Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

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.

Do you even know how coding works <o> You don’t copy/paste renderer code in multiple projects in Visual Studio so you would compile with different flags and have the support for all of them. You write abstractions and implementations based on those abstractions and the APIs you have available. Then you instruct your compiler through compiler flags to compile the code that you need. Its how OO programming works. And this is just one option, there are many…for instance, you can have multiple renderers in single executable.

Google this kitten man. It’s basic programming principles.

Actually I’ve been “coding” for 30 plus years. It is better and cleaner to determine which API you will be using at game startup and launch a custom thread than attempting to write one monolithic renderer that can invoke multiple APIs.

This isn’t a compile time issue but a run time issue.

I also see where we are confused over the word “abstraction”. I’m using the word from a top down design PoV. To me, an API like DirectX and OpenGL are already an abstraction of the hardware. I thought you meant to create an additional level of abstraction that was API neutral. That layer would take care of massaging the data and providing setup to call the appropriate API based on user selection. That would be the wrong approach as you should be trying to get closer to the “metal” than further away.

There is a reason a number of games (Civ V, Total War series) require a relaunch when you switch between Dx9 and Dx10/11, it’s because it either launches a different version of the game with the appropriate renderer for that API baked in (Civ V) or internally launches the appropriate renderer at start up. I don’t know why you keep thinking I’m suggesting you can’t have multiple renders in the same executable, I’m suggesting you can.

On the other hand you were using “abstraction” in an language/object oriented sense. Which is fine and dandy if the project started as C++ and at the time they were anticipating adding future APIs. Now something those who only learned OO programming often don’t realize is that all the features an OO language provides to keep programmers from shooting themselves in the foot can significantly slow down the code, as well as making the executable significantly larger. But in an era of multicore, multi-gigahertz, multi gigabyte computing that shouldn’t be a problem, unless performance is utmost importance.

In my 30 plus years writing, designing and managing projects, getting it done quick is more important on a day to day basis that getting it done right, right as in well designed classes for ease of maintenance and maximum reusability. Upper management, doesn’t care about elegance of design, marketing cares only about how many new features you can have in the release and in the end all they care about is the ship date. Later if, big if, there is time between major releases you might be allowed to refactor the code into something more elegant, stable, maintainable and reusable but often clever, quick and dirty is the rule of the day and you end up with something held together with bubblegum and bailing wire that’s fragile as hell. And it’s only when it collapses under it’s own weight will those with the scheduling power listen.

Maybe you’re at a company that isn’t short sighted about proper design, strive for easily maintainable and reusable code above all else. I envy you if that’s the case.

Edit: Silly kitten filter is silly

Yeah well after we failed kitten multiple projects, my boss kinda started listening to me. That and the general “i dont give a kitten” attitude. Hey, he did called few times to tell me how he’s trying really hard not to fire me. And I’m like … “I want to have a real work/life balance” and “good luck finding better people to deal with all this”

Instant win. xD

P.S: That was 5 years ago though. Now … it all works well. And I get to have a life … most of the time …

It’s the sad fact that since software isn’t something someone can physically touch, most non-programmers can’t appreciate the complexity, cleverness and scale as they can with some complex physical piece of equipment. That often leaves to the erroneous assumption that something is easy to change or easy to add something on at the last minute. It would be very different if you lead them to a warehouse size machine of intricate clockwork humming away so you can turn and ask if they think adding X into that would be easy or trivial this close to the ship date.

Turbine uses a common engine for DDO and LOTRO. When the Dx10 update was done in Nov 2007, both games were still subscription based. Dx11 support was added in late 2010 but very, very little in terms of features (Dx11 based Ambient Occlusion even though it can be done without Dx11) and in LOTRO Dx11 dynamic water effects.

The HardOCP article on LOTRO Dx10 upgrade pointed out at the time a massive loss in performance from Dx9 to Dx10.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2007/11/12/lord_rings_online_dx10_patch

“When we directly compare DirectX 9 performance and DirectX 10 performance on the same graph, using the most powerful gaming video card you can currently buy, the results are quite clear. In LOTRO, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is 55% slower when using the DX10 code, than it is when using only DX9 code. We have observed similar performance penalties in the past, but we are no less frustrated to see it here.”

Which is why back in 2007, while providing visual improvements, Dx10 impacted frame rate noticeably leading to few gamers flocking to Vista for Dx10 goodness. So why develop for a platform that many gamers are hesitant to adopt? Which may be one reason why Dx9 was focused on for GW2 when it started development in 2007.

Pretty sure they didn’t have much time to optimize (LotrO). Some games, like WoW and EVE Online have had fantastic migration and in the case of EvE they can now upgrade their lighting tech (realistic reflections and whatnot) because of the performance gains. I mean sure, 1 ship in relatively empty space compared to fantasy-themed MMOs isn’t all that much, but EvE ships are so detailed. And the FPS is stable even when you get into asteroid field with all the particle effects, smoke and amount of rocks and huge structures. Massive battles (which are a common thing for EvE) have stable FPS on PCs like mine.

