Guild Wars 2

Cazamar.7148:

I don’t understand the big deal. The game is fine as is. Real mmo gamers know that gameplay trumps pretty graphics.

Its not about graphics and stop insulting people by saying they play from toasters. You have the latest and greatest 500$ CPU, that’s fine. The Dx9 pipeline probably doesn’t clog up your CPU scheduler with draw calls.

For the rest of us, who are used to play games on ultra graphics on everything remotely-modern is a huge problem having to lower settings and still play at 40 fps.

The networking layer of this game is fine for a MMO. It really is. If only the game was able to use more cores … instead of you know, relying on single core for draw calls and game logic.

@maddoctor – Thank you for the reminder. I play EVE Online currently alongside Gw2, and have been playing it over the years. The guys have implemented new renderers and new features every few years. Few years ago they refreshed all the textures and models of the game making it look more modern. Last patch allowed them to use realistic lighting with surface reflection thanks to the improved renderers. And I think their next expack will update few more models of the game.

The best of all … game runs smoothly on 120 fps completely maxed out (and frame limited because because i dont want it to go over 120 fps)

Funny thing is, EVE Online is written in Python. Or was,, the last time I checked, around 5-6 years ago.

maddoctor.2738:

Although a lot of people keep posting about how Blizzard created a DX10/11 renderer for WoW, it’s not the only company that has done so. Turbine created a DX11 renderer for Lotro and DDO, CCP for EVE and many many others. Did they all have way more money than Arenanet to hire actual programmers to work on that?

It is actually rather interesting that every single company that people brings up that have made the change have all had subscription based games (both DDO and LotRO require a subscription back when they did the update). And yet no one seems to see the connection.

lordkrall.7241:

maddoctor.2738:

Although a lot of people keep posting about how Blizzard created a DX10/11 renderer for WoW, it’s not the only company that has done so. Turbine created a DX11 renderer for Lotro and DDO, CCP for EVE and many many others. Did they all have way more money than Arenanet to hire actual programmers to work on that?

It is actually rather interesting that every single company that people brings up that have made the change have all had subscription based games (both DDO and LotRO require a subscription back when they did the update). And yet no one seems to see the connection.

CCP’s revenue has always been lower than ANet’s. Go figure.

CCP’s best is less than ANet’s worst.

CCP recently axed World Of Darkness MMO because their funds were unstable.
Dust 514 is really poor and drains the company
Eve Online is their only stable revenue, which is low. They hope Eve Valkyrie will hit bit on eSports.

lordkrall.7241:

maddoctor.2738:

Although a lot of people keep posting about how Blizzard created a DX10/11 renderer for WoW, it’s not the only company that has done so. Turbine created a DX11 renderer for Lotro and DDO, CCP for EVE and many many others. Did they all have way more money than Arenanet to hire actual programmers to work on that?

It is actually rather interesting that every single company that people brings up that have made the change have all had subscription based games (both DDO and LotRO require a subscription back when they did the update). And yet no one seems to see the connection.

And what does a subscription have to do with anything? I thought it’s the revenue that counts, even when Lotro had a subscription, do you honestly believe it had more income than GW2?

Also, check how freelance people (alone or with some limited help) created DX10 renderers (for free) for major gaming engines. Notice the “free” part and that they didn’t have a huge production studio behind them.

Subscription is a steady income every month. Thus they can rather easily plan for stuff like that.

ArenaNet on the other hand probably have rather different incomes from month to month, and they have to hope that people keep buying gems every month in order to generate said income.

Therefore it is rather different.

It is also worth pointing out that Turbine have a rather large number of games, and had rather many active games back when they made the change. So it was not just the income from LotRO that mattered, but also the income from DDO and AC.

And yes, people keep bring up all these freelance people doing it for free. But how long did it take?
For what games were it done?
Was the updates used officially by the company developing the game? (Which is very unlikely due to legal stuff and such)

It is also worth pointing out that no one other than ArenaNet have access to the engine in question. Seeing as it is their own in-house created one. Which means that even if someone wanted to do it for free, it could take years to just get familiar enough with the engine to even start the project. And by the time they are ready people would start demanding support for DirectX 13 or whatever is the “new cool thing” by then.

