Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

Scoobaniec.9561:

Im curious if people trolling this thread or they dont want to gain better performance? Or maybe they playing on potato and doesnt want rest of the playerbase to enjoy smooth gameplay?

No, we wouldn’t mind better performance but dislike those that are constantly softballing the effort required to add additional render pipelines that support newer APIs. It is hardly trivial. It requires those with “deep magic” understanding of the newer APIs and may require massaging of all the game’s assets to be compatible with Dx9 and additional rendering APIs. It’s a specialized skill set. Not every code slinger can jump in feet first and knock it out.

Turbine did it because they have multiple products using the same engine so multiple income streams.

SoE/Daybreak did it because again, multiple products using the same engine so development cost is spread out.

WoW did it because they are sitting on a Smaug size pile of gold and can afford to without significantly impacting their bottom line.

Dice did it because the license the Frostbite Engine and the same can be said with other game companies that license their engines to 3rd parties. Have to compete with each other so if one does it, everybody needs to do it.

To do it right, it isn’t trivial. It isn’t a selling point for MMOs. Nobody is rating or comparing MMOs based on frame rate. A ROI argument needs to be made internal to the company if the cost to do this will be offset by additional income Vs doing nothing or very little (tweaking the current engine and rendering code). It’s a business decision at the end of the day and if a business argument can’t be made to do it, it won’t get done. Do not forget that in the life of ANet, they’ve had total income, GW and GW2, of less the $600 million over 15 years.

Aaand CCP did it for lulz and giggles ? Since you conveniently missed that one…

Obtena.7952:

I don’t need to back up anything … I’m not the one claiming we need DX12. I do however understand the implications of a fairly unnecessary upgrade on the game. The game works, it can be maintained and developed within the cost structure and business model surrounding the game. You can slather ‘performance increase’ or ‘do more with the game’ as your rally banner all you want. It’s actually a terrible justification to upgrade from a business perspective because what more needs to be done? How does that translate to ROI? Upgrading to DX12 don’t sell gems; the game would need to be unplayable or hit development dead ends before this suggestion would even make sense.

It would make more sense to just pump out more awesome skins on the Gemstore than it would be to waste time upgrading to DX12.

what ever troll since that’s you are clearly doing no matter what I say you will nit pick an argument out of anything.

It’s not ‘nit picking’, it’s just common business sense, of which you showing none off. Upgrading to DX12 is a business decision. If you can’t justify doing it with arguments about how it affects the business, you’re arguments are quite irrelevant. I don’t question your technical arguments but they don’t matter. You can tell me all the awesome performance or great things DX12 can do but if it’s ROI doesn’t make sense, it won’t happen unless it’s absolutely necessary to develop and maintain the game. It’s not.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t need to back up anything … I’m not the one claiming we need DX12. I do however understand the implications of a fairly unnecessary upgrade on the game. The game works, it can be maintained and developed within the cost structure and business model surrounding the game. You can slather ‘performance increase’ or ‘do more with the game’ as your rally banner all you want. It’s actually a terrible justification to upgrade from a business perspective because what more needs to be done? How does that translate to ROI? Upgrading to DX12 don’t sell gems; the game would need to be unplayable or hit development dead ends before this suggestion would even make sense.

It would make more sense to just pump out more awesome skins on the Gemstore than it would be to waste time upgrading to DX12.

Its terrible business decision not to improve your game performance. I’m sorry but lets face it, Gw2 is not the only kid on the block. New games pop up all the time, MMOs at that too, supporting new technology, utilizing everything you have. People are a lot more likely to give up a lagging game, regardless of quality. See, I’m eyeing Black Desert, because it looks dope and runs buttery smooth. I’m eyeing Star Citizen. I’m quite tempted to pick up TESO even though I despise ZOS for what they did to the franchise just because the game supports – wait for it – ……… massive battles on an acceptable framerate. Find people who have played both Gw2 and TESO and ask them which WvW was more enjoyable.

It is sad really. ANet has some really great and passionate developers. I saw the keynote at GDC. The in-house monitoring tools are fantastic. And the game is fantastic. But that renderer man … on a game that tries to play on such a high scale. Hundreds of players on a single map. Shooting yourself in the foot would be the mild thing to say …

P.S: Gw2 survived for 3 years on gem store alone. Do not underestimate that. They haven’t had a single staff cut since the game launch. On the contrary, the dev team has expanded and they are still hiring. Most of you make it seem like the game running out of funds. If there is a time to do this, its after the HoT launch.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t need to back up anything … I’m not the one claiming we need DX12. I do however understand the implications of a fairly unnecessary upgrade on the game. The game works, it can be maintained and developed within the cost structure and business model surrounding the game. You can slather ‘performance increase’ or ‘do more with the game’ as your rally banner all you want. It’s actually a terrible justification to upgrade from a business perspective because what more needs to be done? How does that translate to ROI? Upgrading to DX12 don’t sell gems; the game would need to be unplayable or hit development dead ends before this suggestion would even make sense.

It would make more sense to just pump out more awesome skins on the Gemstore than it would be to waste time upgrading to DX12.

Its terrible business decision not to improve your game performance. I’m sorry but lets face it, Gw2 is not the only kid on the block. …

That’s a fallacy … people aren’t drawn to this game because of it’s OMG awesome use of DX technology. If it’s a terrible business decision, why is the game still around after using ‘outdated’ technology for 2.5 years? If this is so critical factor to players, then I think we need to understand how this contradiction exists; MMO’s that don’t appeal to the fleety whims of players don’t last more than 1 year.

You have cherrypicked a specific element to justify your position without knowing exactly how much of the playerbase actually gives a crap about WvW performance. That’s exactly what I mean when I talk about return on investment.