Behellagh.1468:

Turbine uses a common engine for DDO and LOTRO. When the Dx10 update was done in Nov 2007, both games were still subscription based. Dx11 support was added in late 2010 but very, very little in terms of features (Dx11 based Ambient Occlusion even though it can be done without Dx11) and in LOTRO Dx11 dynamic water effects.

The HardOCP article on LOTRO Dx10 upgrade pointed out at the time a massive loss in performance from Dx9 to Dx10.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2007/11/12/lord_rings_online_dx10_patch

“When we directly compare DirectX 9 performance and DirectX 10 performance on the same graph, using the most powerful gaming video card you can currently buy, the results are quite clear. In LOTRO, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is 55% slower when using the DX10 code, than it is when using only DX9 code. We have observed similar performance penalties in the past, but we are no less frustrated to see it here.”

Played Lotro before Rift was released, so at the end of 2010 into 2011 .. not sure
if i tested DX11 or DX10 .. but all i know is a switched back to DX9 after very
short time, since the performance was at least not better, and some effects
like water reflections looked even worse.

On the other hand, performance in Lotro was never a problem, i think mostly i had
far over 100 fps and often even 250 or whatever.

Well in Turbine’s defense, how to use Dx10 effectively wasn’t widely understood that soon to Vista’s release. Same could be said about the drivers and the underlying hardware architecture. But several other early adopters of Dx10 had similar problems, yes it was prettier but the frame rate cost was huge. But years of hardware advancement and driver improvements made Dx10/11 viable. Actually a lot of the Vista/Dx10 – Windows 7/Dx11 is iterative and more about stepping away from the bad reputation of those names and giving the illusion of starting fresh.

As an aside, the GT 740 and R7 250, both with GDDR5 memory, are faster than the 8800 Ultra in that HardOCP review. Both are sub $100 cards. The 8800 Ultra was an $800+ card when it was introduced. My, how time and tech flies.

JediYoda.1275:

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

She’s not trolling you….just kicking your behind in a discussion about WHY it would be an economically bad decision for Anet to apply resources to this request (make game DX12).

Her arguments are sound and summed up as:

1. It’s not necessarily needed as the game is quite playable for the majority of the current player base using the current technology used.
2. There are better places to put the limited Anet resources.
3. The number of existing players that could take advantage of DX12 support without hardware upgrades is low (certainly NOT a majority of GW2 playerbase).

Claiming she’s a troll because you can’t refute those arguments is childish.

Brother Grimm.5176:

JediYoda.1275:

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

She’s not trolling you….just kicking your behind in a discussion about WHY it would be an economically bad decision for Anet to apply resources to this request (make game DX12).

Her arguments are sound and summed up as:

1. It’s not necessarily needed as the game is quite playable for the majority of the current player base using the current technology used.
2. There are better places to put the limited Anet resources.
3. The number of existing players that could take advantage of DX12 support without hardware upgrades is low (certainly NOT a majority of GW2 playerbase).

Claiming she’s a troll because you can’t refute those arguments is childish.

1. Playable is matter of preference and quite opinionated. Below 60 fps is unplayable to me and I’m doing a said game a favor if I still play it after it constantly tanks below that.
2. Switching renderer is not about throwing 2000 man to code it out. Programming only looks like construction building and programmers as construction workers. What it really needs is a few dedicated and focused developers who know what they are doing.
3. I advise you to check which GPUs are planned to have Dx 12 support.

Besides, most of us will be happy with Dx11 upgrade too, if it is optimized well. I don’t care about water effects or ambient occlusion or blur or kitten like that. I want 60 frames per second. Like 99.99% of the computer games out there try to have. I’m very hellbent on this. That’s what I didn’t like in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Going from ~150 fps on Mantle to 30 fps in cutscenes was soooooo noticeable to me. And before you jump to conclusions that im some spoiled brat or something, almost all reviewers counted dropping the framerate as a negative. Despite it being a great game (GoTY 2014 for sure!)

I currently play warframe a lot more than I play Gw2. Now … why would I play a super grindy F2P game with terrible pay-to-progress mechanics? Well … if I can trust their FPS meter … 200 fps in regular scene, 120 fps in a scene with flying body parts everywhere, 80 fps after 40 minutes of defense game mode. The amount of crap that is way too high.

That and last night’s public beta server crash prevented me from playing stronghold at all. Do you know why? Because after waiting half an hour i gave up and went playing other games, without wasting my limited entertainment hours after work. Killing bots in HotM only goes so far ….

No, playable is in no way or form a matter of preference. You might choose not to play it at lower FPS but that doesn’t mean it is unplayable.
The very definition of unplayable requires it to not be POSSIBLE to play. You CHOOSING to not play is not the same as it not being possible.

lordkrall.7241:

No, playable is in no way or form a matter of preference. You might choose not to play it at lower FPS but that doesn’t mean it is unplayable.
The very definition of unplayable requires it to not be POSSIBLE to play. You CHOOSING to not play is not the same as it not being possible.

