Guild Wars 2

I don’t have an amazing PC by any means (a Phenom II X4 @ 3.3Ghz, Radeon HD 7850, 8GB of RAM), but performance in a lot of cases is lower-than-expected, especially during world events and WvW. I’ve tried plenty of different drivers, OS setups, settings, etc. but I’m 99% sure my processor is the bottleneck.

The Tech Support forums has loads of posts about low performance on top-end both Intel and AMD processors, with or without overclocking. There’s posts about how ArenaNet “doesn’t care” about such performance issues either, talk of how the game was designed for consoles, never going to be fixed, ArenaNet refusing help from NVIDIA and/or AMD, etc.

Every time there’s a new patch, I eagerly check out the notes and look for any sign of performance changes, and usually end up disappointed with the lack of any.

I really want to believe that ArenaNet does care, and are secretly doing some behind-the-scenes update that’ll bring forth crazy performance improvements and other optimizations, but lack of any mention of anything performance-related is pretty discouraging I even tried asking about it on the questionnaire post on the official Facebook page recently (yesterday) but didn’t even get a “thanks for the question” response (other questions prior to mine did).

Does ArenaNet really not care about improving performance? Or is it secretly being worked on (a hint might be nice I suppose)?

Guild Wars 2 is possibly the best MMORPG I’ve played, and I recommended it to all my friends (who haven’t purchased it). The game looks beautiful, but I just dislike how it performs currently :/ I mean it’s playable to an extent I suppose, but it could be better.

I don’t really want a timeframe (one would be nice I guess if it could be given), just would love to see something stating that it’s at least being looked into currently…

infantrydiv.1620:

Performance is a HUGE issue for me in WvW as well.

WvW will never be playable as intended for most people in GW2’s current performance state.

That’s pretty disappointing to hear :/

Was just telling my friend a little while ago about how large-scale the battles could be in WvW, but I doubt he would really be able to enjoy such battles at all (his computer is notably worse than mine).

Well, blame the bandwagoners that thought it’d be cool to stack on a few servers and then consider themselves above all the PvE peasants with their l33t 11111111.

Ah, well I think the problem is that it’s just advantageous to bandwagon on the biggest servers, and it’s a problem created by the players, and A-net too in game design.

In WvW at least numbers and coverage are the defining factor. In PvE this isn’t nearly as important but bigger servers get stuff done faster, and thus tons of people guest… which creates these problems. So you get a situation is that if something doesn’t work to

• Zerg it
• If it fails, send a bigger zerg
• If that fails, keep zerging
• If that fails, complain on the forums that your opponents are just mindless zerging nightcappers and that you could take at least 5 of them if you fought fairly.

I don’t really know what to do, except maybe make it very cheap to move to lower populated servers to even things out a bit.

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, blame the bandwagoners that thought it’d be cool to stack on a few servers and then consider themselves above all the PvE peasants with their l33t 11111111.

Ah, well I think the problem is that it’s just advantageous to bandwagon on the biggest servers, and it’s a problem created by the players, and A-net too in game design.

In WvW at least numbers and coverage are the defining factor. In PvE this isn’t nearly as important but bigger servers get stuff done faster, and thus tons of people guest… which creates these problems. So you get a situation is that if something doesn’t work to

• Zerg it
• If it fails, send a bigger zerg
• If that fails, keep zerging
• If that fails, complain on the forums that your opponents are just mindless zerging nightcappers and that you could take at least 5 of them if you fought fairly.

I don’t really know what to do, except maybe make it very cheap to move to lower populated servers to even things out a bit.

I don’t quite get what you’re trying to say in-regards to overall game performance?

It’s a CPU, graphic card hungry game.

I have a top of the range PC, SLI, and my fans are flat out at times, pretty solid at 60fps (With everything up max), but drops to 30fps sometimes when I get in a big zerg.

A little bit of lag and skill delay on the odd occasion, not to often enough to concern me.

From what i’ve learned they have a failure of an engine with outdated servers, they can’t do anything anymore.

because living story > performance

I built my gaming rig using an OC’d Intel 3770k and OC’d EVGA Superclocked GTX 660ti. It is a beast, I get very nice frame rates in Crysis 3 with all settings maxed, but GW2 brings my system to its knees.

