Guild Wars 2

Yes, this is another Dragons Stand boss crash thread. ANET please pay attention.

So I took a chance tonight by going into Dragons Stand. Little under two hours pass, get to the boss death cutscene, cutscene ends, I start making my run to the big chest, aaaaaaand we all know what happens next.

Can we SERIOUSLY get a fix for this issue? This has been a major bug since October that has yet to have a solid FIX. And I’m not talking about:

“Oh, just lower your settings.” Why should I? Why should I have to lower the quality of the game to remedy this glaring issue?

“Just party up with someone, so you can get back in.” Oh yeah, that’s grand, forming a group EXPECTING to crash on a map, lets get a round of applause for the community on this one. Creating a new map culture to counter a lack of fix on ANETs part.

“You crashed after the boss died? Too bad you can’t get back in.” Seriously. Whos idea was this? No other map, to my knowledge, has a ‘lock out’ mechanic barring those who weren’t in or were forcibly ejected from the map from getting back in. This alone is the reason most dread the infamous Dragon Stand crash.

“Just use the 64 bit client, that’ll fix it.” I am. And I wish that were true. I really do.

Best part is, that’s not even the ONLY major bug this map has. You also have to pray that your map doesn’t randomly reset mid run. Whoops, add that to the list.

The fact that there are this many issues and that no REAL solutions have been offered, is unbelievable. And the silence on the subject drives home the idea that ANET either doesn’t care, or is unable to fix it.

Underking.2694:

“Just use the 64 bit client, that’ll fix it.” I am. And I wish that were true. I really do.

Are you sure, you’re starting the correct executable? Just to be sure, check in the windows task manager. If there is a “*32” next to the process name, it’s the wrong one. Also, how much RAM do you have? The 64bit client improves nothing if you only have 4GB RAM. Might even be problematic if you have 6GB.

I haven’t had a single crash on a DS map with the 64bit client. And I’m often a comm there so I’m always in the middle of a complete graphics effect meltdown.

Could you post your crash log?
You can find it here
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2\ArenaNet.log

My favorite part about this post is how the comments both suggest that YOU did something wrong. LOL. These are the reasons why Anet says “meh” to fixing their crash problem (because people are really quick to blame the player, even when you stated the facts).

Also, the crash problem has now spread to Tequatl and core Tyria content. There are anti-DC groups for Teq maps now because people crash mid-Teq. It’s a serious issue and they do need to look into it. But for now though instead of HoT, you can either farm Wintersday grinding bells/JP or their e-sportz, both give decent rewards and have a time limit before they disappear. Hopefully by end of e-sportz season they’ll have fixed the issue

I can see no blaming, we’re just trying to find the problem. In fact, the only constructive posts so far were the two answers. To a more or less rant.

There is hardly something you can do if you have a game that handles so many resources. You’ll have to make a choice between loading the stuff you’ll need into memory or load stuff and immediately free up resources after they are not immediately needed anymore. Noone wants to do that. Try to play Skyrim on the PS3 if you want to experience the later.

They opted for using more RAM and are hitting the wall on low memory situations now. Hence why I asked if he still may be using the wrong client by accident or has only 4GB in his machine. Things move on. Players expect über-shiny graphics, highest texture resolutions, effects that make your eyes bleed and play on higher resolutions than 2 years ago. It all comes with a price.

I don’t think Anet likes the current situation. I’m sure they are quite aware of the problems.

Minx.7521:

Also, the crash problem has now spread to Tequatl and core Tyria content.

Crashing has always been a problem if you zerged on high settings for extended periods. If I did Tequatl and Jormag for example, I would crash 100% of the time. This was easily avoided however by restarting the game after completing the event. With the 64-bit client, this isn’t an issue, though at times GW2 will use a lot of memory (in HoT), so you’ll want at least 8 GB dedicated to GW2 if you intend to play on higher settings in zergs and for extended periods.