I would be just happy about it, if they would give the game finally, like announced that it will come later before they released the game, that GW2 will get finally DX11 support first, because the amount of people that have PCs that support 11, will be much bigger currently, than the number of people, that have DX12 ready PCs.

DX11 and finally an optional downloadable from the website 64Bit Game Client – this are the two important game performance improvements, that ANet finally has to do to brign this game much further.

DX11 and 64Bit Client would solve so many game performance problems, especially for WvW where big zergs clash into each other and where the pc has by far to handle the most stress and information at once, but where the performance of PCs currently gets heavily bottlenecked, due to DX9 and the 32bit client making it not possible to make usage of maximum performance of your PCs.

Its like driving a car (PC) made in 2015 with an engine (Client) and a gear box (DX Version) inside of it, that are made in 1985.
It is clear that your car can’t give you then the best performance results with such a bad setup, if you drive it with such old engines and gear boxes.

To get better results, you have to upgrade your engine and gearbox, namely your Client and DX Version to let them match to your PC to get out of your PC the best Performance that it is able to have, if the DX and Game Client fit to the PC.
if even such old Games like WoW have already since years DX11 Support and a 64bit Client, I really start to ask myself, what takes Anet so long to give GW2 that too.
Come on, we are nearing soon the game to become 3 years old.
How much longer should we wait, until we can have finally the best game performance with our PCs that are made for better performances, than what you can get with those ancient old DX9 and 32bit client setups???

lordkrall.7241:

Therefore it is rather different.

Anet makes in a month what lotro used to make in half a year… so subscription or not it’s irrelevant, those creating the gem store items or the content are not the engine developers.

It is also worth pointing out that Turbine have a rather large number of games, and had rather many active games back when they made the change. So it was not just the income from LotRO that mattered, but also the income from DDO and AC.

I’m certain Anet makes more money than all Turbine games combined used to back in that day. Keep in mind that Turbine’s income increased drastically when they went free-to-play (nearly triple for the first few months after f2p) so once again, subscription or not is irrelevant.

And yes, people keep bring up all these freelance people doing it for free.

I’m not saying they should give the engine to the public so they can make new renderers, that’s suicide. But if a person can create a new DX renderer on his free time from his garage in a couple of months, I’m sure a big studio that already knows how their own engine works and has more resources / people can do it very very quickly.

All leads to the simple truth, if they wanted to add DX10/11/12 they would’ve already. It’s just a matter of priority, like having the tech team create the Wyvern and fire shaders first. Threads like this one should be used to “persuade” Arenanet to increase the priority of a new DirectX

Wish we could get some words from ANet on this topic, but that is unfortunately their weak side, communication.
I’ve seen MMO companies that are easier “persuaded” to add a new feature than ANet to answer on a request.

Well I don’t know, if non-ANet people could just stop worrying about revenues and just ask for things without arguing over non-issues, maybe they’ll listen.

Keep your Dx9 renderer if you love it so much. I want my Dx11/122 renderer and I’m willing to pay … wait for it … full game price tag for it. If you don’t like it, keep it to yourselves, it is that simple. I like to pay for my things. I don’t play Gw2 because its B2P. I play it because I like the game. Sub or no-sub, especially the de-facto standard of $15 really doesn’t bother me. Actually, I buy gems pretty often. Sometimes I store them for future use because I want to support the game. True that doesn’t give me any more rights than the next player, but just like the next player, I get to ask for things. Its ultimately in ANet’s hands whether they do this or they don’t. If they don’t I think it would hurt them more. Game is already 3 years old, I would love to see it reach the age of 10 and tell its story. I like the graphics, I don’t like the framerate

I think ANet could even pull a PR stunt out of all of this, to bring in purchases further. I mean after all, they sell TVs now with “TimeShift” technology and I used to “TimeShift” in the 90s with my VCR.

Plok.5873:

Wish we could get some words from ANet on this topic, but that is unfortunately their weak side, communication.
I’ve seen MMO companies that are easier “persuaded” to add a new feature than ANet to answer on a request.

What should they say ?

If they say NO they will be flamed.

If they say YES they will be flamed if they don’t give a date, or if they give a date
they will be flamed if it is not ready at that time.