Obtena.7952:

It’s not ‘nit picking’, it’s just common business sense, of which you showing none off. Upgrading to DX12 is a business decision. If you can’t justify doing it with arguments about how it affects the business, you’re arguments are quite irrelevant. I don’t question your technical arguments but they don’t matter. You can tell me all the awesome performance or great things DX12 can do but if it’s ROI doesn’t make sense, it won’t happen unless it’s absolutely necessary to develop and maintain the game. It’s not.

look stop your trolling my post and i asked you in pm to stop replying to my post. enough is enough

Obtena.7952:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t need to back up anything … I’m not the one claiming we need DX12. I do however understand the implications of a fairly unnecessary upgrade on the game. The game works, it can be maintained and developed within the cost structure and business model surrounding the game. You can slather ‘performance increase’ or ‘do more with the game’ as your rally banner all you want. It’s actually a terrible justification to upgrade from a business perspective because what more needs to be done? How does that translate to ROI? Upgrading to DX12 don’t sell gems; the game would need to be unplayable or hit development dead ends before this suggestion would even make sense.

It would make more sense to just pump out more awesome skins on the Gemstore than it would be to waste time upgrading to DX12.

Its terrible business decision not to improve your game performance. I’m sorry but lets face it, Gw2 is not the only kid on the block. …

That’s a fallacy … people aren’t drawn to this game because of it’s OMG awesome use of DX technology. If it’s a terrible business decision, why is the game still around after using ‘outdated’ technology for 2.5 years? If it was so critical factor to players, then I think we need to understand how this contradiction exists.

Half of, if not more, of the serious WvW guilds are over at TESO. Gw2 is a game that sold 2 million copies in its first week. Where are those 2 million players?

Ravenmoon.5318:

Obtena.7952:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t need to back up anything … I’m not the one claiming we need DX12. I do however understand the implications of a fairly unnecessary upgrade on the game. The game works, it can be maintained and developed within the cost structure and business model surrounding the game. You can slather ‘performance increase’ or ‘do more with the game’ as your rally banner all you want. It’s actually a terrible justification to upgrade from a business perspective because what more needs to be done? How does that translate to ROI? Upgrading to DX12 don’t sell gems; the game would need to be unplayable or hit development dead ends before this suggestion would even make sense.

It would make more sense to just pump out more awesome skins on the Gemstore than it would be to waste time upgrading to DX12.

Its terrible business decision not to improve your game performance. I’m sorry but lets face it, Gw2 is not the only kid on the block. …

That’s a fallacy … people aren’t drawn to this game because of it’s OMG awesome use of DX technology. If it’s a terrible business decision, why is the game still around after using ‘outdated’ technology for 2.5 years? If it was so critical factor to players, then I think we need to understand how this contradiction exists.

Half of, if not more, of the serious WvW guilds are over at TESO. Gw2 is a game that sold 2 million copies in its first week. Where are those 2 million players?

I don’t know … do you have proof they aren’t playing GW2? What fraction of those serious WvW make up the total population of people playing GW2? You’re argument is based on an upgrade appealing to a fraction of the population instead of how it affects the business. Don’t you think that’s a bit shaky if you don’t know what fraction that is? You say half the hardcore WvW guilds have left … that doesn’t mean anything to anyone except Anet … if it’s even true.

People come and go from games all the time; to try to establish a link that 50% of the hardcore WvW in GW2 have left because of ‘performance’ or ‘technology’ is ridiculous because you can’t prove that correlation. Even Anet can’t make such statements … and they actually have the data on how many people play, what they do, etc… try and be less incredible.

JediYoda.1275:

Behellagh.1468:

JediYoda.1275:

maddoctor You are wrong as AMD Mantle – Works On Nvidia GPU’s

http://www.redgamingtech.com/amd-mantle-works-on-nvidia-gpus-100000-draw-calls-similar-to-ps4-api-library/

http://wccftech.com/amd-mantle-api-require-gcn-work-nvidia-graphic-cards/

Thank you for proving you don’t know what you are talking about.

None of this is showing an nVidia PC GPU running “Mantle”. These articles are from the time AMD was showing that a close to the metal graphics driver, similar to what’s found in consoles, could be implemented for Windows and that there is nothing hardware related to AMD GPUs that would preclude nVidia from supporting it. Of course nVidia won’t.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/07/nvidia-has-no-interest-in-mantle-doesnt-do-anything-you-couldnt-do-before/

And then Microsoft drops Dx12 on everyone which makes Mantle dead because the era of supporting hardware vendor APIs died with 3DFX Glide.

Oh rerally? Its you that has no clue to what you are talking about

Fact: AMD Mantle API does not require GCN – Will work with Nvidia Graphic Cards

AMD is Nvidia GPU competitor so I wouldn’t excpet to Nvidia to have interest in Mantal, however it doesn’t mean that Mantal won’t work on Nvidia GPU’s which it does in fact. So nice try!

Lets stop derailing the thread before its locked.

I didn’t say anywhere that Mantle required GCN. It’s just currently AMD only supports Mantle on GCN architecture.

I said the questioned answered at AMD’s presentation was there isn’t anything hardware specific about AMD GPUs that would preclude another company such as nVidia or Intel to write a Mantle driver.

Now that AMD presentation was in Nov 2013 during APU13. Mantle showed it could be done and what the results were like so Microsoft appropriated the idea, as Microsoft is apt to do, in a creation of a “standard” and March 2014 they announce Dx12. It’s Mantle-ish without the politics of one hardware vendor originating/controlling the API.

Here’s the presentation. Edit: Skipped to the part about other hardware support.

https://youtu.be/N_6CAneoW-0?t=30m40s

JediYoda.1275:

Obtena.7952:

It’s not ‘nit picking’, it’s just common business sense, of which you showing none off. Upgrading to DX12 is a business decision. If you can’t justify doing it with arguments about how it affects the business, you’re arguments are quite irrelevant. I don’t question your technical arguments but they don’t matter. You can tell me all the awesome performance or great things DX12 can do but if it’s ROI doesn’t make sense, it won’t happen unless it’s absolutely necessary to develop and maintain the game. It’s not.

look stop your trolling my post and i asked you in pm to stop replying to my post. enough is enough

Why is it trolling? My perspective is as valid as yours and I think it makes as much sense to discuss the business implications of such an upgrade as the impact it has to the mechanics and performance of the game if you’re serious about wanting to see it implemented … wouldn’t you agree?

