has been limited by drawcalls. the korea mmo try to enter the new era by pushing for action-based mmo but still, it is limited by the drawcall from reaching its greatest potential. the new high end hardwares is what pushing the game then. now, dx12 is here, the huge amount of possibility open due to it pushes the games to an new era.

Oh I understand it. I was commenting on your assertion that players would choose another game rather than GW2 solely on the fact it didn’t support Dx12. AO and automated gamma adjustment based on current lighting conditions as well as new AA modes show that work on the pipeline isn’t dead.

maddoctor pretty much hit the other point, that the game’s limited performance currently is due to the primary non-render thread, as reported by the dev in charge of the code, not being fast enough to do all the housekeeping required for the next frame to be rendered. Dx12 would help the render block of code for sure but not this.

i hope you understand that dx12 is not just simply of increase of drawcalls.

while the increase of drawcalls indicate that the cpu can be freed of doing these tasks to focus on other tasks which also indicate performance increase due to that.

dx12 also help resolve problems with the cpu scaling

while anet dev is saying about dx9 regarding to rendering thread.
he has comment nothing about dx12 which work differently from all previous dx.

This is what DX12 is promising to do:
http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-20-72/2806.cpucompare.png

The major “Bottleneck” in Guild Wars 2 is the Green part. If the Green part isn’t split evenly among cores, like in the image above, so most of it is on Core 0, no amount of playing with the rest of it will help the game run much smoother.

Focusing on making that green part split more evenly among cores will have a much higher effect on the performance of the game than playing with the rendering (dx12) part

SkyShroud.2865:

i hope you understand that dx12 is not just simply of increase of drawcalls.

while the increase of drawcalls indicate that the cpu can be freed of doing these tasks to focus on other tasks which also indicate performance increase due to that.

dx12 also help resolve problems with the cpu scaling

while anet dev is saying about dx9 regarding to rendering thread.
he has comment nothing about dx12 which work differently from all previous dx.

Only if code calling the Dx API are already multithreaded. Basically the Dx12 driver allows more of the driver code to be executed in the “User Mode” (UM) rather than “Kernel Mode” (KM) which only runs in a single thread at the OS level. That UM code is thread safe so if the calls to the API are broken out across multiple threads, so then is a greater portion of the driver code. It’s not automatic, the existing renderer needs to be multithreaded as well. Ours is not.

So if your renderer is already scalable, Dx12 makes a even greater impact than a scalable Dx11 code path. But GW2’s renderer is not scalable yet. Everyone is putting the cart before the horse here. Both of the main threads first needs to be coded to allow greater CPU scalablility and then Dx11/12 can shine. The trick is first getting the existing code and data, as described in the reddit post, thread safe so scalability is possible.

And while modern game engines are already designed that way so adding Dx12 is a relatively easy task, ours is not. Duplicating the existing render code and replace the Dx9 calls with Dx12 is not going to significantly help the game’s performance. It’s the equivalent to putting racing slicks and a spoiler on an AMC Pacer and thinking it’s going to get faster.

Edit: Thanks maddoctor for linking to the illustration.

People are simply not aware what an MMO has to do that all eats performance.

I can’t repeat what they said exactly, but just as an example in EQ2 a dev posted
years ago why we only had a maximum of 50 (later 80) active quests. It is simply
the point that at each step you make the client has to go through all your open
Quests and check if at that point something quest relevant is triggered.

Or a dev of Funcom postet what a problem it is when people can actually drop
items onto the ground because the position of all those items then have to been
sent to all players on the map.

Now in a big zerg all the damage every player does and all the buffs and whatever
has also constantly been calculated and then sent to every player .. ok thats
more serverside …

However .. the render thread is simply not the one big thing in an MMO like in a
singleplayer game .. there is just so much more happening behind the scene.

lordkrall.7241:

But the game engine is built for DirectX 9. You can’t just magically push a button and have it use DirectX 12. If that was the case why would any game ever use anything other than the latest version?

WOW could provide DX11 client from DX9 so could GW2 if ANet focused on it. That would be a huge performance boost.

Killyox.3950:

lordkrall.7241:

But the game engine is built for DirectX 9. You can’t just magically push a button and have it use DirectX 12. If that was the case why would any game ever use anything other than the latest version?

WOW could provide DX11 client from DX9 so could GW2 if ANet focused on it. That would be a huge performance boost.

Yeah .. if such a poor indie company like Blizzard could do it .. no reason why
you can’t do it yourself in your cellar ^^

But carefull .. the performance boost to 1000 Gazillion FPS could maybe make
your monitor explode.

Serious .. just stop with the WoW argument .. Blizzard earns money without end
from their cashcow, on the other hand that game is ugly as hell and was espically
build to run on low speed single core processors.

so you are saying gw2 is multithreaded but anet dump most of the things into one single thread thus the load balance isn’t there

that reminds me, gw2 engine was based on modifying gw1 engine which can be really old. not surprising if it does not take advantage of multi core architecture.

wow, so gw2 is super badly optimized eh…

Not going to pretend or care to know all the little nuances between DX11 or DX12 or DX9 or whatever but I will say is I just want a game that doesn’t crash. The thread linked they talk about memory fragmentation and how a x64 bit client would fix that.

That’s all I want. To play the game, on full settings, and not crash at a big event. My computer can easily handle it. Sitting in a 3 hour queue at reset night or missing out on a world boss I helped take down to 25% because of a out of memory client crash is just the worst and the only option to fix is basically tank the graphics.