They can’t win no matter what they do.

Beldin.5498:

Plok.5873:

Wish we could get some words from ANet on this topic, but that is unfortunately their weak side, communication.
I’ve seen MMO companies that are easier “persuaded” to add a new feature than ANet to answer on a request.

What should they say ?

If they say NO they will be flamed.

If they say YES they will be flamed if they don’t give a date, or if they give a date
they will be flamed if it is not ready at that time.

They can’t win no matter what they do.

“We’ll look into it”
“Nothing is off the table”
“When it’s ready”
“Thank you for your feedback”
“It’s coming”

You know, nothing they haven’t already said! :p

Beldin.5498:

Plok.5873:

Wish we could get some words from ANet on this topic, but that is unfortunately their weak side, communication.
I’ve seen MMO companies that are easier “persuaded” to add a new feature than ANet to answer on a request.

What should they say ?

If they say NO they will be flamed.

If they say YES they will be flamed if they don’t give a date, or if they give a date
they will be flamed if it is not ready at that time.

They can’t win no matter what they do.

Saying “We plan on adding DirectX12 support” would be just enough. DX12 isn’t even out yet officially, so there is no point in saying anything else or give any dates, because for sure not even the devs would know at the moment.

However, saying that DX12 is being considered would certainly help a lot.

Face it, if 90% of games available require powerful GPU, and only Gw2 requires powerful CPU, where do you think 90% of people will invest more money at? Especially after the bullkitten Intel pulls with each generation, having to upgrade the motherboard to upgrade the CPU. Fun times.

maddoctor.2738:

Beldin.5498:

Plok.5873:

Wish we could get some words from ANet on this topic, but that is unfortunately their weak side, communication.
I’ve seen MMO companies that are easier “persuaded” to add a new feature than ANet to answer on a request.

What should they say ?

If they say NO they will be flamed.

If they say YES they will be flamed if they don’t give a date, or if they give a date
they will be flamed if it is not ready at that time.

They can’t win no matter what they do.

Saying “We plan on adding DirectX12 support” would be just enough. DX12 isn’t even out yet officially, so there is no point in saying anything else or give any dates, because for sure not even the devs would know at the moment.

However, saying that DX12 is being considered would certainly help a lot.

You remember the precursor hunt ? If they say they add it it would be much
the same for the next 1-2 years or how long ever it will take.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Face it, if 90% of games available require powerful GPU, and only Gw2 requires powerful CPU, where do you think 90% of people will invest more money at? Especially after the bullkitten Intel pulls with each generation, having to upgrade the motherboard to upgrade the CPU. Fun times.

I guess those 90% are all single player games, or at least not MMOs, since all MMOs
i ever played needed mostly CPU power and less GPU.

Beldin.5498:

maddoctor.2738:

Beldin.5498:

Plok.5873:

Wish we could get some words from ANet on this topic, but that is unfortunately their weak side, communication.
I’ve seen MMO companies that are easier “persuaded” to add a new feature than ANet to answer on a request.

What should they say ?

If they say NO they will be flamed.

If they say YES they will be flamed if they don’t give a date, or if they give a date
they will be flamed if it is not ready at that time.

They can’t win no matter what they do.

Saying “We plan on adding DirectX12 support” would be just enough. DX12 isn’t even out yet officially, so there is no point in saying anything else or give any dates, because for sure not even the devs would know at the moment.

However, saying that DX12 is being considered would certainly help a lot.

You remember the precursor hunt ? If they say they add it it would be much
the same for the next 1-2 years or how long ever it will take.

Unlike other people who might have selected memory (see: most people who complain) I remember clearly when they also said that they are changing their whole reward structure. So I for one never had a problem with postponing the precursor hunt. Remember that when they announced the precursor scavenger hunt, champions weren’t dropping champion bags yet, dungeon paths didn’t reward gold, collections didn’t exist etc

It made sense to me that they will postpone the precursor hunt until after all their other new reward systems were in the game, like the (then new) ascended material rewards.

DX12 is a different story, there aren’t any complex game mechanics that will affect it, there isn’t anything that they have to change in their actual content to use DX12. They will keep the same gameplay, same game features, same textures, same skins, same lighting, same shaders, same maps, same geometry, same everything other than the draw engine.