Please tell me how an action combat that relies heavily on reaction times can have such a kittenty FPS in large fights. IMO its one of the reasons people use tanky gear in wvw. Just compare the meta builds of both modes (sPvP and WvW). Skilled players are more likely to run risk vs reward builds. Hell, even the roamers in WvW use risk/reward builds. But the group comps? Just nope…

I’ve actually tried to berserker build in WvW group fights. I can’t tell anything out of the SFX spam and the sub 25 fps. So I just spam #1 until everybody is dead…or until I die. However it is more efficient to press #1 as a Soldier rather than berserker.

See if this was World of Warcraft it would’ve been kind of okay because you are supposed to be stationary and spam your gazillion skills and watch those DPS check addons do their magic.

Then again WoW has better FPS than Gw2 so … it’s kind of embarrassing.

Wow, now people in WvW use tanky builds because of bad fps, and not because they are part of the melee and need to be able to eat most of the damage…

Ansau.7326:

Wow, now people in WvW wear tanky builds because of bad fps, and not because they are part of the melee and need to be able to eat most of the damage…

Sadly, people will use terrible analogies and scenarios if it suits their argument.

Its funny that you nitpick only that part of my comment … amateurs

Ravenmoon.5318:

1. Playable is matter of preference and quite opinionated. Below 60 fps is unplayable to me and I’m doing a said game a favor if I still play it after it constantly tanks below that.

Besides, most of us will be happy with Dx11 upgrade too, if it is optimized well. I don’t care about water effects or ambient occlusion or blur or kitten like that. I want 60 frames per second. Like 99.99% of the computer games out there try to have.

Thats however you personal problem. Normally it is said that the human eye doesn’t
really notice a difference if its more than 25-30 fps.

Also i have over 60 FPS most of the time, as long as i’m not in heavy zergs. And i’m
still not really sure if its mainly the graphics renderer or has also more to do with
network traffic when for example the FPS at Svanir Shaman goes down to 18 as
soon as the fight begins, while i have 50-70 before.
If its really just the renderer then more options to disable effects should already
help a lot.

Ansau.7326:

Wow, now people in WvW use tanky builds because of bad fps, and not because they are part of the melee and need to be able to eat most of the damage…

Hey .. if the next time a thread about “how to stop the zerker meta” pops up, we know
that the answer is : just make the engine even slower

Well, the rest of the comment doesn’t say anything else from what I understood and replied.
You ask why such an action game have so kittenty FPS, and in your opinion this is one of the reasons people in WvW use tanky builds.

It’s completely false. There is no possible reason to use tanky builds because you have bad performance. It only relies in your role in the zerg and personal skill.
First, because not everybody run tanky builds, just the melee. Ranged people experience the same bad performance and run very offensive builds (even worse performance because melee pc’s don’t render all what’s in their behind).
And second, as one gets more skilled, he can use less tanky builds. Prove is top guilds, where melee can run at 2900 armor and ranged often run full zerker.

Then, your example is not valid, as you’re describing poorest situation in WvW (pug zerg while autoattacking) where the fact you live or die, or survive with other gear is solely determinated by numbers of your zerg vs enemy zerg and the lack of skill when being killed in situations you shouldn’t.

In case you tried to talk about different gear being meaningful, it doesn’t matter, as you’re bringing a completely different argument that is not discussed in this thread.
If you’re are talking about the use of a type of builds in a performance thread, it’s easy we supose you’re relationating that use of those builds with performance issues.

PD: I personally have been playing mesmer in zergs with just 2300 armor and I used to play with an old laptop at minimum graphic settings at 20fps. Few months ago I built a desktop (my description) and I haven’t felt myself more capable of running less tanky just because of the performance gain.
In fact, I’ve felt the need to run more tanky because I couldn’t handle the bigger and more skilled blobs.

http://www.30vs60.com/

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

1. Playable is matter of preference and quite opinionated. Below 60 fps is unplayable to me and I’m doing a said game a favor if I still play it after it constantly tanks below that.

Besides, most of us will be happy with Dx11 upgrade too, if it is optimized well. I don’t care about water effects or ambient occlusion or blur or kitten like that. I want 60 frames per second. Like 99.99% of the computer games out there try to have.

Thats however you personal problem. Normally it is said that the human eye doesn’t
really notice a difference if its more than 25-30 fps.

As scoobianec has shown there is HUGE difference in the feel. Also if you play on a 120Hz screen (or even 144Hz one) and your PC is able to pull the frame rate to match the refresh rate of the screen you will start noticing HUGE difference in gaming.

Human eye is capable of capturing a lot more than current gen consumer tech has to offer. The human brain can process up to 300 images per second but it chooses to process just around 60-80 of them due to the amount of stress it would cause to process them all. Thus the term “trained eye”.

Another interesting fact: High skilled pro gamers can see and react before normal people like you can even see what is happening.

Less biological fact: Your reaction is bound by FPS. The higher the FPS the higher the reaction time. Do you know why? The real-time message loop checks for user input at the beginning of every frame. Makes no sense? Add maths to it then.