Novuake.2691:

Ravenmoon.5318:

lordkrall.7241:

You are ignoring the fact that it is completely different to have a game built with multiple versions in mind and one that is not.

Guild Wars 2 was built from the ground and up for DirectX 9. The whole engine is built around specifically having DirectX 9.

In order to get Guild Wars 2 Direct X 12 compatible, they will have to rebuild the engine, since it is not built to handle Direct X 12 (or 10 or 11) at this time. That will take money and resources.

You – don’t – know this for a fact.

Yes, we do. The GW2 engine is the original Guild Wars engine heavily modified.

DirectX12 is NOT going to happen and SHOULD not happen as its a MASSIVE project that would sink a lot of resources for a purely theoretically performance improvement.

If money and time falls out of the sky then, sure then it should happen.

I’m afraid you’re quite wrong Novuake, the GW2 engine was built brand new from the ground up, it was never a heavily modified version of the original GW engine. I know this for a fact, everything was rebuilt and tightened up, including how they handle networking and data storage/transfer, etc. It’s a completely new engine.

As for everyone saying that all users of Win7/8 can get a free upgrade to 10 within the first year, I have news for you, and you better go back and read the articles again. Every single user of Win7/8 will NOT be given the opportunity to upgrade to Win10 for free, read that again: every user will NOT be given an opportunity to upgrade for free. For example, say you own an Alienware, well, Dell/Alienware owns MS license as an OEM, they will most likely get the option to upgrade for free, but everyone that bought or owns a Win7/8 Alienware may not…you need to read the fine print in the announcement about the free upgrade to Win10, there are restrictions.

As for adding DX11 support, believe it or not, they did design the game engine with the potential to add support for newer version, if they chose, but because when the game was launched the prevalent version of DX that was on the super majority of most machines at the time was DX9, that’s what they went with…and don’t believe for a minute they would tell us if they game was getting the option to use DX11 with the HoT release. Some of the players might consider that a major feature, but it’s not, so something they probably wouldn’t announce.

Zaklex.6308:

Novuake.2691:

Ravenmoon.5318:

lordkrall.7241:

You are ignoring the fact that it is completely different to have a game built with multiple versions in mind and one that is not.

Guild Wars 2 was built from the ground and up for DirectX 9. The whole engine is built around specifically having DirectX 9.

In order to get Guild Wars 2 Direct X 12 compatible, they will have to rebuild the engine, since it is not built to handle Direct X 12 (or 10 or 11) at this time. That will take money and resources.

You – don’t – know this for a fact.

Yes, we do. The GW2 engine is the original Guild Wars engine heavily modified.

DirectX12 is NOT going to happen and SHOULD not happen as its a MASSIVE project that would sink a lot of resources for a purely theoretically performance improvement.

If money and time falls out of the sky then, sure then it should happen.

I’m afraid you’re quite wrong Novuake, the GW2 engine was built brand new from the ground up, it was never a heavily modified version of the original GW engine. I know this for a fact, everything was rebuilt and tightened up, including how they handle networking and data storage/transfer, etc. It’s a completely new engine.

As for everyone saying that all users of Win7/8 can get a free upgrade to 10 within the first year, I have news for you, and you better go back and read the articles again. Every single user of Win7/8 will NOT be given the opportunity to upgrade to Win10 for free, read that again: every user will NOT be given an opportunity to upgrade for free. For example, say you own an Alienware, well, Dell/Alienware owns MS license as an OEM, they will most likely get the option to upgrade for free, but everyone that bought or owns a Win7/8 Alienware may not…you need to read the fine print in the announcement about the free upgrade to Win10, there are restrictions.

As for adding DX11 support, believe it or not, they did design the game engine with the potential to add support for newer version, if they chose, but because when the game was launched the prevalent version of DX that was on the super majority of most machines at the time was DX9, that’s what they went with…and don’t believe for a minute they would tell us if they game was getting the option to use DX11 with the HoT release. Some of the players might consider that a major feature, but it’s not, so something they probably wouldn’t announce.

and proof? and a link to this fine print while you are at it!

Ravenmoon.5318:

snip I’m quite tempted to pick up TESO even though I despise ZOS for what they did to the franchise just because the game supports – wait for it – ……… massive battles on an acceptable framerate. Find people who have played both Gw2 and TESO and ask them which WvW was more enjoyable. snip

That’s the core aspect for me as well. Battles, especially in WvW/RvR/whatever called, but also in PvE without the performance going south abysmally.

If you haven’t played MMOs beyond the single-core choked DX9 from 2002 you might not even know what your computer is capable of.

bob.5680:

Ah, but after that first year of “free” (nothing is really ever free) upgrades, we will then have to pay a monthly service charge to run Windows 10 (I believe) on new installations. For this reason, if no other, I plan to avoid Windows 10 like the plague. Even for the systems that I could upgrade it on for free during the first year I plan to pass.

While Microsoft might want to try a system like this and we might see it as an option in the future (what would be really bad) you are wrong here. Windows 10 will not be free for 1 year. You can upgrade for free the first year. After that, that option is gone. It’s not ‘free for the first year’. This is a misconception.

You are right, nothing is really for free (from a company standpoint at least) but in this case Microsoft simply wants people to move to Windows 10 (after the bad name they got with Windows. They want people to get familiar with Windows 10 so they are more likely to buy a Windows phone (and so they win back some of the market Google and Apple have). Microsoft will earn the money with you buying a Windows phone, with you wanted a PC with Windows after the first year, with you buying a tablet with Windows. People buying apps from the windows store (that hopefully will stay completely optional (not like the Apple store) but if Windows is popular the shop will be used anyway). Basically they seem to try to do the opposite of what they did with Windows 8. With 10 they want to make a system people first like and they earn money because people buy it (the non-free options) and buy apps in there store and buy office and so on. Instead of trying to manipulate people into using something they don’t like what they did with Windows 8.