Now if they were going to take full advantage of DX12 they will probably need to add some new things too, but I’d be happy just for the main engine and nothing else. I’m not asking for them to add Tesselation now, it’s unreasonable and it will obviously take a lot of time to make it work properly.

At this point I’ll be happy for multi-threaded Dx11 renderer xD

Ravenmoon.5318:

Face it, if 90% of games available require powerful GPU, and only Gw2 requires powerful CPU, where do you think 90% of people will invest more money at? Especially after the bullkitten Intel pulls with each generation, having to upgrade the motherboard to upgrade the CPU. Fun times.

That is true at the moment except with DX 12 Microsoft found way for DX12 to uses all of your cpu cores to work with the gpu not just one core so you get huge gaines from that alone. Which alot of people don’t understand yet while DX11 would offer performance gain aswell but you still would be cpu bottle necked to one cpu core. Face it DX 12 is going to be a huge game changer this summer when it comes out with windows 10.
Also DX12 allows for more way draws calls per frame than any other DX versions witch gw2 has a hard time with in big zerg fights having to draw all the players and skills effcts which currently bogs players down at times.

i think it would be a smarter move for arenanet to make support for Mantle rather then DX12. Mostly because Mantle, while an AMD API, works for older devices and DOES help with older Nvidia and Intel stuff too.

DX12 will only have full support on newer hardware….
Which means to play the game itself, AT ITS BEST, you will still have to invest in never hardware to make full use of it. Yes i know DX is backwards compatible, but especially discrete graphics cards cannot make full use of the technology implemented in DX without fully supporting it, which is a kitten shame.

Now while not a perfect argument for NOT going with DX12 (yet), i think that “forcing” or rather imposing a sufficiently strong argument, onto players that they need to invest 200-300 Dollars for a new discrete graphics card and quite likely also a new power supply to accept the new card.

Either way, Mantle seems like a more valid option, for now.

Also for those who just see “AMD lel all they make sucks”…. go google around a little bit. While Mantle give more boost to AMD devices they also give a huge boost to Intel + Nvidia combinations, especially on the lower end level (weaker i5, i3 and older Pentium based systems). Which would help immensely for the CASUAL part of the playerbase, the part which nearly never comes onto this forum, yet is probably 1000-2000 times larger then the forum population.

I switched from a GTX 460 to a GTX 960 the other week. Man, what a difference for a CPU-bound game.

I think, a lot of the theories in this thread about the used technologies and their effects on performance are… let’s say… not very well founded.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Ansau.7326:

@Ravenmoon I don’t have the problem, maybe you have fps issues and that’s why you have such a bad experience, but that doesn’t mean the game runs really crappy.
Also, I was talking performance at same speeds. Your 2500k at 4.5GHz is like a 4690k at 3.8GHz.
And about the rest, that shows how little you know about improving fps. Yes, pcie speed increases fps (tested). Yes, ram speed increases fps (tested). Yes, some graphic options have massive cpu load with minimum graphic increase.

If I have time this Easter I’ll do some tests in my desktop about all this kind of things.

I have i5 4690k overclocked to 4,6ghz and i experience fps drops for no reason and overall performance is bad. All maxed except shadows on medium, culling on lowest i still have troubles keeping this joke at 60 fps. So if you dont have any problems you must be running on minimal..

Finally somone telling the truth.

Halvorn.9831:

I switched from a GTX 460 to a GTX 960 the other week. Man, what a difference for a CPU-bound game.

I think, a lot of the theories in this thread about the used technologies and their effects on performance are… let’s say… not very well founded.

because the gtx 460 is a huge piece of crap compared to the gtx 960. of course you will see a fps increase with a gpu that is double as good and the gtx 460 was most likely the bottle kneck in your system.

i have an i5 4690k and a gtx 970. if i run the game at 4k i will lose 5 fps compared to 1080p.

the thing is, no matter how good your hardware is, you will never be able to run 60fps+ in every single place in this game, because the optimization is trash.

with dx 12 and a 64 bit client, people with a wooden computer could run the game at 60 fps.