At 60 FPS your PC needs 16.6ms to spit out a frame. That is less than a 10th of a second so you can’t really feel any delay at 16ms. But there is definitely a delay, even if it is hard to gauge scientifically it is there. The higher the frame rate the better the response time. At sub 30 FPS your actions start to feel sluggish and at 15 fps you actually notice the input delay. Crazy right … all those spoiled brat gamers that kitten and moan about 60 fps.

If you have ever wondered why most pro gamers play at minimum 120Hz screen and why they are willing to sink 500-600$ on a screen that characteristically has nothing really better than your average 200$ 60Hz screen – that is the reason. Having higher frame rate gives you an advantage. Fact. Thus highly competitive games are frame limited.

Look into it before spewing marketing bullkitten that the human eye “can’t see” more than 60 fps. The extra framerate is a godsend in intense scenes.

But yeah, look at the link of the poster above and tell me you don’t see a difference.

P.S: Regardless, I don’t know why you try to act like smart hipsters when you really aren’t. Keep your DirectX9 and keep your bad framerate. I asked for Dx 11/12 out of necessity. Whether you want it or not, I personally don’t really care. Its a feature that I want. Just like the people that want turret engi nerf. Whether one is easier than the other is irrelevant. People in this thread have given way more examples than they should have to justify the upgrade.

Whether it is a good or bad business decision is none of my or your business. I’m ready to pay full box price for it if I have to. You aren’t. Keep up with your 10 year old renderer.

What matters to me is that Gw2 is the only Dx 9 game on my computer at the moment. And it runs the worst. Go figure.

Ravenmoon.5318:

At 60 FPS your PC needs 16.6ms to spit out a frame. That is less than a 10th of a second so you can’t really feel any delay at 16ms. But there is definitely a delay, even if it is hard to gauge scientifically it is there. The higher the frame rate the better the response time. At sub 30 FPS your actions start to feel sluggish and at 15 fps you actually notice the input delay. Crazy right … all those spoiled brat gamers that kitten and moan about 60 fps.

If you have ever wondered why most pro gamers play at minimum 120Hz screen and why they are willing to sink 500-600$ on a screen that characteristically has nothing really better than your average 200$ 60Hz screen – that is the reason. Having higher frame rate gives you an advantage. Fact. Thus highly competitive games are frame limited.

I don’t care about those “pro gamers” .. and those pro-gamers surely would also
not play a game in the internet where the ping already invalidates everything
you wrote, if they really are soooo pro.

16.6ms for a frame .. fine .. but it needs maybe 20ms for the data of your opponent
to reach the sever, and another 20ms to arrive at your PC .. so that will bring down
your reaction time again to something like 25 fps.

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

At 60 FPS your PC needs 16.6ms to spit out a frame. That is less than a 10th of a second so you can’t really feel any delay at 16ms. But there is definitely a delay, even if it is hard to gauge scientifically it is there. The higher the frame rate the better the response time. At sub 30 FPS your actions start to feel sluggish and at 15 fps you actually notice the input delay. Crazy right … all those spoiled brat gamers that kitten and moan about 60 fps.

If you have ever wondered why most pro gamers play at minimum 120Hz screen and why they are willing to sink 500-600$ on a screen that characteristically has nothing really better than your average 200$ 60Hz screen – that is the reason. Having higher frame rate gives you an advantage. Fact. Thus highly competitive games are frame limited.

I don’t care about those “pro gamers” .. and those pro-gamers surely would also
not play a game in the internet where the ping already invalidates everything
you wrote, if they really are soooo pro.

16.6ms for a frame .. fine .. but it needs maybe 20ms for the data of your opponent
to reach the sever, and another 20ms to arrive at your PC .. so that will bring down
your reaction time again to something like 25 fps.

Personally I don’t think that arguing is of any use here any more. He will not accept your reasoning anyways.

The majority of players does not seem to have serious performance issues as they are not complaining, that’s why it would be a suboptimal investment for ANet.

If ANet have the spare time, ok, I don’t care. I’d still rather have them add an option to reduce particle effects, not because of fps but because of clutter.

Ravenmoon.5318:

But yeah, look at the link of the poster above and tell me you don’t see a difference.

I don’t see a difference there between 30 and 60 on that webpage.

But I do see a difference in GW2 between 30 and 60 fps.

And I would like to have better/more FPS in GW2, but do not care if this is achieved with DX9 or DX12 or something in between or something totally different.

Halvorn.9831:

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

At 60 FPS your PC needs 16.6ms to spit out a frame. That is less than a 10th of a second so you can’t really feel any delay at 16ms. But there is definitely a delay, even if it is hard to gauge scientifically it is there. The higher the frame rate the better the response time. At sub 30 FPS your actions start to feel sluggish and at 15 fps you actually notice the input delay. Crazy right … all those spoiled brat gamers that kitten and moan about 60 fps.

