Guild Wars 2

UmbraVictor.9842:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

BillFreist.1527:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Were there any optimizations for AMD CPUs?

Theoretically everyone should see an improvement.

Except people running the OSX client who seem to be reporting drastic decreases in FPS to almost unplayable levels on decent spec machines.
(I’d appreciate not being told to write this in the OSX Support thread because it does not have any sort of dev presence in it so I may as well be talking to a brick wall.)

On a more positive note – I do seem to have slightly better performance in Windows after the update, especially in Orr where I used to see a noticeable drop in performance.

Try the auto-detect settings and then remove anti-aliasing.

Actually, as I stated before anti-aliasing on actually increases performance with the latest bugs (about doubled the fps from 2 fps to 5 fps while fighting in a medium sized group). Additionally, even all the way down at the lowest settings we’re still getting horrible frame rates (I used to get 30+ fps on nearly the highest settings and now I get 5 fps).

BillFreist.1527:

To follow up, the client optimizations that I mentioned before went out with the build today. Let me know if you saw improvements. Feel free to list your specs too!

-Bill

Running an AMD A10-5800K @ 3.8 GHz with a GTX 660 and 8 GB RAM here, I suddenly gained ~20 FPS in pretty much every area compared to before. Great work from the crew.

the FPS has improved, also I have to note the rendering somehow seems better.
1 thing – when i select in gfx highest settings – it doesnt select the ultra options as well, not sure if its a new bug due to the patch or not.
Overall a nice improvment

So far I’ve nothing nothing greater than a “placebo” effect from being told this had happened.

I’ll need more time and testing in several locations to see if there was any real improvement.

UmbraVictor.9842:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

BillFreist.1527:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Were there any optimizations for AMD CPUs?

Theoretically everyone should see an improvement.

Except people running the OSX client who seem to be reporting drastic decreases in FPS to almost unplayable levels on decent spec machines.
(I’d appreciate not being told to write this in the OSX Support thread because it does not have any sort of dev presence in it so I may as well be talking to a brick wall.)

On a more positive note – I do seem to have slightly better performance in Windows after the update, especially in Orr where I used to see a noticeable drop in performance.

Try the auto-detect settings and then remove anti-aliasing.

Tried that .. no change still very poor FPS .. and additionally .. dropping everything else to OFF/LOW/NONE barely improved the FPS .. it went from 2 – 3 FPS to 5 – 6 FPS .. WvW remained an unplayable slide-show.

AMD Machine:

CPU: FX 8350 – OC’d to 4,8ghz
GPU: AMD R9 280X
RAM: 16GB 1866Mhz CL9
S.O: Windows 8
Tools: MSI Afterburner.

Overall FPS increase with character settings on low-low (like I was force to play before) 10 to 15.

The interesting part comes when I went into WvW with the same settings, (everything on high, except shadows) instead of getting 15-20fps (with low-low) I was reaching 50fps (huge improvement). After that, I tested high-high, in both character limit and quality, result: up to 25-30fps in a full clustered battle.

All I have to say is thank you so much and I hope you just don’t stop here and leave it be, because from an unplayable area you made it right now enjoyable for many AMD users like me that were quite upset about the performance given by this game in general.

Continue to improve and again thanks!

PD: Make the GPU work more on the game, because at this point, enabling supersample on a r9 280x there’s no FPS downgrade in anyway cause is by far one of the only options that really uses GPU, only putting it still to 50%-60%.
PD2: CPU on GW2 client in a stress enviroment such as WvW went up to 35-45% usage, from previously 25-35%.

Zerg experience got way better than it used to be. Overall framerate is the same, but I experience almost no brutal drops now. Thanks guys!

Mac Client too a HUGE performance hit due to this.

Game is mostly unplayable now .. 4 / 5 FPS is unacceptable..

Unplayable on Mac …

The Mac client has been rendered borderline inoperable. I was clocking 4-6FPS at MegaDestroyer, 5-7 at Golem Mark II.

Late 2012 iMac, 10.9.1/3.2GHz/8GB/675MX

I can barely play on my Mac now.
Late 2011
Mac OS X 10.9.1
2.8 GHz Intel Core i5
4 GB Ram

BillFreist.1527:

To follow up, the client optimizations that I mentioned before went out with the build today. Let me know if you saw improvements. Feel free to list your specs too!

