Guild Wars 2

Yes. The client doesn’t get updated… EVER. We don’t even have the basics which is an active mod in the forums, which still doesn’t mean anything if we did.

AND, to top it all off, after two years, they announce a “major update” with “graphical improvements” that were supposed to improve mac users gameplay, yet, today i found my game running worse than before.

NO! i was not even able to run the game on the worst settings possible and reach 30 fps…

Shame on you ANet.
Fool me once to get my money, announcing that your game will run on OSX, shame on you.
Fool me twice, making me think you will ever give a tiny piece of kitten about our community, shame on me…

This has been without a doubt the worst customer service i ever seen from a game company… complete lack of interest for the paying customer!

Hi,

I am coming back to play after a long break, there seems to be huge improvements with the Mac client and you just have to be patient, the client is still in Beta at the testing phase, I have an understanding as to why it is taking so long to be a final version and they won’t share this information with you and don’t need to, so I hope to enlighten you on the matter of software development.

In the software development world there are concepts that determine the stages in development, the two main ones are the waterfall model and the agile development model. Google these, as explaining them would take up a lot of this post, but they are using an agile development process which requires customer feedback and that relies on bugs being submitted so they can “iron them out” and this is the process they are in, testing and getting customer feedback and it goes in a loop until a final version is met.

So please be patient as they require your feedback to advance the mac client towards the final version. That is why there is no date on a release for the final version yet.

Umm selno your point is so moot. The testing/beta phase has been in existence for 2 years. To add the support we do have is so lack luster its not even funny. I think most Mac players have been more than patient as we have been pushed under the rug and ignored. People are just getting sick of the fact of feeling taken advantage of investing time money and effort in to a game in which most probably feel a bit abandoned in many ways.

So the problem is the support is not good enough?
Hmm
Think a bit more instead of getting emotional, I’m trying to provide some logical explanation as to why it is taking so long, they don’t need to keep you updated if they have nothing to share yet, 2 years is a long time, but logically they are developing and improving the client. Your point that they are just pushing us under the rug and ignoring us is not true.

Evidence suggests they are still working on the client, 5 months ago they posted overtime bug fixes, which is a good sign that the mac client is on its way to a final release, if something was said by them, in the 2 years that they were not improving the client then that is evidence that they are ignoring us.

Btw this post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Let-s-unite-for-a-Mac-OS-X-native-client/first

Is even more evidence they are not ignoring us, this game is in a wrapper according to this post, so that is probably why majority of people are upset because they said there would be a windows and mac version (there are but mac version has been in beta for too long from what we expected), with that post in mind they are probably considering a native application, so my assumption is they don’t release any updates because they may be in development with a native application or they are trying to make the wrapper work. This is all assumptions but logically it all comes down to people asking “why is it taking so long for a final version” and getting no response and feeling like they ignoring us and it is all because of their development model(agile model, which requires customer feedback)…

Selno, your optimism is admirable and I don’t think you are wrong on the developement points your make.

There are several problems with the “GW2 Mac Community”

• People expected a Mac Client, not a Wrapper. To be fair, people also expected GW2 to revolutionize MMOs and were left a little confused about the highly iterative/evolutionary steps it took and is taking. Beta, I know.
• After every update the bugs came in all different shapes and colors, Beta I know.
• People have been ignored. Don’t be “fooled” by the presence of a mac specialist. Over a long time the pattern looked like this: Mac users complain, dev/mod/xy appears and promises to communicate more/take care of xy/forward our issues and then vanishes into thin air. This process repeats every other month. Appeasement at its worst.
• Anet advertises it as a beta client suggesting it is a client in developement even though it is more the wrapper that is in developement, not the client.
• Anet advertises the beta “client” to run well (well, well is well for everybody in a different way) on a number of systems. They do so on their store page, for people to buy GW2 and without proper warnings for the mac client.
• If we are supposed to be beta testers, there has been very little incentive to do so due to a lack of communication and no feedback has been given to the user that their reports and pleas were actually heard.
• Anet did realize they had bad communication with the player base in general. A small subsection like the mac client was “hit” even worse by this. At least this is my opinion.
• Anet introduced this draconian policy of not talking at all about anything remotely in developement, this alone makes/made it extremely hard contributing.
• We aren’t getting any loot, really where is the Mac Mini? :P

Really, go back a few pages/months if you really feel like it but the communication here has been horrendous and insulting how they stalled users and tried to appease the same way over and over again. Which is what it boils down to, Anets communication problem.

Again, a native client is what people expected when they announced a mac client and working on a wrapper for the whole time suggests a native client not being developed at all, not the other way around like you hope.