Something Anet could maybe also learn something from. Of course nothing Microsoft is doing now gives any guarantees for the future but the ‘it’s only free the first year’ is not correct. Windows 10 will stay working also after the first year and you can buy it without subscription. In fact, Windows 10 will NOT be available as subscription Microsoft said. You simply don’t have the option to upgrade for ‘free’ after that first year.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Mirta.5029:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

XP is no longer supported, not by banks, not by microsoft, not by software manufacturers… unless they are A Net.

Win 2000 is not yet obsolete, not is windows 7 and 8 due to the fact they are NT versions. even though XP 64 was reasonable… I am glad I avoided XP entirely.

Windows 7 and 8 will get free upgrades to windows 10. so at the release of windows 10 there is no actual reason NOT to upgrade. Other platforms will get this upgrade as well… Only they require a full reinstall. This could be very nice, though I expect compatibility issues will arise,

Even if this game stays direct x 9 for computation , maybe the direct x 12 will unlock multithreaded rendering. using the hardware available… I cannot foresee this, but I imagine it being possible.

do remember that not only your operating system, but your hardware has to be compatible too. Some of my guildies are playing on the absolute lowest settings… But that’s the thing about MMOs. People with all sorts of hardware want to play it, so developers try to cater to all.

From what I heard this update wasn’t directed so much at the GPU but at the multithreading of the present single direct x thread, So it will be a big thing for all quad(and more) core users and the dual cores will remain in the positions where they are now…

If this is true I wouldn’t mind And even though I have a very powerfull PC I still have direct x 11 cards.

They might allow for directx 9+ to be allowed for the calculations, but still only refer to the instructions available in the direct-x 9 instruction set? so you could optimize use for GPU’s above direct x 9? not all possibilities have to be usefull…. most draw functions are probably still the same in direct x 12 as they are in direct x 9… Only the usage of the threads could be improved… whcih could be a VERY big thing.

Especially on a CPU bound game…

In fact it’s the other way around, DirectX 12 can be extremely good for CPU bound games. At least if the GPU is also used enough but the CPU is the bottleneck in many casus. Exactly what is the case in GW2. I did not ever check GPU ussage but most graphics are still renederen by the GPU. All these calls to the GPU first get ‘prepared’ by the CPU (creating CPU overhead) and then send to the GPU who then does the calculations. this means it still adds (a lot of) work to the CPU and it’s exactly this part where DirectX 12 is so strong, reducing the CPU overhead, allowing for more direct calls (less preparing) towards the GPU what means the CPU can spend it’s cycles on other things. In best case senario’s increasing FPS up to 60% and GW2 might be close to one of those ‘best case cenario’s’ because it’s uses GPU and CPU but the CPU being the bottleneck. That is where DirectX 12 is it’s strongest. At least on paper that is.

To the guy screaming about mantle. Sorry to disappoint but as it is now it is a proprietary API locked to AMD. Their plans were to open it to other vendors but obviously nVidia weren’t interested in supporting it, HOWEVER, the next OpenGL standard, namely Vulkan, is basically Mantle.

Here’s the blogpost about it: http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2015/03/03/one-of-mantles-futures-vulkan

I like AMD too but they have never had a working Mantle demo on an nVidia or Intel GPU.

Good news is, Vulkan is meant to work on any major OS (including WXP) and most modern GPUs.

Ravenmoon.5318:

To the guy screaming about mantle. Sorry to disappoint but as it is now it is a proprietary API locked to AMD. Their plans were to open it to other vendors but obviously nVidia weren’t interested in supporting it, HOWEVER, the next OpenGL standard, namely Vulkan, is basically Mantle.

Here’s the blogpost about it: http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2015/03/03/one-of-mantles-futures-vulkan

I like AMD too but they have never had a working Mantle demo on an nVidia or Intel GPU.

Good news is, Vulkan is meant to work on any major OS (including WXP) and most modern GPUs.

AMD advised to not focus on Mantle but on DirectX 12 and Vulkan. Mantle was a really good idea of AMD but became obsolete with DX12 and Vulkan.

Devata.6589:

Ravenmoon.5318:

To the guy screaming about mantle. Sorry to disappoint but as it is now it is a proprietary API locked to AMD. Their plans were to open it to other vendors but obviously nVidia weren’t interested in supporting it, HOWEVER, the next OpenGL standard, namely Vulkan, is basically Mantle.

Here’s the blogpost about it: http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2015/03/03/one-of-mantles-futures-vulkan

I like AMD too but they have never had a working Mantle demo on an nVidia or Intel GPU.

Good news is, Vulkan is meant to work on any major OS (including WXP) and most modern GPUs.

AMD advised to not focus on Mantle but on DirectX 12 and Vulkan. Mantle was a really good idea of AMD but became obsolete with DX12 and Vulkan.

Well, basically Mantle will become Vulkan … and nVidia and Intel are onboard aswell as Apple (hint at the Mac Beta, which would be obsolete with DX12)

Ranva.8024:

Devata.6589:

Ravenmoon.5318:

To the guy screaming about mantle. Sorry to disappoint but as it is now it is a proprietary API locked to AMD. Their plans were to open it to other vendors but obviously nVidia weren’t interested in supporting it, HOWEVER, the next OpenGL standard, namely Vulkan, is basically Mantle.

Here’s the blogpost about it: http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2015/03/03/one-of-mantles-futures-vulkan

I like AMD too but they have never had a working Mantle demo on an nVidia or Intel GPU.

Good news is, Vulkan is meant to work on any major OS (including WXP) and most modern GPUs.

AMD advised to not focus on Mantle but on DirectX 12 and Vulkan. Mantle was a really good idea of AMD but became obsolete with DX12 and Vulkan.

Well, basically Mantle will become Vulkan … and nVidia and Intel are onboard aswell as Apple (hint at the Mac Beta, which would be obsolete with DX12)

I doubt the only stop for real Mac port is the graphics renderer. I’m not talking of PC vs Mac here though.