-Bill

Are you guys aware that this patch broke the mac beta client? If so, any estimates on when you will fix it (meaning, give us at least the mediocre performance we had before)? Communication would be nice. The perception is that the mac beta client (beta for over a year!) is abandoned and the total silence on the issue two days after people said that the client was broken just feeds that perception. Would love to hear and see that the perception is wrong.

Some communication or at least acknowledgement would be great here, thanks devs!

PS: I’m still laggy and rubberbanding a-la GW1 style.

^ Acknowledgement would be amazing at this point. Posting in the mac forums, cross-posting to other forums and submitting support tickets has yielded nothing.

massive problems here with the mac-client, fps in WvW before edge of the mists patch around 35, now i hardly get it to 15 with all settings at lowest (and i wasn’t even on the new map, it’s worse there)…

iMac late 2013 27’’
OSX 10.9.1
3,2 GHz Intel Core i5
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1024 MB
GW2-Client-Version: 1.0.009524

OK here goes but as we Mac folks have experienced in the past this will probably take months to fix if at all, and no one at ANet will probably address us directly other than to ban or suspend us for “not being positive”. Here you go ANet.

Mac mini-late 2012
2.3 GHz intel core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 4000
OSX 10.9.1

Now I await my suspension…again.

I’d like to confirm performance gains most notably during high load scenarios. I see less frame dips when the action increases and it makes a notable improvement to the experience. Much appreciated. Hopefully you can get the mac client sorted for these guys soon but thank you starting to make headway in game optimization.

Just completed Marionette just 10 minutes from this message.

The skill bug started again as of today.

Even in Fractals was was. 4 of my friends are also complaining. They are from EU/NA.

I’m gonna stop GW2 for today.

Genoss Hazard.7528:

Yes, a week into the Wintersday event this skill lag/long delay came out of the blue, weeks prior to that day I played with no skill lag and I could do world bosses and zerg in wvw and experience no issues, but this lag came out of nowhere and the game was unplayable regardless of me being in (PvE, PvP or WvW. Overflow/empty zone)

I could not play the game, the only time the game was actually playable was past 1AM. 5 weeks have passed and the problem persists, however last Thursday the skill lag was reduced significantly but I would get lag spikes of 2-3s, however I still get delays of 20s+ when large groups of players are nearby.

It’s really upsetting because I just want to play the game and have fun. In addition I would also like to mention that there is no conceivable reason that it could be a problem originating from my side, my pc and internet were able to meet the requirements for GW2, I was able to run the game perfectly before this issue arose.

I’m positive that this problem persists for many people, and I urge arenanet to delve into the problem to find a solution instead of creating more problems every two weeks.
Sincerely
~ An upset player.

Thank you Arenanet, I notice the improvements. The horrible unplayable lag just disappeared sometime last week and I have returned to playing normally prior to the whole issue that arose early Wintersday ; however it took you far too long to repair this issue (approximately +-9 weeks. Some people have probably been experiencing this for longer) which is unacceptable.
But I’m pleased with the results.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Someone asked for acknowledgment. You got it! Bill is active in this thread as other devs may be as well, but here’s a little added note:

Some of you have noticed improvements, and that’s good. We’re aware that others still are having latency issues, particularly our Mac users. The team is working on the issue/issues.

While there’s no precise timeframe for a roll-out, the Production Director (that’s one of our top guys) stopped by last night to specifically state that this was actively being worked on. See this post. I think that’s relevant and should reassure you these issues are on the to-do list.

Thank you Gray and Bill

It just brings out so much negative impression to Anet when bugs like this happens.

I’m not a mac-user. Problem for me was fixed 2 days ago on first optimization patch together with the Living Story, then yesterday after a few patch the problem is back.

I have no FPS issue. And FPS is never a problem in any game. it’s the feeling of responsiveness when your hands trigger a button, which is more important.

As of this message, I just got DC from Lyssa 10 min ago, when its down to 15%, and when i got back from DC, I get no loot. Please stop this world boss junk. It’s a nice name but bad implementation. You get bad name. means it’s bad for business. Make it instance, and people need to register and also needs to have sufficient players to register before it even starts/transport us to a different instance.

You guys need to hire Signs of Kelani. He said it all and ARENA you MUST LISTEN when your customer speaks.

http://youtu.be/EF_RfD1qPsE

Have unique contents or world bosses that is only crafted for top players not the average 99% AFK-er with Tags.