It’s easy to blame ArenaNet, but that’s not going to magically fix the problem. More information on why they’re crashing could potentially solve the problem.

sigh

Teq didn’t start crashing for me (and tons of people I asked on maps) until a month (or so) after HoT. But by all means, tell me my experience with Teq is wrong and Anet doesn’t need to work on crashes.

The fact is that the game should never simply crash due to memory limits. If you fit game requirements, you are able to run it, then you should not experience crashes.
There should be checks and safeguards against over-allocating of memory resources.
I mean the 64-bit client is still beta, so the game SHOULD be stable with 4G of memory.
So it’s perfectly OK to complain when it’s not.

That said – fixing the situation will not be easy, so meanwhile all you can do is try all the possible work-around.
Joining a squad in DS is a good thing even for the sake of better coordination. Other stuff can help to minimize crash risks too.

Imagine a company released a car, that has this malfunction causing the engine to explode sometimes, if it goes over 4000 rpm and/or 140 km/h. So far there is no fix for this problem. They obviously should make one. But will you drive it over 4000 rpm or at 150 km/h and explode with it because “Why should you? Why should you have to lower the speed of the car to remedy this glaring issue?”.

Hubal.8571:

There should be checks and safeguards against over-allocating of memory resources.

They are reaching limits of 32bit architecture. Pick up a random C source code on the internet and see if there are checks for malloc return values. Also, in many situations you can’t do anything else anyway than just let it crash. Memory exhausted = game over. It might not even be in their code, but some library the game uses. The only real solution is to forget about 32bit. It’s not that 64bit is new.

Or find a way to drastically reduce the memory usage. But I’m not sure such a huge change will make sense. All it does is cost developer resources. But they should probably push the new client instead of calling it beta for too long.

But the OP didn’t answer yet, so we don’t even know if it’s an oom problem.

Hubal.8571:

Imagine a company released a car, that has this malfunction causing the engine to explode sometimes, if it goes over 4000 rpm and/or 140 km/h.

Well, the client crashes and burns for sure, but I think comparing the outcome with an exploding car is a bit too much.

Kiza.5630:

Hubal.8571:

There should be checks and safeguards against over-allocating of memory resources.

They are reaching limits of 32bit architecture. Pick up a random C source code on the internet and see if there are checks for malloc return values. Also, in many situations you can’t do anything else anyway than just let it crash. Memory exhausted = game over. It might not even be in their code, but some library the game uses. The only real solution is to forget about 32bit. It’s not that 64bit is new.

Or find a way to drastically reduce the memory usage. But I’m not sure such a huge change will make sense. All it does is cost developer resources. But they should probably push the new client instead of calling it beta for too long.

But the OP didn’t answer yet, so we don’t even know if it’s an oom problem.

Hubal.8571:

Imagine a company released a car, that has this malfunction causing the engine to explode sometimes, if it goes over 4000 rpm and/or 140 km/h.

Well, the client crashes and burns for sure, but I think comparing the outcome with an exploding car is a bit too much.

Well, extreme example was to make a point. In both cases you know the workarounds, you know the consequences of not applying them.

Regarding the malloc – that is a bit besides the point, as checking the malloc return is not really the solution. It’s not how you control resources. At the moment it returns null it’s quite too late to do anything smart except throwing exception. (And basically this is what usually at some level leads to client-side crash window, instead of system-side crash message)

But if you are a programmer please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_dynamic_memory_allocation
If you do please check the “Common errors” section, specifically the one titled “Not checking for allocation failures”.

And unfortunately now they simply cannot abandon 32-bit version for the sake of business itself. Basically you cannot change the requirements after you sell your product. The HoT expansion should have been made 64-bit mandatory – now it’s kinda stuck – and as I said fixing the situation will not be easy – time and money is needed (or as you said “development resources”).

Provided of course the the memory is the problem.

I know that my mention of malloc was overly simplistic. I was going into more detail but deleted these paragraphs again as probably nobody would understand or even care about that or call me grampa. It’s a game forum after all.