Halvorn.9831:

I switched from a GTX 460 to a GTX 960 the other week. Man, what a difference for a CPU-bound game.

I think, a lot of the theories in this thread about the used technologies and their effects on performance are… let’s say… not very well founded.

I am running R9 290X which frankly destroys your GPU in every test in existance. I rarely get 100 frames per second. If I am within intensive scene it dips below 30.

Fighting the miasma in Lion’s Arch a year ago was cancer to me. The events after that, even more so. All those people zerging single boss mobs. That frame rate was going back in time.

To be honest at the time I didn’t overclock my CPU (i5-2500k) because of heat issues, plus Crysis was maxing out on 100 fps, so it was running its stock clock of 3.3GHz + turbo(500MHz). Now that I juiced extra 1GHz out of it the fps is more stable in low to medium places but if i dare to go to WvW without effect LOD, i’ll be playing slideshow 2.

No, I won’t toss $600 for CPU upgrade just so I could get decent FPS in one game, while everything else runs at least with 60 fps.

you ppl do realize that the DX only enhances the shader quality and need to make the right shaders to take advantage of this, for now all they have to do is add a higher resolution then 500X500 on their textures (like 1024) and the game already looks allot better. (often it feels like they take a texture of 200X200 and stretch it on a way to big area, it’s a pixel mess in the game)
oblivion is a much older game then GW2 and runs on DX9, this game has textures far higher in resolution then in the entire game of GW2.

it’s not the DX version you have to worry about, it’s the texture resolution.

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

JediYoda.1275:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Face it, if 90% of games available require powerful GPU, and only Gw2 requires powerful CPU, where do you think 90% of people will invest more money at? Especially after the bullkitten Intel pulls with each generation, having to upgrade the motherboard to upgrade the CPU. Fun times.

That is true at the moment except with DX 12 Microsoft found way for DX12 to uses all of your cpu cores to work with the gpu not just one core so you get huge gaines from that alone. Which alot of people don’t understand yet while DX11 would offer performance gain aswell but you still would be cpu bottle necked to one cpu core.

Dx11 allows the Dx3D API to be called from multiple threads safely. However the Dx11 driver is executing those calls from a single thread. What Dx12 does is it allows portions of the driver code to execute from within each thread using the Dx12 API and reduce the portion of the driver that is still tied to the primary thread. This is on top of the reduced CPU setup overhead when using Dx3D API. It doesn’t automagically turn a single thread renderer into a multithreaded one, just make it more efficient by letting parts of the driver to run within each thread.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/178904-directx-12-detailed-backwards-compatible-with-all-recent-nvidia-gpus-will-deliver-mantle-like-capabilities

We don’t even have a scalable multthreaded renderer.

Ravenmoon.5318:

I am running R9 290X which frankly destroys your GPU in every test in existance. I rarely get 100 frames per second. If I am within intensive scene it dips below 30.

Fighting the miasma in Lion’s Arch a year ago was cancer to me. The events after that, even more so. All those people zerging single boss mobs. That frame rate was going back in time.

To be honest at the time I didn’t overclock my CPU (i5-2500k) because of heat issues, plus Crysis was maxing out on 100 fps, so it was running its stock clock of 3.3GHz + turbo(500MHz). Now that I juiced extra 1GHz out of it the fps is more stable in low to medium places but if i dare to go to WvW without effect LOD, i’ll be playing slideshow 2.

No, I won’t toss $600 for CPU upgrade just so I could get decent FPS in one game, while everything else runs at least with 60 fps.

And give an estimation: what percentage of players is in the same boat as you? 0.5? 0.1? Less?

You spent more than three times the money for your rig compared to me. Yet I can perfectly live with my performance in WvW, even if it’s in EB, three zergs. It could be better, but it is not awful.

If ANet has spare dev time, I vote they spent it on toning down particle effects – that would help all of us find bosses and our own mouse cursors.

I’d sooner push for Vulkan than DX12, though that both paths have a near-zero probability of happening. I do admit I am rather selfish about it though, all things considered. If GW2 ever switches to DX12, that’s when I’ll be forced to stop playing for a variety of reasons not entirely under my own control.

