Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

I got a new laptop a few months back and was excited to see that the Intel HD 4000 can play GW2 reasonably well. I tried auto detecting graphics settings and it puts everything at the lowest settings, but then my FPS is always at 60+. I’ve tried tweaking a few things a bit but I’m not familiar with what is best to spend those FPS on so I’m hoping somebody can offer some suggestions on the optimal settings for this integrated graphics card.

My laptop specs are as below:

Intel i5 3210M @2.5 GHZ
Intel HD 4000 (latest drivers)
6 GB DDR3 ram
Windows 7 HP 64 bit
Screen resolution 1366 × 768

Before anyone tells me to play on a desktop or anything my life is on the road so that’s impossible.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Why not experiment with the settings yourself? Just hop into the middle of LA, look at everyone, and start changing things to get YOUR desired FPS.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Why not experiment with the settings yourself? Just hop into the middle of LA, look at everyone, and start changing things to get YOUR desired FPS.

I have experimented and as I said there are a lot of advanced settings and it’s easy to shoot yourself down to an unplayable level. I’m not familiar with these settings and was hoping somebody would point me in the right direction of which settings I would want to invest in first to make the game the most beautiful. Aiming for anywhere around 30 FPS.

Giving this a quick bump.

I’d recommend starting with setting Textures and Shaders as high as possible, and turning off Shadows and Reflections.

Sharp textures will make the game look much more “high definition” in general, while the normal mapping enabled by medium or high shaders will make the lighting look a lot less flat.

Shadows and Reflections are pretty, but relatively expensive compared to the other stuff, so you should probably leave both at a low setting. At high levels, both can kill the framerate even on high end hardware, or at least make the FPS so jumpy the game gets unpleasant. And the “terrain only” reflections just look inconsistent.

I’ve never seen the remaining settings affect the framerate that much. Still, the HD 4000 isn’t exactly a high end GPU, so turning off GPU-heavy things like postprocessing, depth blur and antialiasing might be a good idea. I don’t think leaving the rest at medium-low settings will hurt the framerate much.

I am with Tota on this. My system as a whole isn’t that topnotch, so what i do is go for the things that matter ‘most’, or at least give the best viewing quality … I will give my settings behind, you may want to play a bit yourself to find out what suits you best…

1. Textures, put these on med/high (think med) for general textures, medium for characters.
2. Shaders, put these on low/med
3. Shadows, put these on low.
4. Reflections, disabled/low (think low)
5. View Distance, not sure, but i try to keep this med/high. Also see below…
6. Blur, not sure what I have it at but most likely just low…
7. Bloom, i turned this off or low (if i can’t turn it off)
8. Antialiasing, not sure what i have this on, generally low/med

To give a bit more explanation about what does what so you may be able to make choices more informed:
1. Textures, these are all pictures that are ‘wrapped’ around objects and characters. the higher the more details these have.

2. Shaders, these are SELF-shadows ON objects and characters ( If an object is hit with light on one side, it will be in it’s own shadow on the other side). These will give you more of a 3D visual effect. (i tend to keep these at medium at most, to crisp self shadows make for a very ‘crisp’ view, i prefer a rougher look)

3. Shadows, these are shadows of objects ON other objects (or the ground), I tend to keep them low/med. Don’t think you can turn them off, but NO shadows looks really weird.

4. Reflections, these can be quite extensive in GW2, it’s not just water, but all metals f/e also have reflections. These can be really cool looking, but are also taxing, i generally keep these low, not disabled! because ‘not’ having any reflections in the water makes the water look like ‘crap’ :P

5. View Distance. This is the distance at which the next effect is ‘turned on’ (blur), the view distance is how far you can look around you (this is concerns land and NPC’s, not to sure about player characters). I tend to keep this higher if i can, as viewing distance really helps in engulfing yourself in your surroundings (for me at least)

6. Blur, this is an effect that is used to give added visual experience of distance. It ‘blurs’ (make vague/foggy) objects in the distance, and the very far distance just looks like ‘fog’.

7. Bloom, this is a lighting setting of sorts, on my system it is generally off (because it can’t handle it), but i don’t care because generally i don’t like the looks of it. Bloom makes stuff look more vibrant and crisp (best way i can describe it), i personally think it makes things look less ‘real’.

8. Anti-aliasing, this has to do with rendering of lines under an angle. You don’t want this to be off in most cases, as it makes all buildings edges look ‘jagged’, but esp. on lower end cards this is also a rather ‘taxing’ feature. And what is ‘straighter than straight’ :P … then again, if you have high/veryhigh texture settings, you may run into this issue, again.

So then it becomes an issue of picking the things you prefer, and how many FPS you want to spend… Though in general, and especially on lower end cards, i would go with upping textures first by one step. Then move up character textures one step. Then move up the viewing distance by a step. Keep shadows/reflections at low, at first … i would keep bloom off, and keep anti-aliasing at low until you run into ‘jagged lines’ when you up your Textures … and keep going at it step by step