Guild Wars 2

First before we get started.. Please remember the forum rules. Be constructive. Be Polite. Don’t dev bash here.

Since this seems to be the only mac specific forum, can you guys tell me what bugs and issues you have aside from what is stickied in the known issues that seems to be so game breaking and frustrating to make you dislike the client.

I have seen a lot of people complain on here about a lack of a native client and a lack of apparent support. Coming from the windows side of things can someone please explain what is so very bad about the cider port? Aside from a slight dip in performance that is.

So inline answers preferred:

Be Realistic here – What would it take from the team to make you happy as a customer and a mac user?

What about the current situation makes you so unhappy?

What bugs do you consider deal/game breaking for you?

What expectations do you have about the game for the future?

Remember be polite and absolutely NO developer bashing please. This is meant to be constructive and not a rant filled hate post.

overlordchin.7583:

Be Realistic here – What would it take from the team to make you happy as a customer and a mac user?

Better communication from Anet and honest answers as to the state of the Mac client. Anet showing respect for their Mac customers by improving dialog in this forum. Not having to beg, complain and go out of the way to get a response from Anet when there are issues with the Mac client.

Edit: I forgot to mention this but IMO it is most important. An official statement from Anet as to the state of the Mac client. I would like them to be honest and let their Mac customers know what plans, if any, there are for the Mac client going forward. It’s fine with me if there are no plans, just let us know that officially. Right now all we have is a blurb from an PAX interview video but no official statement.

The reason the cider port is problematic is because it’s trying to mimic the functions of windows whilst running in OSX – that means that in order to play GW2 your computer is working on three levels – it’s running OSX, it’s having to allocate certain resources in order to allow GW2 to think it’s Windows, and then on top of that it’s having to actually run GW2 which is a very CPU heavy game. So the dips in performance and increase in overall computer heat can be quite noticeable.

On top of this cider has a 32bit limitation – so despite macs being 64bit operating systems the game is forced to run in 32bit mode – this means the computer has to work a little harder to run it, but it also means it doesn’t run as well as it could. 32bit generally has much slower load times and doesn’t quite take advantage of all the computer resources available to it (for example RAM).

I think for most people it’s not so much the issues with the client that are making them unhappy (of course it does contribute) but more the lack of communication from Arenanet. There seem to be small periods of time when the OSX GW2 community catches their attention and then we get about a week or so where they respond to posts and provide support – but outside of that week things tend to go back to normal, which means no responses from devs. A lot of the time it is community members who are discovering temporary fixes for problems with the client – I think even if Anet were to acknowledge these problems it would be better, regardless of whether or not they straight away knew the answers.

For me personally there is nothing I consider game/deal breaking. I seem to be the only fortunate person using the OSX client in that I have never had a single bug and everything has always functioned for me. Even now with the recent gem store and TP issues my game and these two aspects functioned perfectly (I am running ML rather than Mavericks which seems to be why). Of course despite all this I switched to running the game in bootcamp anyway – because for me the boost in performance is worth it. But I still hang around because I’m curious to see if the OSX client gets anywhere.

For the future – no clue.

honestly.. i didn’t see any problems with the mac client when i was on my macbook pro. i used to run it fine and didn’t mind lowering my graphic settings even more to get more fps. on my brand new imac though.. with high settings…. it keeps crashing. more than once a day, and mostly in events like tequatl. reason being is that it’s only 32bit and is only reading 4gb of my 16gb ram. this is the only issue i’ve had with the mac client since they released it and i’m starting to wish, now more than ever, that they had made a native client instead.

i’m not big on bootcamp either. tried it before just for Gw2 before the mac client was released and it’s kind of a hassle, having to switch back and forth OS’s just for a game.

No deal breakers for me…
I’m kinda OK with lowering graphics on my MBP to play this, but limitations of Cider are certainly palpable when running this via Bootcamp which nearly doubles my frame rate. I’ve had the odd ‘mad mouse’ issue, but so far not much else in the way of bugs so far…

Bootcamping is too much hassle to occasionally play a game though… I suspect a 64 bit client (or cider wrapper) would go a long way to improving mac users’ experience.

As for the future, would be nice to know what Arenanet are planning (if anything) for Mac clients.

I noticed zero performance difference between bootcamp and mac beta client.
At first, there was also zero problems with best appearance settings.
however, starting around June, I have been plagued with crashing problems. usually setting to lower graphics fixes it. also the TP sometimes doesn’t work and need to re-login to make it work. But I feel like the bootcamp version had the same problem, so that wouldn’t be mac-only.
honestly, I’m ok with zero communication (though I can see how others would be comforted by it). But just listen to us and fix reported problems. The worst is to have known issues for a year and nothing is done about it.

It’s not dev-bashing to say that there has been poor communication. Let’s say, some timeline for the Mac client to exit beta, or to have some roadmap if this client is not the future client. Considering that it has been 5 quarters since launch, and the company continues to accept money from Mac users on BLTP. I think Mac users are entitled to some expectations.