But I’d like to comment on:

Hubal.8571:

And unfortunately now they simply cannot abandon 32-bit version for the sake of business itself. Basically you cannot change the requirements after you sell your product. The HoT expansion should have been made 64-bit mandatory – now it’s kinda stuck – and as I said fixing the situation will not be easy – time and money is needed (or as you said “development resources”).

It was done before and probably should be done over the course of a long running game to avoid too much cruft piling up. WoW has subsequently dropped support for various OS X versions over the years. Making people force to upgrade their OS and in same cases their computer.

I highly doubt a non-64bit CPU could even run GW2. And I think the eula also states that system requirements will change over time so I think they could.

I guess most if not all of these threads will just vanish if they default to the 64bit client one day.

Hubal.8571:

And unfortunately now they simply cannot abandon 32-bit version for the sake of business itself. Basically you cannot change the requirements after you sell your product. The HoT expansion should have been made 64-bit mandatory – now it’s kinda stuck – and as I said fixing the situation will not be easy – time and money is needed (or as you said “development resources”).

LOL! Sorry, that made me laugh. A while back, I had subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud soon after it launched to try things out. I was running Windows Vista when I started and Vista had full support. Three months into my CC sub, they changed the requirement to Windows 7 or 8 and I was unable to use the applications on my Vista machine.

Cloud-based applications are going to have constant requirement changes. I’d lump an online gaming experience in the same boat, especially if they’re tweaking things that require different resources. The product was sold under certain conditions but the only way to keep the requirements the same would be for the product to never evolve. If the product isn’t allowed to evolve then it grows stagnant and you’d have more people complaining about the lack of growth in what should be a dynamic MMO.

It’s a poor marketing decision to leave behind too much of your consumer base though, so you have to see the user data behind the scenes to know just how wise or stupid their decisions may be.

Hubal.8571:

And unfortunately now they simply cannot abandon 32-bit version for the sake of business itself. Basically you cannot change the requirements after you sell your product. The HoT expansion should have been made 64-bit mandatory – now it’s kinda stuck – and as I said fixing the situation will not be easy – time and money is needed (or as you said “development resources”).

LOL! Sorry, that made me laugh. A while back, I had subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud soon after it launched to try things out. I was running Windows Vista when I started and Vista had full support. Three months into my CC sub, they changed the requirement to Windows 7 or 8 and I was unable to use the applications on my Vista machine.

Cloud-based applications are going to have constant requirement changes. I’d lump an online gaming experience in the same boat, especially if they’re tweaking things that require different resources. The product was sold under certain conditions but the only way to keep the requirements the same would be for the product to never evolve. If the product isn’t allowed to evolve then it grows stagnant and you’d have more people complaining about the lack of growth in what should be a dynamic MMO.

It’s a poor marketing decision to leave behind too much of your consumer base though, so you have to see the user data behind the scenes to know just how wise or stupid their decisions may be.

P.S. I have never crashed in Dragon Stand. I crashed one time in HoT. I forget where exactly, I think it may have been TD. And I’ve maxed my HoT mastery lines (not including raid lines) so I have spent more than enough time on all maps.

Never had a problem since the 64-Bit was released, don’t think it’s on Anets side,
run a -Diag and see where the bottleneck is located.

Eldbrand Charging.8902:

Never had a problem since the 64-Bit was released, don’t think it’s on Anets side,
run a -Diag and see where the bottleneck is located.

Like it was said earlier, this attitude is why ANET doesn’t put bugs like this on the top of their ‘to fix’ list.

Members of my guild, who also run also 64 bit, report crashing in DS, AB, and even places like Karka Queen. It’s a far reaching issue that effects players of different computer builds and speed, and it seriously saps the fun out of going into these zones. Dreading a D/C around every corner during events is NO way to play a game.

I just hope more people will report and post so ANET can stop ignoring the issue.

Underking.2694:

Eldbrand Charging.8902:

Never had a problem since the 64-Bit was released, don’t think it’s on Anets side,
run a -Diag and see where the bottleneck is located.