NoTrigger.8396:

i think you misunderstood. nobody cares about texture quality. what people care about is the major performance increase from dx 12.

…seriously, so ppl whine about performance problems when they have an outdated computer…..and they want a higher DX version that in no way does anything good for GW2?

oh and if nobody cares about it, am i nobody then?

But like OpenGL, Vulkan will be fighting against the Microsoft’s Dx API on the Windows platform and lose. I can see it as a crossplatform API for Linux, Mac and maybe even some future consoles and mobile devices. But back before Dx9 when OpenGL was the superior API, and backed by id, John Carmack and other game development big wigs, OpenGL simply couldn’t prevail over DirectX. And once DirectX caught up feature wise and with a saner API like OpenGL, that killed killed it off right there for Windows.

Well that and Microsoft slapping a kitten poor OpenGL 1.1 emulator on Vista.

sorudo.9054:

NoTrigger.8396:

i think you misunderstood. nobody cares about texture quality. what people care about is the major performance increase from dx 12.

…seriously, so ppl whine about performance problems when they have an outdated computer…..and they want a higher DX version that in no way does anything good for GW2?

oh and if nobody cares about it, am i nobody then?

even with a high end computer gw2 performance is pretty kittenty.

dx 9 and 32 bit. think about it.

and why wouldnt dx12 do anything good for gw2? you realize dx 12 is like a 30%+ performance increase, compared to dx 11, right?

instead of having no idea what people are talking about you could have googled dx 12.

sorudo.9054:

NoTrigger.8396:

i think you misunderstood. nobody cares about texture quality. what people care about is the major performance increase from dx 12.

…seriously, so ppl whine about performance problems when they have an outdated computer…..and they want a higher DX version that in no way does anything good for GW2?

oh and if nobody cares about it, am i nobody then?

i5-2500k @ 4.5 GHz and R9 290X OC is barely a toaster PC my friend. Gw2 is the only game that it struggles at atm(I don’t tend to play older titles, but even if i did, the games 10 years ago didn’t push the renderer as hard as Gw2 is pushing it atm)

Upgrading at the moment makes no sense either because:
1) You buy an year old CPU/mobo or
2) You miss out on the generation that is going to be revealed later this year by either AMD or Intel
3) DDR-4 is still quite expensive. Buying those 16gb modules now is a suicide while in a year time the best now will just be an entry-level and will lose 2/3rds of its price, once the manufacturing switches over to DDR4
4) Current generation GPUs are a bit of a sham compared to last gen (that includes AMDs new R9 3xx). No die shrinkage was made, so they are, for the most part, the same GPUs, just on steroids. And in Titan-X’s case … a larger die. 22nm GPUs are scheduled for arrival in 2016.

Going to be blunt here.

We all know dx9 is holding back gw2, from a logical stand point there is no reason not to upgrade it to dx12. A lot of people are arguing that they shouldn’t because a lot of people wont have access to dx 12 because of older os’s. Frankly if your not running 7 or higher by now it your own fault. If your are not going to put any effort into upgrading on your end then you shouldn’t complain when you get left behind. It not like a move to dx12 would require people to go spend thousands on a new computer.

From a business stand point yes anet is not going to make money directly from the move ( though if they did charge I would be more then happy to pay for the upgrade). Rather the money will come from what they save from teams not having to waste time over optimizing textures, draw calls and renders to work on dx9 which can only handle so much. And in the long term a move to dx12 would allow more people to upgrade their graphic setting allowing them to enjoy gems shop armors/costumes more, which will equal more sale. (Admittedly this will be a minor increase but its still an increase.)

Side note alot of people are confusing engine with directx. They are NOT the same. The game engine you can think of, as what can be done mechanically, ie what you can and can’t do in game, how aoes work, the party system, the mechanics of a boss, etc. Directx is how your computer handles what the game is saying, how it calculated info on the cpu, and draws on the gpu, to an end result of what you see on screen. A directx change is very minor in comparison to a game engine change.

If Anet needs a selling point to tell the higher ups here. The people that would see the greatest increase from a move to directx12 are those with higher end computer. These are the people that when they spend money on a newer graphics card/cpu expect to see an increase in game performance. With the already really aged dx9 that performance in non-existent. At which point they will see their performance increase on other games and spend more time and money there, not on GW2. The Biggest thing to remember is those that spend lot on their rig are also the ones that spend a lot in the gem store.

Cloth simulation (E.g. non-clipping capes) is a thing in DirectX 11 games. Among other things ….

I mean really the only negative I can see is the upfront cost. But that’s just how things work in the software world. Huge upfront costs and then potentially cashing big.

I’ll just say that like other players, longevity is important for me. We’re all investing time in digital rewards whose only value really exist for as long as we log in to enjoy it. I’m also eying Black Desert and willing to put down what I need to so that I will be able to enjoy it for the long-term. The PC market is inherently different from that of the console. Players are willing to invest more to see better returns in their experience. I would imagine that continued optimization is something that Anet is realistically looking at.

http://anandtech.com/show/9124/amd-dives-deep-on-asynchronous-shading

Even more info for the uninitiated. If you are bad with technical terms, at least enjoy the slides

ANet was implementing DX11 in GW2 but it went totally bad, they just don’t have experienced people with that. From before the first BWE there are videos (I’m sorry that I can’t find any quick because it’s over 3 years ago) that showed they allowed to switch between DX9 and DX11.
The problem was as they had no experience in DX11 the performance was actually lower and a lot of bugs occurred which is why in the end they scrapped DX11 and focused on DX9.
ANet even had some issues with NCSoft about this and NCSoft was close to take executive action to change this decision, yet seemingly ANet prevailed.

Considering this it’s highly unlikely DX12 will be implemented in any timely fashion. Though ANet did upgrade their engine from DX8 to DX9 way back when Factions released, so it is not unprecedented that they do change if there’s enough benefit/demand.