That said, it is far easier to say the game engine isn’t very efficient than to actually streamline it. MMORPG game engines tend to be far more complex than game engines designed for FPSs. So I don’t expect much improvement coming to performance any time soon.

On the other hand, Anet actually could have used CryEngine 3 (or CryEngine2) to power their game, and it would’ve looked gorgeous, just absolutely stunning. There was an mmo called “Project D” that was being developed for Japan or Korea (i forget) that used CE3 as a game engine and it was an RPG and had fantasy art style exactly like GW2 but with more detail and richer effects.

A gamer can dream I guess.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

On the other hand, Anet actually could have used CryEngine 3 (or CryEngine2) to power their game, and it would’ve looked gorgeous, just absolutely stunning. There was an mmo called “Project D” that was being developed for Japan or Korea (i forget) that used CE3 as a game engine and it was an RPG and had fantasy art style exactly like GW2 but with more detail and richer effects.

CryEngine might render everything nice a pretty but I doubt it can handle rendering multiple player, casting mulitple spell, and running around without it imploding.

One engine that can handle multiplayers is the Unreal Engine, but forget it if you want every thing pretty.

The GW engine is trying to be both pretty and able to handle multiple players doing multiple things.

GW Engine might not be there yet, but they sure are getting closer.

Any more feedback?

I have a mid-range laptop with a 680M 2GB, i7 2770k and 12 GB of RAM and a PC with 2 GTX 780s, a 3rd gen i7 3770k and 32GB RAM. My laptop plays the game better. Go figure, for some reason mid-range laptops play the game the best.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

I built my gaming rig using an OC’d Intel 3770k and OC’d EVGA Superclocked GTX 660ti. It is a beast, I get very nice frame rates in Crysis 3 with all settings maxed, but GW2 brings my system to its knees.

That said, it is far easier to say the game engine isn’t very efficient than to actually streamline it. MMORPG game engines tend to be far more complex than game engines designed for FPSs. So I don’t expect much improvement coming to performance any time soon.

On the other hand, Anet actually could have used CryEngine 3 (or CryEngine2) to power their game, and it would’ve looked gorgeous, just absolutely stunning. There was an mmo called “Project D” that was being developed for Japan or Korea (i forget) that used CE3 as a game engine and it was an RPG and had fantasy art style exactly like GW2 but with more detail and richer effects.

A gamer can dream I guess.

Are you talking about Project Divine being funded and developed by Chandler Thomelson? …Because it’s being developed as an isometric Diablo-esque game in UDK.

Nuka Cola.8520:

From what i’ve learned they have a failure of an engine with outdated servers, they can’t do anything anymore.

And where have you heard this?

I’ve heard plenty of stories from other people about why performance is the way it is currently, but I really just want something official…

They’ve been working on performance quite a bit. I do think all the culling changes made a pretty big difference in big encounters.(so long as you’re willing to look at a bunch of the same character models.)

I’ve got several answers from support and my problem isn’t internet nor my PC. With culling things are getting worse even with all same characters, got disconnections, crashes, errors of sorta and still i can’t play wvw or events with more than 15persons. I feel i’m losing a big of fun in this game, I hope they will improve as soon as possibile.

it took them years to create the game, which means building on top of an old direct 9 engine, when it was released, direct has increase to 11. They can’t upgrade the engine since the game revolves around 9.

MMOs are based on CPU bottlenecking, not GPU. In any case, you can simply run the game in low, with sample native, it’s the same game essentally (I run amd 965 & gtx 570, with a dedicated physix card)

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

That is so important! Thanks for that!

Thank you Team! Dwayna bless you

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

This is exactly what I wanted to hear! Thanks for the response

They just need more options to scale things down even more. Like low definition animations and massively reduced particle count. Reduce draw distance of landscapes, models (just draw nameplates).

I quote myself from another thread:

“We need to see:

1. enemies and their animations (especially their red aoe rings)
then
2. other players (including helpful skills like healing spring where we can jump into when needed)
then
3. other player’s animations (if needed.. please give us the option to turn it off, we do not really need to see all the ele’s fireball animations!!)