If you have ever wondered why most pro gamers play at minimum 120Hz screen and why they are willing to sink 500-600$ on a screen that characteristically has nothing really better than your average 200$ 60Hz screen – that is the reason. Having higher frame rate gives you an advantage. Fact. Thus highly competitive games are frame limited.

I don’t care about those “pro gamers” .. and those pro-gamers surely would also
not play a game in the internet where the ping already invalidates everything
you wrote, if they really are soooo pro.

16.6ms for a frame .. fine .. but it needs maybe 20ms for the data of your opponent
to reach the sever, and another 20ms to arrive at your PC .. so that will bring down
your reaction time again to something like 25 fps.

Personally I don’t think that arguing is of any use here any more. He will not accept your reasoning anyways.

The majority of players does not seem to have serious performance issues as they are not complaining, that’s why it would be a suboptimal investment for ANet.

If ANet have the spare time, ok, I don’t care. I’d still rather have them add an option to reduce particle effects, not because of fps but because of clutter.

You both have poor reasoning.

Are you blind? WvW lags. Mass fights in Gw2 lag. People are probably tired of asking for performance increase. You are either blind or new here not to see the slow to a clog whenever a massive battle occurs in Gw2.

You two basically agree that reaction time means jackkitten <o>
Also where would those pro players play the games if not on the internet … sometimes i feel like I’m explaining things to a thick brick wall.

It is pretty evident. More frames per second, more chances to spot a juke and react on it. You don’t even have to be a pro player to do this. You just need tad better reflexes than a dead cat.

But scientifically and biologically and mathematically what you said in your previous post is complete and utter crap. Stop embarrassing yourself.

Also there already is an option to limit particles. I guess you need a slider then?

All this discussion about if it’s needed is moot. It’s not economically feasable, so it’s not going to happen.

The argument that it’s not hard to do (so it should be done) is also not taking into account that they CANNNOT abandon the current DX9 client, so they would have to support both. That effectively doubles all development and testing costs from here on out. Again, not gonna happen.

MrH.2591:

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.

intel i7 3.4GHz
Nvidia geforce 770 GTX 2GB
corsair 2X 4GB
no performance loss, update your PC…..

Something to note: going by recent Steam Survey results, the number of people on DX9 only systems is very low. Platform support is not really an issue anymore, especially since DX12 will benefit much of the existing hardware (something not true of previous DX releases) as long as people upgrade to Windows 10.

It probably doesn’t make sense to worry about this until DX12 officially comes out though. Moving to DX11 doesn’t make any sense when the gains from 12 will be much larger, and waiting to see how Windows 10 adoption goes makes sense. If the majority of Windows 7 users move to Windows 10, moving to the new apis is more of an inevitability than a question; if GW2 wants to last a decade, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be looking to, it’s going to need to do graphics updates to stay with the times. Unlike GW1 there’s no fundamental limiting factor in the design that’s going to force a sequel to correct.

Also though, adopting new graphics features in addition to the multithreading benefits may result in costs from having to upgrade content pipelines and tool chains, so it’s not as simple as new renderer.

Brother Grimm.5176:

All this discussion about if it’s needed is moot. It’s not economically feasable, so it’s not going to happen.

The argument that it’s not hard to do (so it should be done) is also not taking into account that they CANNNOT abandon the current DX9 client, so they would have to support both. That effectively doubles all development and testing costs from here on out. Again, not gonna happen.

1. You have no basis to say it’s not economically feasible; that it’s lower priority than some other feature has nothing to do with feasibility and everything to do with opportunity costs. HoT is definitely more important than DX12, for instance. That doesn’t mean they can’t do a new renderer when it makes sense versus other development priorities.

2. It does not double development and testing costs; the marginal cost of supporting a new renderer is significantly less than the cost of supporting the entire game. So it increases costs by some amount, but it does not anywhere near double them. Many code changes will have nothing to do with the renderer, not all features will be supported by both, etc etc.

Brother Grimm.5176:

All this discussion about if it’s needed is moot. It’s not economically feasable, so it’s not going to happen.

The argument that it’s not hard to do (so it should be done) is also not taking into account that they CANNNOT abandon the current DX9 client, so they would have to support both. That effectively doubles all development and testing costs from here on out. Again, not gonna happen.

I have never suggested and I do not suggest dropping the Dx9 renderer. By all means, keep it. I simply won’t use it. If the abstraction is done right they won’t have to support both because they will write against the abstraction and not the Dx APIs directly. But that’s computer talk which you probably don’t understand.

@sorudo go away troll.

There are more than 1 type of i7 CPUs and your clock speed is kitten
Your GPU is old
It doesn’t matter how much or what kind of ram you have, this is a 32-bit app.

All in all, troll somewhere else OR consider getting out of starter zones OR consider playing on something other than medium. #kkthxbai

Meanwhile you spill your troll kitten here, I enjoy Bf hardline at ultra preset with over 60 frames per second. Same goes for DA: I.