Like it was said earlier, this attitude is why ANET doesn’t put bugs like this on the top of their ‘to fix’ list.

Members of my guild, who also run also 64 bit, report crashing in DS, AB, and even places like Karka Queen. It’s a far reaching issue that effects players of different computer builds and speed, and it seriously saps the fun out of going into these zones. Dreading a D/C around every corner during events is NO way to play a game.

I just hope more people will report and post so ANET can stop ignoring the issue.

anet already commented they are not ignoring the issue…..

I think they are having problems reproducing the actual bug.

So far, I heard that they commented that a 32 bit XP machines does not crash. So it is pretty telling that there might be something in Windows that changed.

Underking.2694:

Eldbrand Charging.8902:

Never had a problem since the 64-Bit was released, don’t think it’s on Anets side,
run a -Diag and see where the bottleneck is located.

Like it was said earlier, this attitude is why ANET doesn’t put bugs like this on the top of their ‘to fix’ list.

Members of my guild, who also run also 64 bit, report crashing in DS, AB, and even places like Karka Queen. It’s a far reaching issue that effects players of different computer builds and speed, and it seriously saps the fun out of going into these zones. Dreading a D/C around every corner during events is NO way to play a game.

I just hope more people will report and post so ANET can stop ignoring the issue.

Run a -Diag, it will tell you where the problem is, Anet’s end or your’s, it might even be somewhere in between. I had problems about 8 months ago, after running -Diag I found out it was a problem with a server in Germany that my connection went through.

I run the 64 bit client, I’ve worked as a System Admin for 17 years, I know the drill. However, there is not going to ever be a solution to every person’s dc issue, including mine. So many individual issues can come up that including a solution to all of them is just not possible. However, my request is to at the very least, change the mapping system to allow for players who do dc to rejoin their squad in the DS instance, even though the “map” as its called is full (not a map, its a partition on the server dedicated to that instance) . There are ways of doing that part.

@Laurie: I think your suggestion is a key. ANet is having problems finding the memory leak in 32-bit executables (which includes us Mac users, since the emulation doesn’t run 64-bit mode). We can’t expect miracles there.

BUT they can modify the code that they do control so that getting disconnected allows a way back in. It could literally allow you back in for N minutes, it could mail you a token that’s soul bound, it could do several things like that. They’re probably nervous about exploits like taxiing in folks who didn’t participate in an event after the fact for gold. Seems to me that they could keep some kind of record where you have to have done certain actions certain periods of time apart during the event, and if you’re present when the boss dies, it records that and whether you collect anything from the chest or not.

Demanding that they find an obscure bug is harsh. Demanding that they create a workaround (to getting the prize, not to crashing) is only reasonable.

This is hardly an ‘obscure bug’ since it happens to people on EVERY Dragon Stand map. But as you said, removing the ‘instance lock’ would be an easy work-around, but still not a fix. Going into a map expecting to crash or expecting others to crash is unacceptable, and needs a remedy sooner rather than later.

I crashed in the event yesterday but I was lucky because I could get inside the map again, that’s still a problem because it didn’t happen to me since the Battle for Lion’s Arch update I think, almost 2 years ago.

loseridoit.2756:

So far, I heard that they commented that a 32 bit XP machines does not crash.

Yep, because everything in XP from the program, through the drivers to the system knows the memory limitations. In the 64bit system 32bit client crash cases it’s most likely a result of the client using some outside driver/library that is 64bit itself and doesn’t limit itself to the 32bit memory range.

And yes, the client should have some builtin checks for this. Putting them in now however might require rewriting large parts of the engine. Which they should do anyway (to make it dx10+ ready for example).

Kiza.5630:

Underking.2694:

“Just use the 64 bit client, that’ll fix it.” I am. And I wish that were true. I really do.

Are you sure, you’re starting the correct executable? Just to be sure, check in the windows task manager. If there is a “*32” next to the process name, it’s the wrong one. Also, how much RAM do you have? The 64bit client improves nothing if you only have 4GB RAM. Might even be problematic if you have 6GB.