Just thought I’d through this into the mix, since it’s actual developers talking about migrating from dx9 to dx11: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/2362/the-pros-and-cons-dx9-moving-to-dx11-render

And from Microsoft itself: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476190%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

dx11 comes with level 10 and level 9 modes, so a new engine would target all available hardware, as I understand it.

Behellagh.1468:

JediYoda.1275:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Face it, if 90% of games available require powerful GPU, and only Gw2 requires powerful CPU, where do you think 90% of people will invest more money at? Especially after the bullkitten Intel pulls with each generation, having to upgrade the motherboard to upgrade the CPU. Fun times.

That is true at the moment except with DX 12 Microsoft found way for DX12 to uses all of your cpu cores to work with the gpu not just one core so you get huge gaines from that alone. Which alot of people don’t understand yet while DX11 would offer performance gain aswell but you still would be cpu bottle necked to one cpu core.

Dx11 allows the Dx3D API to be called from multiple threads safely. However the Dx11 driver is executing those calls from a single thread. What Dx12 does is it allows portions of the driver code to execute from within each thread using the Dx12 API and reduce the portion of the driver that is still tied to the primary thread. This is on top of the reduced CPU setup overhead when using Dx3D API. It doesn’t automagically turn a single thread renderer into a multithreaded one, just make it more efficient by letting parts of the driver to run within each thread.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/178904-directx-12-detailed-backwards-compatible-with-all-recent-nvidia-gpus-will-deliver-mantle-like-capabilities

We don’t even have a scalable multthreaded renderer.

your link backs up what i’m saying thanks

@Lord you dont need a new engine just the games dx api’s would have to updated and all dx versions are backwards compatible. You would need the newest hardware that supports the newer version to get full benifits.

Backward compatible doesn’t mean that a Dx9 game will suddenly become faster. It just means you can still use those API calls so the app doesn’t simply break.

And note that they passed the buck by saying that the Dx9 to Dx11 port is like Dx9 to Dx10 and then they link to this.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb205073(v=vs.85).aspx

That’s a whole lot of difference there.

And then you have to do the Dx10 to Dx11 fixes.

Then you have the additional features in Dx11 over Dx9.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476876%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

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?

Behellagh.1468:

Backward compatible doesn’t mean that a Dx9 game will suddenly become faster. It just means you can still use those API calls so the app doesn’t simply break.

stop twisting what i’m saying i said never it would I just said you would need the newest hardware that supports the newest version to get full benifits. stop trolling huh?

Either case, for those wondering. GOOGLE “MANTLE API”… read how it works. Most of that technology will be avaliable in DX12, however MANTLE IS ALREADY HERE, AND IT IS ALREADY IMPLEMENTED IN GAMES SUCH AS BATTLEFIELD4 FOR PC.

DX 12 is still not out on the consumer market, it is close, but not here. Mantle is a solution we COULD get, it WONT require new hardware from what ive read so far. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT WILL HELP THOSE WITH LOWER END SYSTEMS A LOT.

Beldin.5498:

Plok.5873:

Wish we could get some words from ANet on this topic, but that is unfortunately their weak side, communication.
I’ve seen MMO companies that are easier “persuaded” to add a new feature than ANet to answer on a request.

What should they say ?

If they say NO they will be flamed.

If they say YES they will be flamed if they don’t give a date, or if they give a date
they will be flamed if it is not ready at that time.

They can’t win no matter what they do.

I don’t think so… at least from what I saw in the Frontier Dev boards, people can live with a statement like “Maybe at a later date” or “Sorry, not planned in the foreseeable future due to extensive effort / design decisions / etc.”

It’s a different communication style both sides need to adapt to, but I’ve seen it working. And a “No, sorry” is definitely less frustrating than talking to a seemingly empty room.

Imho ANet’s communication style on many (not all!) matters is, unfortunately, reminiscent of Passive-aggressive behavior.

And people still don’t see the problem is not anet devs cannot do it, nor newer api + game engine rewrite won’t bring better performance.

The problem is devs DON’T WANT to do it.

End of the discussion.

Reason i preach for Mantle, aside having a AMD rig myself (cuz it was cheap and i didnt have the money for a i7 rig at the time), is that Mantle has been proven to work. It is already released and in use by consumers. It has been launched on a major title and is coming to several others.