Do you know why? Mantle and Dx 11 … that’s why

sorudo.9054:

MrH.2591:

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.

intel i7 3.4GHz
Nvidia geforce 770 GTX 2GB
corsair 2X 4GB
no performance loss, update your PC…..

its not about “performance loss”. its more about “the performance could be so much better”.

and i would like to see how you are not losing at least half of your fps during world bosses.

NoTrigger.8396:

sorudo.9054:

MrH.2591:

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.

intel i7 3.4GHz
Nvidia geforce 770 GTX 2GB
corsair 2X 4GB
no performance loss, update your PC…..

its not about “performance loss”. its more about “the performance could be so much better”.

and i would like to see how you are not losing at least half of your fps during world bosses.

Rule #1 of the internet – Do not feel the troll. Throw boulders at him. Do not feed him.

My 2 copper pieces inc… representing just my own experience. I currently run a GTX 760 + an i7@4.6 GHz.

Frame rate and agile feeling interface are major quality of life criteria. In large “Braveheart” style clusterkittens with particle effect hailstorm GW2’s frame rate, just like any other DX9 MMO’s I’ve ever tried, goes south to uncomfortable regions.
Meanwhile one CPU core hits 100% load, 2nd and the GPU bob around 50%. Two CPU cores are picking their noses and staring out of the window.

DX11 shows a different behaviour, the performance drop occurs much later, if at all, the GPU load hits 100% (and limits the performance) while all CPU cores are toiling equally.
Much better overall subjective experience.

From what I’ve read that’s quite typical. Alleviating the single core choke was a major design target for DX10+. That’s just the leap 9→11. 12 goes beyond.

Most gamers run hardware beyond single core and DX9 cards, implying resources lie fallow while at least in one of the game’s mainstays, the WvW, performance feels dissatisfactory.

From my point of view a new renderer would increase content accessibility and overall QoL, contributing to the game’s mid-term success. On the other hand the development since launch suggests ANet (or perhaps their overlords?) have not much interest in that. If you cannot deliver mere gear or build managers a new renderer is probably utopistic.

sorudo.9054:

intel i7 3.4GHz
Nvidia geforce 770 GTX 2GB
corsair 2X 4GB
no performance loss, update your PC…..

Yes man, update your potato as fast as possible. Gtx 770 and some i7 3,4ghz probably from second generation lol. Nice museum over there.

You gave yourself a good advice, now to work.

I think the point being made here Ravenmoon is the difference between 16.7ms per frame and 50ms is invalidated by server latency as well as differences in network latency between players. A player with a 50ms network latency advantage at 20FPS could still get their action in before you at 60FPS.

And yes, there are a lot of people who would laugh at your 60FPS minimum and ultra settings or it’s beneath you and the game should feel honored to have you still playing it attitude.

Behellagh.1468:

I think the point being made here Ravenmoon is the difference between 16.7ms per frame and 50ms is invalidated by server latency as well as differences in network latency between players. A player with a 50ms network latency advantage at 20FPS could still get their action in before you at 60FPS.

And yes, there are a lot of people who would laugh at your 60FPS minimum and ultra settings or it’s beneath you and the game should feel honored to have you still playing it attitude.

Sure if you are spamming #1 all the time it probably is invalidated. For anyone else, it isn’t. Or well, keep wondering why esports players kick your kitten all over the place with the same build. You know its not really hard to be an esports player. It just needs a good system and some dedication. Its not like a real sport where you need good equipment AND tons of training. Unlike you I’ve actually been at tournaments (not Gw2, obviously, too old to care that much now). Even with 80ms ping reaction time matters, big time. Server response time matters as well. But its mostly player reaction time.

Go watch some Quake Live tournament or something. Even with average of 50-80ms ping, player reaction time and aim wins the game.

Gw2 does have some good prediction tech and its very fast on the response time.

Also, be my guest and go and measure frame variance time. Because in Gw2 it is anything but a constant.

Above all … the QoL gains of having 60 fps are superb.

“Patching gw2 to DX12 would cost tons of money. I dont think it is worth to include this extra cost to heart of tons expansion.”

Master chief office

Eolirin.1830:

Brother Grimm.5176:

All this discussion about if it’s needed is moot. It’s not economically feasable, so it’s not going to happen.

The argument that it’s not hard to do (so it should be done) is also not taking into account that they CANNNOT abandon the current DX9 client, so they would have to support both. That effectively doubles all development and testing costs from here on out. Again, not gonna happen.

1. You have no basis to say it’s not economically feasible; that it’s lower priority than some other feature has nothing to do with feasibility and everything to do with opportunity costs. HoT is definitely more important than DX12, for instance. That doesn’t mean they can’t do a new renderer when it makes sense versus other development priorities.

If you can’t see it’s not economically feasable, you are blinded by your desire to have a new game feature. Please join us here REAL WORLD. Business don’t do things because YOU want them to UNLESS there is valid reasons to…..those includes making more money or at LEAST not harming your present income projections.

2. It does not double development and testing costs; the marginal cost of supporting a new renderer is significantly less than the cost of supporting the entire game. So it increases costs by some amount, but it does not anywhere near double them. Many code changes will have nothing to do with the renderer, not all features will be supported by both, etc etc.