The current priority doesn’t make that much sense at all."

amd cpu are lowering the fpc they are junk sorry

Espionage.3685:

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, blame the bandwagoners that thought it’d be cool to stack on a few servers and then consider themselves above all the PvE peasants with their l33t 11111111.

Ah, well I think the problem is that it’s just advantageous to bandwagon on the biggest servers, and it’s a problem created by the players, and A-net too in game design.

In WvW at least numbers and coverage are the defining factor. In PvE this isn’t nearly as important but bigger servers get stuff done faster, and thus tons of people guest… which creates these problems. So you get a situation is that if something doesn’t work to

• Zerg it
• If it fails, send a bigger zerg
• If that fails, keep zerging
• If that fails, complain on the forums that your opponents are just mindless zerging nightcappers and that you could take at least 5 of them if you fought fairly.

I don’t really know what to do, except maybe make it very cheap to move to lower populated servers to even things out a bit.

I don’t quite get what you’re trying to say in-regards to overall game performance?

Easy. Tons of people in one place = massive zergs = unplayable lag = long queues = terrible experience and performance.

I built my computer for performance.
I have an AMD 1090T Six-core CPU, 16Gbs of RAM, and two ATI 6850s in XFire.

I HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES.

I have no idea why… A friend has a Quad-core, previous gen CPU, 8Gbs or RAM, and a single nVidia video card and his graphics are smooth and fluid where mine stutter and jerk all the time, my frame rate is continuously below 20 in major conflicts, and even where there is NO ONE as soon as I spin my camera I get jerky movements… Do I need more RAM? A third video card? An eight-core CPU?

R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

You defensively need more folks working to improve performance. Because since release, hence, since the betas, the performance even on high-end PCs is bad. And when talking about WvW it’s extremely terrible. Just check the CPU/GPU usage and the framerates in the pic below… Looks like an 8 (eight!) core flagship cpu clocked at 4.6GHz isn’t enough…

GW2 doesnt need minor improvements. It needs a complete rendering engine overhaul. As you see above it doesnt make use of an 8 core or 4&HT CPU. It doesnt even make use of 4 cores and the biggest flaw is the rendering thread which only runs on one core. The graphics cards are under utilized because that thread is not providing enough data to them. The instructions in that thread need to be split in order for this game to properly utilize modern CPUs and run properly. Also: a console version of the game is impossible before this happens.

But it is not just client performance. ANET has continuously ignored even server side performance. Skill lag in zerg events is ridiculous. Hell the whole zerging gameplay is horrible in its own right.
ANET needs to design better gameplay by spreading players out more.

Espionage.3685:

I don’t have an amazing PC by any means (a Phenom II X4 @ 3.3Ghz, Radeon HD 7850, 8GB of RAM), but performance in a lot of cases is lower-than-expected, especially during world events and WvW. I’ve tried plenty of different drivers, OS setups, settings, etc. but I’m 99% sure my processor is the bottleneck.

The Tech Support forums has loads of posts about low performance on top-end both Intel and AMD processors, with or without overclocking. There’s posts about how ArenaNet “doesn’t care” about such performance issues either, talk of how the game was designed for consoles, never going to be fixed, ArenaNet refusing help from NVIDIA and/or AMD, etc.

Every time there’s a new patch, I eagerly check out the notes and look for any sign of performance changes, and usually end up disappointed with the lack of any.

I really want to believe that ArenaNet does care, and are secretly doing some behind-the-scenes update that’ll bring forth crazy performance improvements and other optimizations, but lack of any mention of anything performance-related is pretty discouraging I even tried asking about it on the questionnaire post on the official Facebook page recently (yesterday) but didn’t even get a “thanks for the question” response (other questions prior to mine did).

Does ArenaNet really not care about improving performance? Or is it secretly being worked on (a hint might be nice I suppose)?

Guild Wars 2 is possibly the best MMORPG I’ve played, and I recommended it to all my friends (who haven’t purchased it). The game looks beautiful, but I just dislike how it performs currently :/ I mean it’s playable to an extent I suppose, but it could be better.