In short, Mantle is here. It would give us the improvements we need from DX12, without having to wait for development to get full access to a finished DX12 version. Arenanet could push for Mantle development right now and we would get a game that would run better, even on old Pentium based systems.

Oh and yes, Mantle was developed by AMD, but it works for Intel and Nvidia too. So the argument that “but that means i gotta get AMD stuff” is a major fallacy….. Mantle just helps correct the horrible performance of multicore AMD CPUs, for Intel CPUs it simply boost a already very good architecture further.

Prysin.8542:

Either case, for those wondering. GOOGLE “MANTLE API”… read how it works. Most of that technology will be avaliable in DX12, however MANTLE IS ALREADY HERE, AND IT IS ALREADY IMPLEMENTED IN GAMES SUCH AS BATTLEFIELD4 FOR PC.

DX 12 is still not out on the consumer market, it is close, but not here. Mantle is a solution we COULD get, it WONT require new hardware from what ive read so far. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT WILL HELP THOSE WITH LOWER END SYSTEMS A LOT.

Mantle runs only on AMD GPUs and is not working on NVIDIA or INTEL GPUs. Anyone capable of playing in DX11 will be able to play in DX12, you won’t need new hardware for DX12, however you NEED new hardware for Mantle (GCN compatible AMD GPU)

Direct X12 is already available on most middleware game engines like Unreal Engine 4, Unity, Frostbite, CryEngine (not sure about this) and others. It is already being worked on by developers, closely with Microsoft of course to tweak DX12 to work better.

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.

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/

yeah, mantle works on nvidia. don’t quote me on this, but i am fairly certain it also served as part of the base for vulkan as well.

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/

I haven’t seen Mantle running on NVIDIA GPUs on any video game, like BF4 or DA:I, have you seen any benchmarks of it running on nvidia gpus?

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.

Also NVIDIA will support DX12 on very old GPUs as well, every Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell-class GPU. That means nearly every GTX 400, 500, and 600 series card will be supported. We still don’t know if AMD will do the same with their older GPUs, they’d better be, because Mantle is only available on GCN GPUs

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.

Stop reading pre-release hype posts and read the official FAQ:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/194

At this time, the following Graphics Core Next-based products are supported:
AMD Radeon™ R9 Series graphics
AMD Radeon™ R7 Series graphics
AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series graphics
AMD Radeon™ HD 8000 Series graphics
2014 AMD A-Series APUs (?"Kaveri")??

And find me one video running a BF4 benchmark using Mantle on an NVIDIA GPU, you can’t because Mantle doesn’t run on NVIDIA cards, only GCN AMD GPUs.

I have a 5850 card and I can’t use Mantle in DA:I because it’s not a GCN card.

I laugh at the notion that a GPU developed in 2009 and is the underlying basic architecture of every nVidia GPU since then is “very old”.

AMD chose to support the GCN architecture from 2011, which happens to be the same set that supports Mantle.

Got to draw the line somewhere and that line is normally at major architecture changes.

JediYoda.1275:

Obtena.7952:

Ravenmoon.5318:

@Obtena – Yes the ROI is negative for this upgrade. But single-threaded DirectX 9 is forcing them to work more at the moment to optimize for this old renderer. Eventually those overwork hours will cost them more than the update itself. They can double the draw calls with Dx 11. Even moreso with Dx 12/Vulkan. Its basic economics. In the long run, this DirectX 9 is going to raise the prices of everything. In the long run, they might even find it hard to find devs that know how to work with Dx 9. Keep in mind that good developers are in limited supply. And some good developers just don’t want to go through the hassle of supporting old technology. And they don’t even look at these gigs.

Could be, but using DX9 already factors into their business model on what the game costs to make and how it makes money. The fact that DX12 is faster to develop to save money is balanced by the cost to upgrade. Therefore, they simply aren’t going to upgrade until they HAVE to, which will be determined by the point where DX gives a net benefit. There is no way they are even close to that net benefit yet.

If they do decide to upgrade regardless of the ROI, it’s going to cost YOU and other people ‘willing’ to pay a fortune to fund it.