Behellagh.1468:

And then Microsoft drops Dx12 on everyone which makes Mantle dead because the era of supporting hardware vendor APIs died with 3DFX Glide.

Ahh .. my good old Voodoo owned all those crappy NVidia cards so hard in Diablo 2

Ravenmoon.5318:

Its terrible business decision not to improve your game performance. I’m sorry but lets face it, Gw2 is not the only kid on the block. New games pop up all the time, MMOs at that too, supporting new technology, utilizing everything you have. People are a lot more likely to give up a lagging game, regardless of quality. See, I’m eyeing Black Desert, because it looks dope and runs buttery smooth. I’m eyeing Star Citizen. I’m quite tempted to pick up TESO even though I despise ZOS for what they did to the franchise just because the game supports – wait for it – ……… massive battles on an acceptable framerate. Find people who have played both Gw2 and TESO and ask them which WvW was more enjoyable.

Most of the games are just another generic Asia Grinder 4711 with Unreal Engine
or whatever .. and they look nice in all those videos, and after playing them
2 hours you are already bored to death.

TESO has by the way NO DX12 .. and DX11 is often worse performance wise than
DX9.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/1scqu6/dx9_vs_dx11_differences_why_such_major/

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Its terrible business decision not to improve your game performance. I’m sorry but lets face it, Gw2 is not the only kid on the block. New games pop up all the time, MMOs at that too, supporting new technology, utilizing everything you have. People are a lot more likely to give up a lagging game, regardless of quality. See, I’m eyeing Black Desert, because it looks dope and runs buttery smooth. I’m eyeing Star Citizen. I’m quite tempted to pick up TESO even though I despise ZOS for what they did to the franchise just because the game supports – wait for it – ……… massive battles on an acceptable framerate. Find people who have played both Gw2 and TESO and ask them which WvW was more enjoyable.

Most of the games are just another generic Asia Grinder 4711 with Unreal Engine
or whatever .. and they look nice in all those videos, and after playing them
2 hours you are already bored to death.

TESO has by the way NO DX12 .. and DX11 is often worse performance wise than
DX9.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/1scqu6/dx9_vs_dx11_differences_why_such_major/

I never stated TESO has Dx 12. No current game has Dx 12 for the obvious reason that the SDK is not out yet. TESO however is properly written to take advantage of the new API (and thus the new hardware), and as a result, a hundred man combat with stuff flying all over the place doesn’t kill your CPU.

Smite probably has poor implementation of Dx11. Either that or they use stuff like HDR lighting or that supersampling technique to improve image quality. The VRAM usage difference is off the charts. Regarless, my GPU has 4gb of GDDR5. Any medium class graphic card nowadays has 2 gigs of VRAM. The VRAM is not really an issue.

P.S: I’m not completely against asian grinders as well, if they are fun. After all I spent 8 years in Lineage 2. Good times. Had kittenty performance unless you had HDDs in RAID 0 (or lately, SSD) .. buuut RAID-ing 2 velociraptors was cheaper than a new CPU+Mobo albeit a bit loud x.o

And if we are going to compare apples to apples, TESO is built using the wretched Hero Engine, the same engine that powers SWTOR and raised the costs of the game at $200kk. Notice the difference between the two?

Ravenmoon.5318:

I never stated TESO has Dx 12. No current game has Dx 12 for the obvious reason that the SDK is not out yet.

Yeah .. but since the talk here is all about that we need DX12 because better performance
and then you bring TESO as an example for better performance, it sounds as if DX12
would be the reason.

I don’t know how the performance of TESO really is, however if it is really better
ist maybe also better in DX9, and that has maybe just because they use very
clunky animations, and there is not much eyecandy there, why GW2 has often
simply an effect overkill.

DX11 in LotRO was also worse than DX9 when i tested it, and i switched back
to DX9 after very short time.

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

I never stated TESO has Dx 12. No current game has Dx 12 for the obvious reason that the SDK is not out yet.

Yeah .. but since the talk here is all about that we need DX12 because better performance
and then you bring TESO as an example for better performance, it sounds as if DX12
would be the reason.

I don’t know how the performance of TESO really is, however if it is really better
ist maybe also better in DX9, and that has maybe just because they use very
clunky animations, and there is not much eyecandy there, why GW2 has often
simply an effect overkill.

DX11 in LotRO was also worse than DX9 when i tested it, and i switched back
to DX9 after very short time.

Is your GPU with 512MB VRam? Because a proper implementation of Dx11 should give you at least 30% better performance. Also clearly mathematically you need at least 1gb of VRAM to contain the pixel color data of FullHD screen (1080p) Then add some megabytes of that for actual storage of textures and whatever else the engine needs to load in VRAM to render the next frame.

Also TESO has a lot more eyecandy. Everything is more detailed and the setting is photorealistic with higher resolution textures. However yeah, animations are hyper lame. But then again, Gw2 has one of the best animations in the industry. But you have to be blind to say that artistically TESO is not breathtaking. And that is achieved with over 60 frames per second. It will also work on the “next gen” consoles, which are basically a $500 PC come this July.

I really hate to advertise other games in this forum, so just watch some youtube clips and see it for yourself. All I want is for my PC to be used at its fullest potential. It barely heats up in Gw2 … that basically means that it is idling at this game….

Ravenmoon.5318:

I really hate to advertise other games in this forum, so just watch some youtube clips and see it for yourself. All I want is for my PC to be used at its fullest potential. It barely heats up in Gw2 … that basically means that it is idling at this game….

I watched a 30 minutes WvW video from TESO and personally it just looked horrible
to me. Maybe they had better textures, but i really don’t care about that if its just
50 shades od brown, and player characters that run around like zombies.

And for the FPS .. i still have for example 50-70 FPS when doing pre-quests for the
Svanir Shaman .. but the FPS go down when the actual fight begins. So its not
simply the rendering of all those character, but either effects in the fight, or
data that is been sent from and to the client about all that stuff that slows
down the FPS.