I went from 32bit client to 64 bit client and immediately had a better experience in GW2. No more crashes ingame, no more fps stutter. This PC only has 4GB of RAM. So apparently “64bit needs more than 4GB to be different from 32 bit client” is an exaggerated myth. There’s a bit more to 64 bit systems than just more memory capacity.

I spent time in PVE doing story in HOT on one charactor completly. Did another one to level 15 which gave me enough crystaline ore to get the exotic recipe for wanderer’s armor. Understand that I am a WVW player and being forced to do PVE completely blows! After spending 2 hours in PVE hell doing the Dragonstand events from beginning to end I was disconnected! I got no map reward which I could give a crap about! What I spent two hours to get was the exotic recipe to change my ascended armor to Wanderer’s. I Spend on average 200 us a month on this game! Give me the recipe! I am so kittened! I never did and never want to do PVE! Why make me suffer in a game I should be able to have fun! PVE sucks the soul out of me! Please correct this mistake!!!!!! Jelly

The Trailblazer’s exotic recipe that failed to work in the Mystic Toilet was bad enough! How many times must my efforts be crushed! That was the second time I did Dragonstand with a disconnect reward! I do not see any point having me do something that I do not enjoy to get the same failed result. I am so done with this broken game!

I have gotten no response from Anet to resolve my issue. I can only assume they dont care. I will do the upgrades for my guild and see how everyone is doing but for now I’m done with the game.

Underking.2694:

“You crashed after the boss died? Too bad you can’t get back in.” Seriously. Whos idea was this? No other map, to my knowledge, has a ‘lock out’ mechanic barring those who weren’t in or were forcibly ejected from the map from getting back in.

I’ve seen it at Teq as well, which suggests it is an artifact of game design, not something specific to this map. It’s just that most maps don’t generate the conditions to cause the crashes and/or aren’t full enough to generate the lock-out.

Whatever the problem is it needs to be fixed. I spent my time in PVE to unlock the rewards I wish to benifit in WVW with. I would be overjoyed if ALL PVE was taken out of the game entirely!!! I dont care to ever see a living world or any new content. I only like WVW. I was forced to jump through hoops to get the wanderer’s exotic insignia recipe. I did the kittenty grind Anet asked of me. I want the exotic insignia for wanderer’s to be handed to me. If only WVW existed in game it would be a perfect game for me.

Chances are its a server side issue that only affects a select block of servers (Cluster). As 99% of the time I never Crash/DC, but that 1% of the time I am not the only on crashing and this comes from DS, Teq, And FOTM maps across the board. Also, right before those types of crashes I see massive skill lags and combat rubber-banding, then the crash immediately follows.

I think while we can probably point fingers back to Users ISPs (or rather their Transports to Anet’s servers) that is not the end all of the issue. As if it were, there would be more wide of an area of players affected and Anets support lines/CRM would be filling up along with the forums.

I also believe that the 64bit client fixed 90% of the memory issues with the 32bit client. the 10% that is not fixed affect systems with only 8GB of system ram and using ultra/high Character model settings. On my 32GB desktop, running max settings the game will take up to 12.5GB of ram in some maps.

I agree with what others said about locking placement in maps. I think we need an in game option similar to what Tera has for map switching, actually, So that we can self control lockouts.

The Maps are limited to 300 players. That’s fine, but lets see the maps raised to a limit of 400 seats, 300 for players and 100 for phantom players (Disconnection spots).

Lets have a drop down on our Mini Map that lets us control what map we port into. We can either choose our held spot in the map we got dropped from, or we can take a less filled map (listed via Map Channels). As we all know, each map has several spawn segments of itself, so why cant the players get to control what map#/ID they spawn into?

Oh right, cause that would break the already broken Mega server.

i was having the same bug with both clients(32 bit and 64). what fixed it for me was deleting the everything and redownloading the whole thing again. took a while but i did it while i was sleeping and had no problem since. sometimes a clean install works better of using an old dirty installation