I have summarized the last few pages of this forum for you, ratio is aprox

• Users: “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “Can’t install sadface” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “Can’t install sadface” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “why do i get a black screen?” “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “why do i get a black screen?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again”

Approximately two months later:

• Anet: “We hear you, there will be improvements to somethingsomething and we will get a mac specialist”

• Users: “Great news!” “Thank you for acknowledging us” “Thank you” “Thank you, is there any news on a native client?” “can we get an update on the mac native client?” “hello?” “why do i get a black screen?” “Can’t install sadface” “Hey I’m late, thank you for answering, is there any news on a native client?” “hello?” …. “Can’t install sadface” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “why do i get a black screen?” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “Can’t install sadface” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again”

You can now copy paste this 6 times for a total of one year.

Trying not to be overly cynical but this is very close to the truth.

selno, as yourself said, you just got back to gw2 after a long time. I too had a long break from gw2 (for the same reasons i opened this thread), and let me tell you that i still face the same issues i did from day 1.

When i bought this game the advertisement said that gw2 was now coming to mac with a new mac client, obviously, beta, but when you release a full client of the game for windows, and you keep the mac client on beta for 2 years… with ZERO SUPPORT OVER THAT COURSE OF 2 YEARS… you start to lose a few screws and your patience will no longer tolerate this joke.

The example of them working over time on a fix happened when we the mac users didn’t know when they started looking for the fix and we the mac users created a work around a day or so before they even showed up to acknowledge the problem.

There is no mac development, they stated there is no mac team. This is a hobby port done by Anet. I’m okay with that but they need to stop pretending we’re anything but second class citizens.

(And guys, lets stop conflating client with native client. The cider port is a client, it just isn’t native/use OpenGL, blah blah blah. There are plenty of decently maintained cider ports.)

There are only promises but no actions follow, the game client is still in the same bad state as 2 years ago. To top it all they broke the tp with last patch. They obviously do not care for mac users, shame on anet for not even testing the patch on mac.

selno.5320:

In the software development world there are concepts that determine the stages in development, the two main ones are the waterfall model and the agile development model. Google these, as explaining them would take up a lot of this post, but they are using an agile development process which requires customer feedback and that relies on bugs being submitted so they can “iron them out” and this is the process they are in, testing and getting customer feedback and it goes in a loop until a final version is met.

This is not what agile software development is. We used agile in the studio I worked at for a few years and I can tell you that it does not rely on customer feedback regarding bugs. The focus of agile development is creating specific goals and milestones, and collaborating between various departmental teams to get stuff done in the most efficient means necessary. This includes their QA department, which should be actively working throughout the development process to break the game and discover bugs.

Anet does not have a Mac development team, nor do they have an actual Mac client. The game has been out for 2 years now and there is absolutely no way that an agile management system would allow for a beta client to be this broken for such a long time, as evident by how smooth their Windows client is working.

As everyone already said, people are getting incredibly frustrated with Anet over this. I’m usually a very patient and understanding person when it comes to these kind of issues, but even I’m just getting really miffed about the runaround they keep giving us.

Hi Gavian,

Thank you very much for the clarification and taking the time to post here, it is much appreciated.
I take it that a native mac client is not something that is being considered. Thank you for the transparency. It was to be expected lately, considering the time and effort that went into the cider port, I’m still a little confused why a statement couldn’t be made sooner.

I don’t know what you did with this update but I’m getting frame rates that almost match the windows version.
I’m happy for the foreseeable future with this performance, great job! I’m sure you know this isn’t yet the case for everybody yet but it sounds like you are working hard to fix the remaining bugs.

Especially with the UI turned off and zoomed in (thanks to the new camera?) I’m able to run high settings at around 20-25fps where I used to get 10-20 on low to medium.
Leveling a norn ranger and having a lot of fun.

Very happy to have a positive outlook for the future of the mac client.

Thanks again!

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

Hi, my name is Gavian and I am the head of production for ArenaNet and I am also a Mac user. I am enjoying the discussion of various development methedologies, and that is something I could talk about endlessly, but I wanted to drop in and let you know what we are doing on the Mac.

Our current focus, like what we are doing right now, is reproducing Mac specific bugs and issues we see reported on the forums and working towards fixes. I will say that it is heartening to see everyone here helping each other out and it helps us out as well.

As has been pointed out, we do have a Mac specific client, it just happens to be using Cider.

We will try and post more to keep you in the loop about issues we had addressed that are Mac specific.

As a side note, for development methedology we use a number of different approaches, depends what the team make up is and what we are trying to accomplish.

Thanks!

I am sorry but no you do not have a mac client you have a mac client that is in a a wrapper this is not the same as a native client which is what we are referencing to. I can take a box of corn flakes take a dump in it and still call it corn flakes that does not make it true unfortunately.

