Guild Wars 2

Dear lovely people at ArenaNet.

Thanks for the 64bit Client beta, this is exactly what I wanted to see – its working smoothly for me this is my configuration for your reference:

CPU: AMD 8350FX (4 Cores, 8 Threads) Black Edition 4.1Mhz (standard clock)
GPU: GTX 970 4GB (standard clock)
MOBO: ASUS Sabretooth 900FX 2.0
RAM: 16 GB

I’ve not had any problems running the 64bit client so far, and I am detecting a marginal performance increase. I’m also seeing RAM use going up to near 8GB when running the Game (with some other apps running in the background).

Couple of questions/suggestions from me:

a) Please could you prioritise your next big change to either:
a. Work with multiple Cores on CPU (typically the game runs core 1 at 47% and nothing on the other cores at all – there is SO much bandwidth you can utilise on modern 4 core setups).
b. Directx12 or Vulkhan (I’d suggest Vulkhan should be the priority) support
i. In many ways this would be ideal, because it will also address point 1 as well as creating a far superior product.

b) Secondly (no less important however) – how about integrating some post processing within the client (or even external to it)
a. Reshade/GemFx/MasterFx/SweetFX do go some way to helping, but support on those are patchy, installation can be fiddly and isn’t for ‘mainstream’ –this might actually be a quick win, since those tools are all open licence to use so could be incorporated into your product.
i. I’m thinking of one effect in particular – heat haze in masterFX (I think) if that could be enabled when we are in dry top the effect (pardon the pun) would be immense. But also the inclusion of Ambient Occlusion cannot be overstated – once it is enabled it makes the entire game look far far far better (check Wooden Potatoes You Tube Video for example (https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=a5i5-2X4wMA))
ii. There are a bag of tools there to be used by any developer that instantly make the game better looking and makes use of GPU features without degrading the performance of the game itself.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for making one seriously awesome game.

Just what limitations does using only 1 core have, in your opinion?

From where I sit it’s immaterial whether 1 core sits at 47% or 2 sit at 23% each, unlike LoTRO I perceive no performance problems duye to the client not being multi-core aware.

On another matter, I always turn off AO in every game and on every gfx card I use, I hate the black smudges which surround many animated objects and I see no improvement anywhere.

Kraggy.4169:

Just what limitations does using only 1 core have, in your opinion?

From where I sit it’s immaterial whether 1 core sits at 47% or 2 sit at 23% each, unlike LoTRO I perceive no performance problems duye to the client not being multi-core aware.

On another matter, I always turn off AO in every game and on every gfx card I use, I hate the black smudges which surround many animated objects and I see no improvement anywhere.

Its not what it might look like if the game was 23% over two cores.. its what it could do if it utilized 80% of all four. More processing power = more logical operations = more complex AI, better pathing (of Npcs), better Physics effects and lots of other lovely stuff. The game’s CPU utilisation is very very low.. and the FPS even on a high end rig still sees no real improvement.

Like all post processing effects, some love em, others hate em, that’s why they should be an on/off choice.

For me Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, both represent the best in class of MMORPG; but graphically they are stuck with confinements imposed 10 years ago. I want to see the greatest MMORPG in history (Guild Wars 2); become even better by embracing better ways to do AI and pathing (pathing is still not great in GW2 – no lets be honest its horrible when an NPC rubberbands back to the set path they were going on after an encounter) – which takes CPU and better graphics utilizing Nvidia Gameworks or similar – so that we could have Witcher 3 level graphics in this most awesome game.

I don’t want to ever see a Guild Wars 3 scenario, i’d see that as an admission that the manifesto has failed in many ways. I want to see Guild Wars 2 evolve into Guild Wars 3, then 4 and on-wards, in much the same way that WoW has evolved with each expansion. WoW’s recent graphical upgrade moving to Dx11 and higher poly character models put it back in the frame as a current era contender. I still believe GW2 is a better game, but we do need to see a graphical upgrade that makes use of at least a mid-level PC specification – likewise it must also scale downwards so that those of our players that dont have PC gaming powerhouses can still play.

Ok so the game currently does use more then 1 core. My i5-4570 with my 390 running the 64bit client was pulling 10GB of ram in HoT zones, and hitting EVERY CORE at 75%+. Nothing else running in the background (Fresh Install of Win7x64 + Drivers only).

Game runs smooth as pie on max settings, played for 8 hours last night no OOM crashes.

This 64bit client is a god send, its EXACTLY what we needed.

sirsquishy.8531:

This 64bit client is a god send, its EXACTLY what we needed.

Totally agree.. it is AWESOME!

a) Making the game multithreading is the optimal solution, but it’s also the hardest task for devs, since it requires to redo a lot of the coding of the game engine.
This is not an easy, neither a quick thing to do in a game which is constantly being updated, so unless thy have being doing it secretly, there’re pretty much no chances to see it happening.
Also, it is false the game uses one core. I can guarantee you there’s a problem with your configuration or you have a setting that is making a huge bottlenecking.
I have an i5 4690k oced to 4.5GHz and it’s easy to see cpu being stressed nearly to its maximum, being the least used core to around 60%.
Also, there’re videos in youtube of 8 core FX using all cores and seing % of usage beyond 40%.

b)A dev said recently upgrading the API wouldn’t bring performance improvements, since the worst scenarios in gw2 are not bottlenecked by the graphic rendering part.
Also, the upgrade from dx9 to dx12/vulkan is really huge. The newer APIs are low level, which means devs need to do a lot of the work the driver was doing since now.

Ansau.7326:

a) Making the game multithreading is the optimal solution, but it’s also the hardest task for devs, since it requires to redo a lot of the coding of the game engine.
This is not an easy, neither a quick thing to do in a game which is constantly being updated, so unless thy have being doing it secretly, there’re pretty much no chances to see it happening.
Also, it is false the game uses one core. I can guarantee you there’s a problem with your configuration or you have a setting that is making a huge bottlenecking.
I have an i5 4690k oced to 4.5GHz and it’s easy to see cpu being stressed nearly to its maximum, being the least used core to around 60%.
Also, there’re videos in youtube of 8 core FX using all cores and seing % of usage beyond 40%.

b)A dev said recently upgrading the API wouldn’t bring performance improvements, since the worst scenarios in gw2 are not bottlenecked by the graphic rendering part.
Also, the upgrade from dx9 to dx12/vulkan is really huge. The newer APIs are low level, which means devs need to do a lot of the work the driver was doing since now.

You are correct on the DX API. The multi-threading is what the game needs the most.

The game uses a single management thread to control all of the little parts. That management thread needs to be split between 2-4 (on an i7) threads depending on the detected CPU. That will give the most performance out of anything else that is left to do.

GW2 will spawn 50+ threads depending on the in game settings, what zone you are in, if you are in or out of combat…ect. But all of those worker threads are controlled by a single management thread and that is the bottleneck.

But for today, I will take a 64bit client!

The game is already multithreaded .. it uses 4 cores .. but since thread often have
to wait for other threads to continue it is more or less impossible to have 100%
load on all 4 cores. So its just 1 core on 100% .. and the others mostly at 50-75%
for me that leads to maybe 60-75 % total load.