Maybe this is not important at all to the vast abundance of AFK-ers

Lag is so bad, didn’t want to continue further. Just get basic stuffs done

I haven’t been able to play much the past few days as I am traveling for work, but I did get on last night and noticed a drastic (for me) improvement in my graphics. =) I haven’t been in any large group events yet, so I can’t comment on the (usually) very low FPS there.

AMD Quad-Core with Turbo-Core 2.8
AMD Radeon HD 7640 w/512 Memory
6 GB RAM

So, thank you very much for whatever you did! =)

Oh…also, I never experience the DC issue. Rarely experience any lag, as well.

I just logged in after a long time not going on my main (ele) to do world boss or large group events as fear of frustration of skill queue-ed and getting stuck.

Surprisingly. at Jorlag event 3 hours after server reset, my at the end of Phase 1 and entire Phase 2, my ele seems to be skill queue-ed and constant rubber banding.

I can’t play my ele with this bug, and I stop playing thief (other than farming). Now what ?

Any update with the fix for mac users? It has been a week since the mac beta client was broken. I assume you aren’t planning on releasing another chapter of Living Story while this is still broken.

Still getting horrible lag in game. Has been going on since last patch.

Just to give an example… I accidently clicked ‘Craft All" on a stack of Orichalcum Plated Dowel’s that I did NOT intend to craft. I IMMEDATELY clicked cancel. Lag spike hits and thus the crafting did not cancel and they all got built.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP THIS kitten LAG WE CAN"T EVEN ENJOY THE GAME ANYMORE!!!! SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m Starting to hate this kitten game LAG has became so common in this game Create us a Oceanic server or something PLEAS!!!!!!!!!!!@#

Thought I’d chime in just to make sure the devs are aware that the issue is still very much alive for a lot of us.

I began playing Guild Wars 2 around the beginning of 2013 on my HP Pavilion Laptop. It wasn’t the greatest piece of equipment, but with graphic settings set to “lowest” I was able to run dungeons or even participate in World Boss/Temple events. Sure the FPS would drop substantially, but “Skill Lag” remained unseen. I’ve since retired that Laptop and upgraded to PC I built myself(specs in attached picture). Other than that nothing else has changed. Still on the same network with the same ISP. Recently “Skill Lag” is so predominant that it is getting harder and harder to justify playing this game. I’ll admit there are good days where lag is rare and skill lag is no where to be seen. However, more often than not it isn’t one of those “good” days.

I’d also like to say I agree with a previous poster who mentioned something about methods of obtaining Dragonite Ore in high quantities that doesn’t require congested world events(world boss/temples) or WvW. As all of those things usually lead to skill lag and even in some cases disconnections.

Hope to hear or even witness some good news soon. Starting to regret buying this game and supporting Arenanet with my monthly gem purchases.

Yeah, FPS is fine, but I’ve had continually worsening (though intermittent) problems with skill lag and what seems like 100% dropped packets for 5-10 seconds at a time. I can run around, but nothing else is moving (except things that were running in a straight line keep going, I assume due to position prediction).

There have been several full server crashes.

Dungeons and Fractals – anything requiring dodging – is completely unplayable.

I just had a few friends come back after a long absence and they’re about to quit again due to the horrific lag.

Could we, at the very least, get an in-game representation of ping so we have an idea when this is happening? If I see my ping at 500-600ms, I might skip out on dungeons rather than join and get continually frustrated.

Also: if you guys are interested in having players help with some testing, I’d be happy to help in any way possible. I really just want my pre-January GW2 experience back.

timmyf.1490:

Also: if you guys are interested in having players help with some testing, I’d be happy to help in any way possible. I really just want my pre-January GW2 experience back.

Seconded. Also I’d like my pre-15th November 2012 GW2 gaming experience back. Something you did in that patch really jammed a big spanner in the works.

Any update on the fix for Mac users.. its not like this is a cosmetic issue or some other trivial problem for us.. as it stands now i’ve stopped playing completely since the break in the mac client is so horrible its not even worth playing as low FPS (2 – 4 fps) induces migraines.

crash all the time in WVW very irritating and frustrating. I have recently began playing again and now experience this.

Makes me crave the games that are coming out soon even more.

Did Anet revert the changes? The performance now feels worse.