If you have 2 clients, do you seriously think they don’t have to test every thing twice? Even if a feature doesn’t hit the renderer, both clients have to support the changes. I may have overstated the resources needed to support both, but you are certainly underestimating how much long term cost increase is being accepted when they decide to support 2 clients….no nearly 3 year old game would jack up their own costs just to appease a minority of the players with DX12 compatible hardware. ANY increase in long term overall costs without SIGNIFICANT guarantee of returns is the sure way to derail a successful business model. Nobody with an ounce of sense is going to do it.

The assumption that hardware poll on Steam is a valid indication of GW2 playerbase hardware is a HUGE (false) assumption. There are many casual players of GW2 that likely don’t even know what Steam is. Anet is NOT going to abandon those players.

Scoobaniec.9561:

sorudo.9054:

intel i7 3.4GHz
Nvidia geforce 770 GTX 2GB
corsair 2X 4GB
no performance loss, update your PC…..

Yes man, update your potato as fast as possible. Gtx 770 and some i7 3,4ghz probably from second generation lol. Nice museum over there.

You gave yourself a good advice, now to work.

this “museum” piece still outruns most you ppl’s PC’s by a mile, FPS is to me so fast i HAVE to use V-sync or i get tearing all the time.
do i have to mention ivy bridge maybe?

Brother Grimm.5176:

If you can’t see it’s not economically feasable, you are blinded by your desire to have a new game feature. Please join us here REAL WORLD. Business don’t do things because YOU want them to UNLESS there is valid reasons to…..those includes making more money or at LEAST not harming your present income projections.

I think players enjoying the game more with higher fps and more smooth gameplay will lead to more income for the company and it IS a valid reason. DX12 isn’t out officially yet, but according to various sources it offers a substantial performance boost, especially on older systems.

If you have 2 clients, do you seriously think they don’t have to test every thing twice? Even if a feature doesn’t hit the renderer, both clients have to support the changes. I may have overstated the resources needed to support both, but you are certainly underestimating how much long term cost increase is being accepted when they decide to support 2 clients….no nearly 3 year old game would jack up their own costs just to appease a minority of the players with DX12 compatible hardware. ANY increase in long term overall costs without SIGNIFICANT guarantee of returns is the sure way to derail a successful business model. Nobody with an ounce of sense is going to do it.

They don’t have to test anything gameplay wise on both renderers. So new content, boss mechanics, dungeon paths, open world encounters, events and so on don’t need any kind of test. Sure more complex things like the Karka and Wyvern unique shaders might need some testing, but not everything in the game. You can CHANGE the rendering engine on various older game engines to use a more powerful and state-of-the-art one, without the need to recheck everything in the game.

The assumption that hardware poll on Steam is a valid indication of GW2 playerbase hardware is a HUGE (false) assumption. There are many casual players of GW2 that likely don’t even know what Steam is. Anet is NOT going to abandon those players.

DX12 compatible hardware is hardware released within the last 6 years. NVIDIA already stated they will support DX12 on GTX 400 GPUs, released in 2009, that’s some impressive compatibility. Older machines have trouble playing the game already and DX12 will allow players with 6 year old hardware to enjoy the game more, with higher frame rates.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Above all … the QoL gains of having 60 fps are superb.

No one is debating if higher framerates are better. It’s quite irrelevant actually. The question is if doing this is a net benefit for the game. It really isn’t at this point because using DX9 is already taken into account in Anet’s business model.

Fact: Human average time reaction is about 200ms. This only includes the time needed by your body to receive the stimulus, calculated it and send the reaction to the parts of the body.
Now add the time needed by your finger to move to the correct key and press it (healing, dodge, utility, elite…), which may be some hundreds of milliseconds more.

I don’t think pc needing 33ms more to process the frame (60fps vs 20fps) has that meaningful impact in your ability to react faster.

PD: If you want to know how much time you lose reacting, go to this website http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime and do the test with the finger you’ll use to left click, in the right click of the mouse.

Ansau.7326:

Fact: Human average time reaction is about 200ms. This only includes the time needed by your body to receive the stimulus, calculated it and send the reaction to the parts of the body.
Now add the time needed by your finger to move to the correct key and press it (healing, dodge, utility, elite…), which may be some hundreds of milliseconds more.

I don’t think pc needing 33ms more to process the frame (60fps vs 20fps) has that meaningful impact in your ability to react faster.

PD: If you want to know how much time you lose reacting, go to this website http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime and do the test with the finger you’ll use to left click, in the right click of the mouse.

Hey, be my guest and assemble a 20fps potato PC and we duke it out in PvP.

Lol it’s Anet, more chance of getting downgraded to dx 1

Ravenmoon.5318:

Hey, be my guest and assemble a 20fps potato PC and we duke it out in PvP.

