Guild Wars 2

I seem to have some problems with graphics, no matter what setting I change everything stays on low-medium looking. I first noticed this earlier today when I was about to create a new character.
I have 3 screenshots here, first shows how my graphics look at ‘best appearance’ setting. Second shows the ‘best performance’ setting and third is how my friends graphics show my character with high settings.

I tried booting my computer and the game, I updated my drivers and tried different setting combinations but nothing helped. Any ideas?

Yeah it does get slightly better from the low settings to high but my graphics used to look as good as my friends. If you look at the armor you’ll see that in my friends screenshot you can see the individual rings that makeup the armor but in my screenshots it’s just a blur.
I’ve added one more example, character creation, first screen is from me with max graphic settings and the other one is from my friend with high graphic settings.
Yesterday I still had way better looking graphics then I can get now, I did not change anything game just seemed to ‘downgrade’ my graphics. and as I said in my first post, I tried to different things to get it back to normal.

Oh and I have 1920×1080 resolution and my friend has 1680×1050. I tried with different resolutions as well but it did not help.

It is known that 32 bit operating systems do not technically have the option for high graphics. You can (please don’t be mad Jeffrey) trick the game into going for high settings by adjusting things on the character selection screen. This may be going around anets intent or it could honestly be a bug. I don’t know, but pweeeeeeese anet don’t take high graphics away from me and my 32 bit system. My necro is so pretty with them.

Thanks for the tip but my friend and I both have 64-bit windows 7. and as I said on my second post my graphics were as good as my friends 2 days ago. The graphics just suddenly changed. I could understand if I had changed/updated something but I have not.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I can see a noticable difference between 1 and 2. 3 does look the best, but I don’t know if that’s the angle showing off the hero’s armor better, a difference in hardware, or any other factors that might be affecting the screenshot.

3 >>> 2 on all fronts. The chest is more detailed, the shoulders are. I don’t think that has nothing to do with the angle!

SieNeSti, you’re right, that’s a pretty big difference. I don’t think there’s anything Arenanet can do about it though; if your graphics card can’t display beyond a certain level of detail, there’s nothing the developers can do about that. Sorry to say it, but you’ll probably need a new graphics card or computer if you want your gameplay to look as detailed as your friend’s.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

SieNeSti, you’re right, that’s a pretty big difference. I don’t think there’s anything Arenanet can do about it though; if your graphics card can’t display beyond a certain level of detail, there’s nothing the developers can do about that. Sorry to say it, but you’ll probably need a new graphics card or computer if you want your gameplay to look as detailed as your friend’s.

I did say that my graphics card can and has displayed everything as detailed as my friends. I’ve been playing since the release and up until roughly 2 days ago, my graphics were working fine and showing in much greater detail than they are now.
Sorry if I was unclear in my earlier posts.

Edit: I’ll be heading to bed, I’ll check back in tomorrow. Hopefully it has fixed itself overnight or someone has found a fix.

Still havent found a way to fix this. Ideas anyone? or should I just wait and hope that some game patch fixes what ever caused this?

I have the same problem, it makes textures look really awful. Hope that whatever’s causing it gets fixed.

Last night I tried uninstalling and re-installing, that didint help either. I’m guessing this is not a common problem so it could just be something on my end or specific to something?

My girlfriend had a similar problem yesterday, try setting high graphic and REMOVE the depth blur check. Then move a little the camera to see if it helps.

Yareon.2835:

My girlfriend had a similar problem yesterday, try setting high graphic and REMOVE the depth blur check. Then move a little the camera to see if it helps.

Tried this but it didint help either, thanks anyway.

Still have not found anything to help me with this problem. I’ll recap everything I’ve tried so far:
-Restored windows to earlier state, to when my graphics were still working in case windows update somehow caused it.
-Updated drivers.
-Repaired GW2 client.
-Reinstalled GW2.
-Tried almost all different setting variations.
None of these have made any difference. I’ve added 2 pictures of cutscenes just so if it was not clear how bad it looks, I had almost maxed graphical settings when I took these pictures. Not that it matters if I have high or low settings, it looks the same anyway.
By the lack of posts in here I’d say I’m almost alone with this problem. Not sure what to do now.

Peach Pinky.6501:

It is known that 32 bit operating systems do not technically have the option for high graphics. You can (please don’t be mad Jeffrey) trick the game into going for high settings by adjusting things on the character selection screen. This may be going around anets intent or it could honestly be a bug. I don’t know, but pweeeeeeese anet don’t take high graphics away from me and my 32 bit system. My necro is so pretty with them.

Aha, it would be kind of hilarious if they decided that allowing 32 bit windows users nice graphics was an exploit.

How dare you want nice graphics without a 64 bit OS! You deviant you!

On topic -

Have you tried manually altering all the levels to max? Are you sure you’re checking high res character textures and best texture filtering option – and then tried to change map to see if there’s any effect?

Some of the settings require a map change to take effect.

It’s also worth asking if you’re having the problem in any other games. My cutscenes didn’t look that bad even with the lowest graphics settings.

Anastasia.8697:

On topic -

Have you tried manually altering all the levels to max? Are you sure you’re checking high res character textures and best texture filtering option – and then tried to change map to see if there’s any effect?

Some of the settings require a map change to take effect.

It’s also worth asking if you’re having the problem in any other games. My cutscenes didn’t look that bad even with the lowest graphics settings.

Yes I set everything manually to max and checked all the boxes and tried changing map and restarting the game. I even tried with different combinations to see if one of the settings was broken somehow but no change.

No, all of my other games work perfectly and look like they’re meant to, including Crysis 2 and Saints Row The Third, both with almost maxed graphical settings. So it’s not that my hardware cant handle the game power vise.

I had similar problem with my laptop, onboard intel video with nvidia dedicated. At one point, I found that the default setting for the game was configured to use the intel video (like you, setting the resolution higher had no effect due to the chip being unable to handle the quality regardless). After switching it to use the nvidia card, I could see resolution changes much better / higher.

mikmoo.7908:

I had similar problem with my laptop, onboard intel video with nvidia dedicated. At one point, I found that the default setting for the game was configured to use the intel video (like you, setting the resolution higher had no effect due to the chip being unable to handle the quality regardless). After switching it to use the nvidia card, I could see resolution changes much better / higher.

Well I dont think this is my problem, as I said earlier my other games work fine and I have a desktop computer. But thanks anyway.