ArenaNet has been not set any expectations as they have for Windows users, but they will take your money all the same. I’m sorry but I can’t help but be disappointed by that, and I feel all Mac users should be as well. It’s a bad relationship with the customers.

The two main problems I have are with the fact that sense its a port, and the lack of support. Its a native widows client being forced through the mac ox through a filter of some sort. I’m not a programmer so i don’t know how it works exactly. I just know it is TERRIBLE to attempt to play sometimes.

And who knows when the next time we’ll see communication from anybody official again.

That’s how i feel.

Hollow.9758:

The two main problems I have are with the fact that sense its a port, and the lack of support. Its a native widows client being forced through the mac ox through a filter of some sort. I’m not a programmer so i don’t know how it works exactly. I just know it is TERRIBLE to attempt to play sometimes.

And who knows when the next time we’ll see communication from anybody official again.

That’s how i feel.

What really is happening is that there is a very very limited ‘virtual box’ being emulated on the computer at that time. I say very limited because it only emulates the Windows parts it really needs. This is not as bad as it seems but as you can read here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Common-Errors-What-we-really-need/first#post3433145

The biggest problem is with the client not supporting multi-threading. Something only NCSoft can really fix. Easily said, it just doesn’t play nice with this emulating layer, and therefore it doesn’t use all the power in your CPU. Your CPU is mostly sitting around being bored while playing Guild Wars 2, because it’s not getting the instructions to do it’s job.

multi-threading; as in using multiple CPU cores at the same time? I’m pretty sure it does – at least I remember all of them being active when I checked. Can’t exactly remember specifically checking, but I’ll do that tonight and get back to you!

Currently my issue is that using it on my iMac causes way more heat than when I played WoW. (Trying to compare MMO with MMO verses an MMO with a different type of game). Maybe it’s because there was a native client that it was better able to sync with my Mac? But WoW ran smoother and with a better frame rate with a lot less heat than GW2 so far.

I’m also not thrilled when a new patch comes out and there is an error that seems exclusively for macs that tend to not get addressed till 2 or 3 patches later. Some of the older GW2 Mac gamers might remember the birds that flew by had lines coming from there wings that sparkled.

Also there isn’t much in terms of Mac customizations. Again comparing WoW, there were options and settings that were available to Macs to make WoW more customizable and manageable for Macs if playing on a lower computer or a higher computer such as offering a 64k version, recording video functions on options, as well as of course the frame rate was better. On GW2 I’ve had to really turn down the settings to get a smooth frame rate, in WoW I could turn them all up with no issues.

I won’t call the issues a deal/game breaker because I do see ANet is trying. They are addressing the issues, but their responses are slow or the responses feel very cookie cutter. It just feels like I’m talking to a robot than an actual person, much less one who understands the types of issues I want to address. I wish they had a way in game to get tickets going to the devs or administrators without having to minimize the game and go to the website. If there is an issue in game, players should have a way to get the ticket going while they have the issue right there in front of them.

Jadjuka.6521:

I wish they had a way in game to get tickets going to the devs or administrators without having to minimize the game and go to the website. If there is an issue in game, players should have a way to get the ticket going while they have the issue right there in front of them.

This sounds like a really good idea!

Anyway, I don’t really know about the technical stuff, why a port is bad and all that, but the performance definitely leaves some room to be desired. I am making allowances for the fact that its a beta, but its been in beta for a very long time and I don’t understand why game companies in general can’t just make the game for mac and windows at the same time like Blizzard does =(.

I like GW2 a lot better than WoW in general, I LOVE the fact that you can buy gems with gold and don’t have to pay per month, but the tradeoff is that I have a LOT more technical problems with GW2 than I ever had with WoW. First, and worst are the CONSTANT problems with the TP. At least once a day it hasn’t worked, since I started playing about 2 months ago. The problem used to be fixed by relogging, which was pretty annoying, but now nothing fixes it no matter how many times I relog. I guess I’ll submit a ticket, but I don’t like how much of my play time is wasted by having to submit tickets =(. I occasionally have the spinning camera problem, but I have cross my fingers always been able to resolve it without too much difficulty. Also, there have been nights in WvW zerg when I have been frequently disconnected due, I guess, to the stress put on the computer by 150+ ppl spamming their abilities and lighting up the screen in huge zerg v zerg fights. WvW zerging is probably my favorite thing to do in game, and this issue has negatively affected my enjoyment of WvW. Finally, push to talk in ts does not work in game, but that might be an issue with teamspeak, idk.

I was also disappointed that it took over a week to fix the gem buying problem with the last patch, due to that I was unable to get an item that I wanted.

I like this game. A lot. But these problems are very close to deal/game breaking =(. I think most of the people at ANet are doing their best, but all these headaches seem like they could have been solved by spending a little more money and doing whatever Blizz did with their mac client.

Also, my parents are mac ppl and bought me this Macbook and I can’t afford to go and buy a copy of windows for bootcamp or a new computer for playing games. It’s too bad, but I’m stuck playing native mac.