No need to assemble it, the laptop I use now can do it perfectly.
But it wouldn’t be fair. Tab, ESC, F2, F5, F8 don’t work, and I don’t have my Corsair M95 (so used to it it’s hard to shatter with the keyboard).

But hey, here is some of my footage with crappy performance in WvW zerguing where I survive much more than some melee even running a light armor profession with a quite offensive build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfL0myRvDGM

Ravenmoon.5318:

Ansau.7326:

Fact: Human average time reaction is about 200ms. This only includes the time needed by your body to receive the stimulus, calculated it and send the reaction to the parts of the body.
Now add the time needed by your finger to move to the correct key and press it (healing, dodge, utility, elite…), which may be some hundreds of milliseconds more.

I don’t think pc needing 33ms more to process the frame (60fps vs 20fps) has that meaningful impact in your ability to react faster.

PD: If you want to know how much time you lose reacting, go to this website http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime and do the test with the finger you’ll use to left click, in the right click of the mouse.

Hey, be my guest and assemble a 20fps potato PC and we duke it out in PvP.

Which would prove nothing. Using a lower DX standard would actually put everyone on a more even footing in PVP, making it more fair actually. Lowest Common Denominator.

Ansau.7326:

@Scoobaneic If newer mmo eat gw2 it will be cause of content, not performance. Gw2 needs raw power, and as time passes, newer hardware will come out with better IPC. With the upcoming of Skylake and Zen, it even make it harder to move to a newer api, which would take really long time.
Just to know, they started modifying gw1 engine in 2007 and it took 5 years till it became gw2 engine, and that’s modifying an existing game engine…

@Ravenmoon BF4 multiplayer is limited to 64 players, and there are fewer external things to process. In gw2, where it gets really messy is when +50vs+50 people engage.
There is a lot of stuff calculated by the cpu there (IA, players location, projectiles, range attack, AoE targeting, condition ticking, dps calculation, hard CC movements, pathing of transportation skills, dodges…). That’s easily several times the amount of data the cpu has to manage compared to bf4.
Things where the gpu does no job, and as a result, it doesn’t matter which api you use.
Just look at this video of how a gtx 660 can max the game with minimum of 45fps while recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1zWbnnjzOk

Also, the photos show how dx12 will work compared to dx11. Violet is game engine, and red/blue is graphic rendering. We can see that dx12 is really important when the game is very graphic demanding, which gw2 isn’t.
You cannot compare a AAA fps game, like BF4, performance with a mmo performance. BF4 has way more complex graphics than gw2, and that’s why mantle/dx12 improves so much the framerate.

Except you fail to realize the jump from Dx9 to just 11 would remedy the CPU bottleneck by using multiple threads.

The sole reason for that bottleneck is the under utilization of the CPU, which both Dx11 and 12 both improve DRAMATICALLY.

Dx12 would be an absolutely massive performance boost compared to Dx9, because it removes practically every bottleneck but GPU (which is extremely favorable) from the equation.

And saying that GW2 doesnt have the graphics for Dx12 to really matter is a moot point. When people are having low framerate in cities or with other players, a lighter CPU load would absolutely remedy this. Not to mention the more advanced graphics options that could be made available when there is less overhead.

Nobody is arguing that Dx11 or 12 wouldn’t be a lot faster. The argument is whether ANet feels the cost to do is worthwhile and that it’s not a trivial, quick change.

People have linked to Microsoft’s own guides to porting across Dx versions and the changes from Dx10 to Dx11 are relatively minor compared to the massive number of things that have to change going from Dx9 to Dx10. And that isn’t even changing the rest of the renderer code to multithread to scale to the number of available cores.

Of course it will look nicer. Of course it would likely run faster. But if ANet decides that the development time isn’t worth it’s …

As others have stated, ANet has prepared the for Dx11 too before launch, but performance was bad and they needed more time to work on it.

I think after HoT launch the time will be perfect to work on Dx11 tech upgrade. Or other optimizations.

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

People need stable FPS. Period. In any game.

Yeaaa … no. Refresh rate, the rate data is transmitted to your monitor is entirely independent to a game engine’s framerate. That’s what G/Free-Sync is looking to fix by only refreshing on frame completion so variance in time rendering frames isn’t exaggerated with V-Sync on while preventing tearing seen when V-Sync is off.

This gives a nice overview with pictures.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7582/nvidia-gsync-review

I just downloaded two F2P titles that are similar in graphics quality to GW2. One I can’t compare directly because everything at low level is instanced, but in both, including during open-world content in the other, I get consistent frame rates. No drops, no stuttering, etc. There is definitely room for more optimization with this title.

Behellagh.1468:

Yeaaa … no. Refresh rate, the rate data is transmitted to your monitor is entirely independent to a game engine’s framerate. That’s what G/Free-Sync is looking to fix by only refreshing on frame completion so variance in time rendering frames isn’t exaggerated with V-Sync on while preventing tearing seen when V-Sync is off.

This gives a nice overview with pictures.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7582/nvidia-gsync-review

Figure out what variable refresh rate and semi-variable refresh rate means. Even the article brings up the question.