Genoss Hazard.7528:

Genoss Hazard.7528:

Yes, a week into the Wintersday event this skill lag/long delay came out of the blue, weeks prior to that day I played with no skill lag and I could do world bosses and zerg in wvw and experience no issues, but this lag came out of nowhere and the game was unplayable regardless of me being in (PvE, PvP or WvW. Overflow/empty zone)

I could not play the game, the only time the game was actually playable was past 1AM. 5 weeks have passed and the problem persists, however last Thursday the skill lag was reduced significantly but I would get lag spikes of 2-3s, however I still get delays of 20s+ when large groups of players are nearby.

It’s really upsetting because I just want to play the game and have fun. In addition I would also like to mention that there is no conceivable reason that it could be a problem originating from my side, my pc and internet were able to meet the requirements for GW2, I was able to run the game perfectly before this issue arose.

I’m positive that this problem persists for many people, and I urge arenanet to delve into the problem to find a solution instead of creating more problems every two weeks.
Sincerely
~ An upset player.

Thank you Arenanet, I notice the improvements. The horrible unplayable lag just disappeared sometime last week and I have returned to playing normally prior to the whole issue that arose early Wintersday ; however it took you far too long to repair this issue (approximately +-9 weeks. Some people have probably been experiencing this for longer) which is unacceptable.
But I’m pleased with the results.

For the past few days I have been experiencing horrible lag. The nature of this lag is that I would receive lag spikes that usually occur for 3 minutes or longer, be it in LA (under Attack!) a simple dungeon or any part of the game.

When this lag spike happens my character’s skills begin flashing, nearby player characters walk in predetermined directions into walls/obstructions, nearby npcs don’t move nor can I move my character.

After the lag spike subsides it seems as if my computer screen is trying to “catch up” with the game, after it has “caught up” I can resume playing but I have a delay (skill lag/chat lag) of up to 10s or more making playability impossible.

Furthermore I would like to mention that prior the lag spike I am playing perfectly (no skill lag or anything)

Sometimes I would exit the game and restart the client, attempting to log in I would receive multiple errors or if I manage to get into the character select screen, select a character and end up with an infinite loading screen.

When this happens I just give up with the game and try to play the following day.

I’m very disappointed with this and I hope that it is resolved soon.

So with regard to this thread the lag is now getting worse. Why? Especially if the game is getting more optimised. It was so bad this reset weekend in WvW that any, and I mean any, 3 way battle had crippling lag with no skills at all being able to be used. In every single one I was involved with we had to bail because there was no point.

If its due to the large numbers congregating for the LA event then you guys should design your events around what your servers are able to handle.

Last two weeks i cant even play WvW normally i just run into enemy zerg and im dead. :/
I did not have that much problems previously. I do tend to use Engi with granades (no autoattack so im as good as a practice dummy) or wells-necro – read heavy AOE – the most usefull skills are not even triggering i just stand there (or walk around) until im dead. WvW kind of became pointless

my specs if it helps:
CPU:i7-3770k @3.5GHz 3.5GHz,
RAM: 8Gb
GPU: AMD RAdeon HD 6700

please make wvw fun for me again

Dramatically reduced frame rate when encountering large zergs certainly makes it much harder to survive, let alone skills that won’t fire, is there some way the game client can somehow sense these situations and automatically scale back the graphics in some way to help the situation out?

I hope this time the optimizations wont break the Mac client again. (not sure if it’s been fixed or not)

Awesome post Bill!

Looking forward to the changes. Here is a question about client side/frame rate. Will the game engine ever reach a point where it performs adequately under situations with spam and zergs?

This is one of the biggest focal points of gw2 (large player events) but its also one of the weakest aspects of the game in terms of performance.

Another question is: When you make performance changes for the game engine, is it with the average hardware in mind (low end cpu, low-mid range gpu) or the highest tiers of hardware?

And my last one: In regards to amd cpus (specifically the fx series), does you and your team have difficulty getting it to run as well as intel cpus? In the future will we see the game engine move towards being more multi-threaded?

I also wanted to add, that the changes you pushed out several weeks ago have been extremely positive on my end. In many areas I have seen around a 15-20fps improvement. Though, areas with lots of zerging going on still suffers and coe story mode dungeon still runs poorly (I only get 23fps at the entrance and through out most of the dungeon).

Thanks again and keep up the good work

Thanks for the info Bill.

Although, I do wonder; how much of an improvement we would see for high end systems, if GW2 supported DirectX 11 and was compiled and optimized for 64-bit CPUs/OS (as a separate executable)? Is it even possible with the current implementation?