Its laready been shown dx 12 gives a net benifit also you dont know if they are or not close to net benifit yet in your own words. At 24:15 shows where Anet still struggeling with performance issues on one map as an expanple for gdc.

http://gdcvault.com/play/1016640/Guild-Wars-2-Programming-the

DirectX 12 is meant to also harness the CPU’s full capabilities (all cores), allowing multiple commands to be sent to the GPU simultaneously and allow for more efficient communication between these two crucial components.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/03/26/directx-12-delivers-amd-nvidia-and-intel-hardware-tested-with-awesome-improvements/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2903586/directx-12-will-goose-gpus-too-amd-says-unlocking-the-potential-of-its-graphics-cards.html

Until you can compare the cost to upgrade GW2 to DX12 to the savings benefit of future development and ROI, you really haven’t said anything here. It will take resources to upgrade, if the resources used doesn’t equate or better to a resources saved in the future, it’s pretty meaningless to sit there and throw industry studies and quotes at us. Your technobabble is irrelevant if the basic requirement of the game “works and can be supported under the current business model and development tools” is being fullfilled.

Also … you people aren’t considering that if Anet are upgrading to DX12, they are losing opportunity to create other more interesting and meaningful content in the game. I can live without DX12; not so much a game that compromises content to upgrade to it. You have not shown a need for this upgrade, even with your cherry picked example. If people are having performance issues for very selected content, they have the opportunity to dial that in for themselves.

Obtena.7952:

JediYoda.1275:

Obtena.7952:

Ravenmoon.5318:

@Obtena – Yes the ROI is negative for this upgrade. But single-threaded DirectX 9 is forcing them to work more at the moment to optimize for this old renderer. Eventually those overwork hours will cost them more than the update itself. They can double the draw calls with Dx 11. Even moreso with Dx 12/Vulkan. Its basic economics. In the long run, this DirectX 9 is going to raise the prices of everything. In the long run, they might even find it hard to find devs that know how to work with Dx 9. Keep in mind that good developers are in limited supply. And some good developers just don’t want to go through the hassle of supporting old technology. And they don’t even look at these gigs.

Could be, but using DX9 already factors into their business model on what the game costs to make and how it makes money. The fact that DX12 is faster to develop to save money is balanced by the cost to upgrade. Therefore, they simply aren’t going to upgrade until they HAVE to, which will be determined by the point where DX gives a net benefit. There is no way they are even close to that net benefit yet.

If they do decide to upgrade regardless of the ROI, it’s going to cost YOU and other people ‘willing’ to pay a fortune to fund it.

Its laready been shown dx 12 gives a net benifit also you dont know if they are or not close to net benifit yet in your own words. At 24:15 shows where Anet still struggeling with performance issues on one map as an expanple for gdc.

http://gdcvault.com/play/1016640/Guild-Wars-2-Programming-the

DirectX 12 is meant to also harness the CPU’s full capabilities (all cores), allowing multiple commands to be sent to the GPU simultaneously and allow for more efficient communication between these two crucial components.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/03/26/directx-12-delivers-amd-nvidia-and-intel-hardware-tested-with-awesome-improvements/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2903586/directx-12-will-goose-gpus-too-amd-says-unlocking-the-potential-of-its-graphics-cards.html

Until you can compare the cost to upgrade GW2 to DX12 to the savings benefit of future development and ROI, you really haven’t said anything here. It will take resources to upgrade, if the resources used doesn’t equate or better to a resources saved in the future, it’s pretty meaningless to sit there and throw industry studies and quotes at us. Your technobabble is irrelevant if the basic requirement of the game “works and can be supported under the current business model and development tools” is being fullfilled.

Also … you people aren’t considering that if Anet are upgrading to DX12, they are losing opportunity to create other more interesting and meaningful content in the game. I can live without DX12; not so much a game that compromises content to upgrade to it. You have not shown a need for this upgrade, even with your cherry picked example. If people are having performance issues for very selected content, they have the opportunity to dial that in for themselves.

wow really with your wall of gibberish you haven’t said anything or backed up anything! Most of us here know dx 12 isn’t just about performance increase and that the the dev’s could do more with the game. Just that most want performance increase.

Nice try and have a good day.

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.