Sometimes stuff slows down performance that people don’t really see. I remember
when devs in SOE explained why we had a questlog limit of 70, because for every
step we go the server has to check your total questlog to see if you maybe just
discoverd something … or in AoC somebody wrote how much traffic was generated
from stuff that was thrown away onto the ground ..

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

I really hate to advertise other games in this forum, so just watch some youtube clips and see it for yourself. All I want is for my PC to be used at its fullest potential. It barely heats up in Gw2 … that basically means that it is idling at this game….

I watched a 30 minutes WvW video from TESO and personally it just looked horrible
to me. Maybe they had better textures, but i really don’t care about that if its just
50 shades od brown, and player characters that run around like zombies.

And for the FPS .. i still have for example 50-70 FPS when doing pre-quests for the
Svanir Shaman .. but the FPS go down when the actual fight begins. So its not
simply the rendering of all those character, but either effects in the fight, or
data that is been sent from and to the client about all that stuff that slows
down the FPS.

Sometimes stuff slows down performance that people don’t really see. I remember
when devs in SOE explained why we had a questlog limit of 70, because for every
step we go the server has to check your total questlog to see if you maybe just
discoverd something … or in AoC somebody wrote how much traffic was generated
from stuff that was thrown away onto the ground ..

Yup, TESO has amazing environment graphics. Characters take backseat, but in intense fighting character animations take a backseat in Gw2 as well to improve performance (somewhat, at least). There even was a setting where everyone ran the same character model with the same animation set. Looked funny and it still lagged. Not sure if they scrapped it off.

You are absolutely correct, working with data eats limited CPU time. But here’s the example. 60 frames per second basically means your computer has ~16.6ms (miliseconds … 1/1000 of a second) to render a frame. 16ms to do game logic, which could get quite CPU hogging on its own, and then you have to go through the rendering stack. Which has huge overhead. Drawing all those special effects that Gw2 employs takes a lot of time. On top of stuffed environment (trees, grass, structures, various textures) and god forbid hundreds of characters that regardless of what you see, have to be rendered all at once.

The problem with the above is that DirectX 9 drivers utilize single thread to process all the rendering stuff. Same happens in Dx 11, but there is multi-threaded option. Its not true multi-threading. You still have tons of overhead, but at least on paper you can separate some of the processing. Also Dx11 can be a multi-threading is user-space setting. So maybe you have this one disabled in your LotRO?

What SoE is talking about is ancient. There are tons of sorting and searching/indexing algorithms. Programming is all about data structures and representation. Database engines use those algorithms all the time to sort through millions of rows of data in a blink of time. Or perhaps you can make more clever quest system, kinda like Gw2’s hearts :P But using your example, nowadays you just need tons of RAM to keep this data “alive” and have the server respond to client quest events only and only then have the server sift through the active quests and verify the quest state. Warframe employs similar system. Your Gw2 already does ridiculous amount of tracking atm. (E.g. all those achievements)

And the traffic issue is relative yeah. Gw2 isn’t there yet.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

I really hate to advertise other games in this forum, so just watch some youtube clips and see it for yourself. All I want is for my PC to be used at its fullest potential. It barely heats up in Gw2 … that basically means that it is idling at this game….

I watched a 30 minutes WvW video from TESO and personally it just looked horrible
to me. Maybe they had better textures, but i really don’t care about that if its just
50 shades od brown, and player characters that run around like zombies.

And for the FPS .. i still have for example 50-70 FPS when doing pre-quests for the
Svanir Shaman .. but the FPS go down when the actual fight begins. So its not
simply the rendering of all those character, but either effects in the fight, or
data that is been sent from and to the client about all that stuff that slows
down the FPS.

Sometimes stuff slows down performance that people don’t really see. I remember
when devs in SOE explained why we had a questlog limit of 70, because for every
step we go the server has to check your total questlog to see if you maybe just
discoverd something … or in AoC somebody wrote how much traffic was generated
from stuff that was thrown away onto the ground ..

Yup, TESO has amazing environment graphics. Characters take backseat, but in intense fighting character animations take a backseat in Gw2 as well to improve performance (somewhat, at least). There even was a setting where everyone ran the same character model with the same animation set. Looked funny and it still lagged. Not sure if they scrapped it off.

The “base model” setting is there for sPvP. It was implemented because players used asuran characters simply because their animations were so small, and their figures were so small that people playing other characters, such as norns or charrs, had their “view” so “high up” that you couldnt notice asurans doing stuff.

End result is that the asuran running around your giant norns legs could be winding up a eviscerate or a auto attack, only the most trained eye would spot the tiny animation in time to actually react, and even top level PvP players had struggles with asurans being so small and thus their animations being so subtle.

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

I never stated TESO has Dx 12. No current game has Dx 12 for the obvious reason that the SDK is not out yet.

Yeah .. but since the talk here is all about that we need DX12 because better performance
and then you bring TESO as an example for better performance, it sounds as if DX12
would be the reason.

I don’t know how the performance of TESO really is, however if it is really better
ist maybe also better in DX9, and that has maybe just because they use very
clunky animations, and there is not much eyecandy there, why GW2 has often
simply an effect overkill.

DX11 in LotRO was also worse than DX9 when i tested it, and i switched back
to DX9 after very short time.

DX11 should run faster then DX9 if you where to use the same things you did when using DX9.

The big difference is that when you enable DX11 in most game you also enable new / better graphical features that obviously cost more / additional cycles from the GPU (and possible CPU) decreasing the total FPS. That makes perfect sense.

Hell, I’d take DX11, it would massively improve the game and an expansion is the perfect time to do an engine upgrade, it worked out great for WoW when they went to DX11 in Cataclysm. The poor performance is the biggest issue I have with this game, being able to maintain 60fps in all scenarios is very important to people who keep their hardware current, and it’s just not possible in GW2. World Bosses absolutely tank the frame rate, even on modest settings. And as of the 31st patch I have noticed a considerable drop, as have many others if the technical forum are anything to go by. When you’re used to 60fps without dips playing a game that drops to 25 – 30fps regularly is a bitter pill to swallow.

sorudo.9054:

NoTrigger.8396:

i think you misunderstood. nobody cares about texture quality. what people care about is the major performance increase from dx 12.