BillFreist.1527:

Keep in mind that there are a few very different issues being mixed up here. “Skill Lag” as discussed in the original post here is referring directly to Game Server CPU usage. I want to ensure we are all on the same page, so here’s a little refresher […]

Thanks so much for this post, very infomative and useful. I’m really hoping you guys will add some way to reduce the number of effects/animations on skills — not only is it a contributor to this issue, but when there’s a big zerg all spamming skills in an area it really becomes almost completely impossible to see what’s going on…

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Dramatically reduced frame rate when encountering large zergs certainly makes it much harder to survive, let alone skills that won’t fire, is there some way the game client can somehow sense these situations and automatically scale back the graphics in some way to help the situation out?

On the other hand, the drop in framerate can be very handy in WvW.

Say for example, you’re approaching a tower and are about to round the corner… Suddenly a wild fps drop appears!

Queue internal monologue “My spidey senses tell me there’s a large zerg nearby, I must be cautious.” Slowly you creep to the corner, peek around, and what do you see. Nothing but red names and spell effects as far as the eye can see. Calmly you about face and walk away telling yourself you didn’t really want in that tower anyway or pop every stealth/stability/immunity you have and hope to get in the door.

As much as I’m sure we’ll miss that spidey sense feeling of a nearby zerg, I’m very excited to see the upcoming performance improvements!

To be honest, I’m not finding the skill lag too bad lately. Compared to what the game was like at launch, things run silky smooth. However… I know a lot of people who’re still running into a couple of bugs that seem vaguely related to triggering skills and abilities and lag.

The first one is the weapon switch bug. For whatever reason, you’re simply unable to switch weapons using a hotkey (and so are forced to manually switch using the arrows in the [H]ero menu). This seems to occur more frequently when there’s a bunch of stuff going on in the vicinity.

The other one only seems to happen when you’re near a mass of players (doing the marionette, the wurm, one of the dragons, etc). This one locks out your ability to trigger any skill (except some of the instant cast ones like stun breaks). The only way to get your skills working again is to log out, change zones, or to go down and get revived.

They’ve been around a long time now. Any chance they’ll be fixed when these improvements roll out?

BillFreist.1527:

• Player/Client -> GameServer bandwidth
  • Most cases usually come from players having other heavy traffic going on while playing the game, weak WiFi signals, or their ISP is having difficulties.
• GameServer -> Player/Client bandwidth
  • This can happen sometimes in our datacenters during peak hours or when hardware is having difficulties, but normally resolves very quickly.

Let’s be honest, there is a LOT more GamerServer -> Player/Client bandwidth issues than there are the other way around.

I really hope the graphics optimizations aren’t just delete and turn down graphics in game. I have a beefy machine that isn’t being used in this game, and no offense Anet, but this sucks. You guys are running a DX9 game in 2014… you may want to hire new engine engineers…

Can we expect more client framerate improvements in the near future? Something to tone down the overflood of spell effects during big fights? Maybe a slider or something to adjust for people that want more frames instead of huge explosions of effects where you can’t even tell what’s happening?

Fast question.

Why is it that open pve content I dont skill lag in zergs (even at low frame rates) but then in PvP solo tournaments I Always have 1sec skill lag no matter what?

BillFreist.1527:

and/or effect spam (which causes a lot of overdraw, which can cripple even the beefiest hardware )

Thanks for the update Bill!

Even on high settings, I rarely run into noticeable lag in big groups. I’m more concerned with playability in those situations – there are frequently so many effects going off that I can’t see what’s going on.

Take for example the Aetherblade Thugs in the current living story. When they’re upscaled, they’ve got a massive attack that can 1-shot even the most tanky players at full health. The attack is probably telegraphed so it’s dodgeable, but there is so much effect spam that seeing it is impossible.

Ideally, I’d love a new option or two in the settings menu. One for enemy effects (I definitely still want to see them, especially those WvW Meteor Showers). And one for friendly effects. If it’s doable, something like All/Party/Max # per second/None as options. That would help so much. I really enjoy all the pretty effects, but when they get me killed and I have no way to adjust them, it is really frustrating.

BillFreist.1527:

Keep in mind that there are a few very different issues being mixed up here. “Skill Lag” as discussed in the original post here is referring directly to Game Server CPU usage. I want to ensure we are all on the same page, so here’s a little refresher:
—-

-Bill

Hey Bill have you ever considered using Maxeler for servers? It’s great way to speed up algorithms, especially while and for loops.