I don’t really want a timeframe (one would be nice I guess if it could be given), just would love to see something stating that it’s at least being looked into currently…

It is most certainly the bottleneck. I run a 3750k overclocked to 4.7GHz and I max out my core 1 of my CPU playing GW2. I play no other game that has even come close. Ive been playing some FF14 and it doesnt go past 50%, with more consistent FPS in large events. Mind you I find GW2 to be orders of magnitude more beautiful the FF14.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

This might sound harsh but considering how terribly unoptimized this game is, it is time to consider letting go of this “performance team”, and start hiring some ppl that knows how to optimize it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

But are you going to rework the engine from the ground up? Because that seems like what it will take.

‘Tweaks’ aren’t going to to do anything when the problems are so clearly fundamental.

It is a shame, because GW1 had such solid performance for it’s era. It was actually kind of amazing. What happened at Anet? How did you guys get stuck in the past?

I blame my comp not the game

kahzee.6042:

I blame my comp not the game

Maybe your comp is not so great, but look at Savov’s screenshot upthread.

The game needs DX11 and 64bit client, too. I am getting out of memory errors daily, because of the 32bit limitations.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Out-of-memory-error

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

Tell them they need to better utilize the video cards and rely less on the CPU.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

And you can send them my regards. Is always good to know your people is working on this

Soji Vec.1708:

I built my computer for performance.
I have an AMD 1090T Six-core CPU, 16Gbs of RAM, and two ATI 6850s in XFire.

I HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES.

I have no idea why… A friend has a Quad-core, previous gen CPU, 8Gbs or RAM, and a single nVidia video card and his graphics are smooth and fluid where mine stutter and jerk all the time, my frame rate is continuously below 20 in major conflicts, and even where there is NO ONE as soon as I spin my camera I get jerky movements… Do I need more RAM? A third video card? An eight-core CPU?

R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S

Its your cpu. AMD cpu’s are pretty bad for single core performance…..and this game is all about that. I would venture to guess a regular i5 (mid range) from intel will give you more performance than your cpu.

The so called next generation mmo uses an old generation 32bit client. So it doesn’t matter if you have 32gb of ram because Gw2 will only use 2gb max.

Sky.7610:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

This might sound harsh but considering how terribly unoptimized this game is, it is time to consider letting go of this “performance team”, and start hiring some ppl that knows how to optimize it.

This! Performance is going backward so unless the performance team hasn’t actually implemented anything yet…………….

Geemo.6018:

The so called next generation mmo uses an old generation 32bit client. So it doesn’t matter if you have 32gb of ram because Gw2 will only use 2gb max.

You do realize the limitation for 32-bit is 4GB, right?

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

Does this “team” happen to be comprised of one person and a monkey?

Take some people off the Living Story team and have them help with performance. We all know that having new boring content every two weeks isn’t working.

Never.8571:

Geemo.6018:

The so called next generation mmo uses an old generation 32bit client. So it doesn’t matter if you have 32gb of ram because Gw2 will only use 2gb max.

You do realize the limitation for 32-bit is 4GB, right?

Operating systems take 1-2 gigabytes by itself, therefore increasing the consumed ram would actually break a large group of computers that run under 32 bit.

Also I have been increasing in framerate, especially when they removed culling. They’ve done a fantastic job on performance updates for one year.

Chase.8415:

Never.8571:

Geemo.6018:

The so called next generation mmo uses an old generation 32bit client. So it doesn’t matter if you have 32gb of ram because Gw2 will only use 2gb max.

You do realize the limitation for 32-bit is 4GB, right?

Operating systems take 1-2 gigabytes by itself, therefore increasing the consumed ram would actually break a large group of computers that run under 32 bit.

I honestly don’t even know why Microsoft continues to produce 32-bit operating systems. Most modern processors are 64-bit compatible and everyone should be running 64-bit anyway.

Also I have been increasing in framerate, especially when they removed culling. They’ve done a fantastic job on performance updates for one year.