…seriously, so ppl whine about performance problems when they have an outdated computer…..and they want a higher DX version that in no way does anything good for GW2?

oh and if nobody cares about it, am i nobody then?

No offence, but you have no clue what you’re on about. Taking WoW for example, DX11 is almost a 50% boost over DX9, that’s massive, there’s no other word for it. And early benchmarks are showing a similar boost going from DX11 to DX12, so that should tell you just how huge of an increase going from DX9 to DX12 would be. It would make the game so much more enjoyable. I personally want to live in a world where I can max the game out and not lose half my frame rate during world bosses if I’m using good enough hardware.

I don’t know if ANet has any metrics but most people I ask have superior hardware that can levitate Dx 11(12). Either that or there are many liars. Everytime a hardware talk happens in map chat in HotM people claim of having 290X-es in crossfire and here I am happy for having a single one xD

Oh right. When the game launched I had crossfire Radeon HD 6870. Gw2 has negative gains in multi-GPU build. So I sold those and bought R9 290X. There was some improvement but the FPS still tanks.

It was fun though. Disabling crossfire in Gw2 raised my overall FPS. Fun times…
But so did many other games, including Crysis 2 until AMD released a driver profile for crysis. So I guess that’s not ANet’s fault after all. But the usage of ancient API is :U

Another funfact is that among other things, in DirectX 12/Vulkan developersr will spend LESS times fighting vendor drivers. They’ll have to do most of the low-level stuff themselves. On the bright side … Valve already did the heavy lifting for Vulkan.

NVIDIA stated that they will support DX12 on as far back as GTX 400 GPUs. Those were released in 2009 and were already 3 years old when GW2 was released in 2012 and are now 6 years old. This means that with DX12, people with 6 year old hardware will see performance improvements.

So unless AMD does something silly and support DX12 on GCN GPUs only (like they did with Mantle), a great amount of GW2 players will have performance benefits from going to DX12.

I’m not sure if the game is even running on an even older rig, if even newer pcs can’t handle big events at lowest settings.

I’d pay for a DX12 support on GW2, if it could be bought through some sort of expansion/feature pack thing.

Assuming ofc: DX12 = no 50fps drops in WvW and World Boss battles, and improved graphics( like tesselation and stuff).

I think MMORPGs players do not pay too much attention to graphics, but it was MMOs with better graphics that actually convinced me to start playing these types of games.

Games with good graphics attract players. I know the FPS Crysis is on the other end of the gaming spectrum, but it’s the best example I can think of. Crysis 3 plot is simple/crappy/cliché/uninteresting, yet people play these type of games mosty because of the graphics quality. Let’s face it, these type of games(Battlefield,Crysis, etc) are not known because of the plot or the futuristic game mechanics (lol), it’s the graphics quality that makes people want to try them out.

GW2 with DX12 would be a massive game changer. I’m not saying GW2 should look like the FPS mentioned above, but it would definitely attract loads of (new) players.

I just read this whole topic. Some people are doing the mistake and thinking that when adding DX12 support Anet will remove DX9 from the game.
And thats not true.
Everytime someone added support for another rendered, original renderer stayed ingame.
You just had a choice to choose rendered in menu.
People with Windows Xp and those that dont want to upgrade their win7 and win 8.1 would stay on DX9.
Those that will upgrade to Windows 10 for free will just switch to DX12.

And Support of new technologies, with beautiful screenshots from game is a great marketing tool, dont forget that. If you want to seel Expansion you can either create just “small” map like Verdant Brink, or you can bundle it with graphic overhaul which will make most people forget about “just a small map”.

Dibaryon.7469:

Games with good graphics attract players. I know the FPS Crysis is on the other end of the gaming spectrum, but it’s the best example I can think of. Crysis 3 plot is simple/crappy/cliché/uninteresting, yet people play these type of games mosty because of the graphics quality. Let’s face it, these type of games(Battlefield,Crysis, etc) are not know because of the plot or the futuristic game mechanics (lol), it’s the graphics quality that makes people want to try them out.

AION has shown the best however that you can’t compare MMOs with other games.

They used the CryEngine and the lag in massive fights was horrible.

“For those of you who have been asking about DX11 support for Guild Wars 2, our goal with GW2 has always been to provide a gorgeous fantasy world while at the same time running on a wide range of gaming PCs.

Focusing on DX9 allows us to do this, as it’s a much wider supported graphics API than DX11 is and we wanted our game to reach as many of our fans as possible.

We will be evaluating supporting DX11 post launch. ~RB2"
https://www.facebook.com/GuildWars2/photos/a.135044094208.103264.114036714208/10151048222709209/
_
We still waiting for that at least..

Evaluating != adding.

It is quite possible that they HAVE evaluated and decided against adding it.

lordkrall.7241:

Evaluating != adding.

It is quite possible that they HAVE evaluated and decided against adding it.

Doesnt matter. It olny proves that they can add dx11/12 if they want to.

Not necessarily. It just means they were going to look into it.

lordkrall.7241:

Not necessarily. It just means they were going to look into it.

If anything, good programmers are forward thinkers. That’s what puts them further apart from the mediocre coders. I’m fairly certain there is some form of an abstraction.

Ravenmoon.5318:

lordkrall.7241:

Not necessarily. It just means they were going to look into it.

If anything, good programmers are forward thinkers. That’s what puts them further apart from the mediocre coders. I’m fairly certain there is some form of an abstraction.

Not if the programmers are under time pressure so they could be placed on something else on the schedule. Not if the code was finished before Windows 7 came out.

Every layer of abstraction reduces performance. That’s why from a performance point of view it’s better adding an entirely new renderer, invoked at game startup, for each API supported.