[/quote]

God Of Fissures.8627:

Chase.8415:

Never.8571:

Geemo.6018:

The so called next generation mmo uses an old generation 32bit client. So it doesn’t matter if you have 32gb of ram because Gw2 will only use 2gb max.

You do realize the limitation for 32-bit is 4GB, right?

Operating systems take 1-2 gigabytes by itself, therefore increasing the consumed ram would actually break a large group of computers that run under 32 bit.

I honestly don’t even know why Microsoft continues to produce 32-bit operating systems. Most modern processors are 64-bit compatible and everyone should be running 64-bit anyway.

Also I have been increasing in framerate, especially when they removed culling. They’ve done a fantastic job on performance updates for one year.

[/quote]

They haven’t sold 32 bit computer in a few years at stores, the problem is everyone in the market has a computer that is several years old. A shocking 40% of the world still runs Windows XP!

Games will not adapt until people replace their computers at home.

How many of your precious 8 cores does WoW use or any other MMO you may have loaded? How many are Dx11 only? How many with both Dx9 and Dx11 run significantly better when you check the Dx11 box? Not just look better but also have a faster frame rate with the same settings? How many are 64-bit clients?

Write your own 3D rendering engine and then we can talk about how “easy” it is to do all these things you think are trivial.

Behellagh.1468:

How many of your precious 8 cores does WoW use or any other MMO you may have loaded? How many are Dx11 only? How many with both Dx9 and Dx11 run significantly better when you check the Dx11 box? Not just look better but also have a faster frame rate with the same settings? How many are 64-bit clients?

It is true, that I am yet to see ANY game (be it a mmo or anything else) utilize all 8 cores at 100%. But even if they do use only less then 25%, the frame rate is always in the 60s and the usage graph is no where near so “spiky” as you see for GW2. I’m sorry, the jpg compression blurred the fps number in my screenshot, it says 26.2 FPS! That’s the only game I’m seeing frame rates below 60. And I play a lot of games, it’s no problem for me to post similar screenshots from Battlefield 3, Witcher 2, A Realm Reborn, where even in the largest places full of players, my fps is skyrocketing in the 100s.
So yea, it’s not easy task to do, but given that GW2 is the only game I’m playing with single digit frame rate at times, speaks enough.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

Please look into Gendarran Field where the centaurs are firing their catapult. There’s something seriously wrong there. When the rock hits the ground and it creates a buff of clounds, it would kill my fps and then lock up my pc before it returns to normal when the smoke clears. Running the game on i5 with gtx 670 so it’s not the pc.

Never.8571:

Geemo.6018:

The so called next generation mmo uses an old generation 32bit client. So it doesn’t matter if you have 32gb of ram because Gw2 will only use 2gb max.

You do realize the limitation for 32-bit is 4GB, right?

Really? You believe that 32bit uses more than 2gb of ram? Because of hardware consumption a 32bit client will only allow around 2gb of ram to be used on any software such as Gw2. Please do your homework than come back.

GW2 is largeadressaware can use use upto 4GB if enough RAM is available

Geemo.6018:

Never.8571:

Geemo.6018:

The so called next generation mmo uses an old generation 32bit client. So it doesn’t matter if you have 32gb of ram because Gw2 will only use 2gb max.

You do realize the limitation for 32-bit is 4GB, right?

Really? You believe that 32bit uses more than 2gb of ram? Because of hardware consumption a 32bit client will only allow around 2gb of ram to be used on any software such as Gw2. Please do your homework than come back.

Funny… looks like you might need to do some homework

As the post above this mentions, 32-bit Large Address Aware applications can use more than 2GB of RAM, and Gw2.exe is in fact, flagged as LAA.

Honestly though, I’ve played since launch, and have never had any out of memory errors. Been on 4GB of system RAM, and atm I’m on 8GB. I’m curious to find out what to even do to experience such an issue…

I’m surely hoping people having these out of memory errors are not disabling the Paging File, that would just be pretty downright silly :p If you haven’t disabled it, go increase it’s size. Might even be helpful to reduce the amount of RAM usage before you start up GW2 (my system idles around 900MB of usage, and that’s with tweaks, and minimum programs running; I predict most people being easily around 1.5GB or more).