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

Hi, my name is Gavian and I am the head of production for ArenaNet and I am also a Mac user. I am enjoying the discussion of various development methedologies, and that is something I could talk about endlessly, but I wanted to drop in and let you know what we are doing on the Mac.

Our current focus, like what we are doing right now, is reproducing Mac specific bugs and issues we see reported on the forums and working towards fixes. I will say that it is heartening to see everyone here helping each other out and it helps us out as well.

As has been pointed out, we do have a Mac specific client, it just happens to be using Cider.

We will try and post more to keep you in the loop about issues we had addressed that are Mac specific.

As a side note, for development methedology we use a number of different approaches, depends what the team make up is and what we are trying to accomplish.

Thanks!

Thanks for taking the time to get in touch with us! It’s heartening to know that Anet is trying to fix bugs and that someone as high up as head of production is aware of these problems and concerns.

Taking a bit of time out to let us know we’re not forgotten goes a long, long way. I definitely feel a bit more hopeful to seeing a more stable Mac version in the future and I hope you’ll come back time from time to let us know what the current development status and latest Mac-specific bug fixes are. Cheers!

Fix that awful new tp, has crashed my game nearly every time I’ve used it, also selno that ‘overtime’ was due to tp issues as well, left many with at least 5 days of no tp! (If it had been a wide issue for the windows version really doubt they’d taken 5 days to fix it right) The weekend fix they attempted failed anyway! Not only failed, it undid the temporary workaround we were given that actually worked.
Not a single piece of compensation either as usual. Even if they gave 1 gem to all affected I’d have appreciated it. This is the only mmo I’ve played that has never gave some small gesture of good will when there’s been a big problem with the game

Thanks all for clarification…
I’m not going to argue semantics based on things i have only assumed. I’m sorry I upset most of you, because literally i was not there to experience all your frustrations, I had frustrations too as I am a mac gamer, but not to the extent of 2 years so I get that. From my point of view things seem a lot better, but that is not the case for some, my sincere apologies.

Gavian,

Thanks so much for the reply and explanation of where you are in the Mac development process. It really is appreciated. Two things:

1) It will take a lot more than 1 post to right/calm/appease/truly help all the Mac people with issues. Someone should really be here from your company on these forums to help Mac users. Without that support for a “support” forum, it’s really just not right. You may lose a customer, like myself, who is truly having some issues with the client, and who only uses Macs. (I know Guild Wars 2 is only a one time buy, so you may have already got my money, but I was really considering putting some funds into that gem store…)

2) To talk like you did, although it was greatly appreciated, about some of the technical stuff your team is doing, is enlightening, but it doesn’t really help someone like me who is nowhere near tech-wavy. Mac users may start flocking to this post because someone finally responded. You may want to communicate to Mac users in a way that is not so techy, so that everyone can understand.

Thank you again for posting, like I said, it is much appreciated.

Best,
Michael

Well to be fair for all parties anyway last year the mac client for me was great, been a rude awakening for me this year… You may not have seen my name ever till this year in the forums as I didn’t need to report any problems on my end, it’s only really the tp that’s let me down severely, it’s not exclusively a mac problem I know…

Thought the problem was the overly frequent living story updates that were the culprit for the many problems that plague or have plagued the game but as that system changed this year we know it may be other reasons. April’s feature pack was a fairly smooth transition, was nice to for several months to have a stable tp that almost always loaded fast and ran well.

Yeah, I think most of the issue here is from the last winter when we had bugs with increasing severity and very poor communication from Anet regarding fixes (and the duration of time to fix such issues).

Communication has been improving in small bursts and I hope we continue to fix this trust issue with more things like the post asking us to file bug reports. Hopefully we can get more specifics like general areas that are being improved to help give us a heads up for where we might see troubles and where you’d like us to detail things.

I know we’re not real testers but I’d like to think we could at least be slightly useful.

We’re not only unpaid testers we’ve paid to test it, one can get very disgruntled with that fact. Partly rather I didn’t but I’ve looked at the threads that mainly the windows users post in regarding problems triggered by this feature pack and it’s very tragic how much more communication they get than what we get here. At the very least from that thread I learned the cause relates to Coherent.exe, which has replaced awesomnium or whatever it’s called. The staff there replied with tips and also explained a bit on how the tp runs or is meant to in this case… Also they are trying to get in touch with the Coherent staff for help…. So much more info even if it hasn’t helped me to get my tp to work than what we’ve had, everything we need to know should be provided equally here!

To be fair, part of the problem is that the posts asking for details is drowned out by the same old refrain of people demanding the port stop using cider.

We need to stop that. It likely will never happen because they’d have to completely re-write the game. All it does is take focus away from real issues.

Anet is hardly blameless when it comes to treating us like second-class citizens (and taking us for granted) but we need to address some of our behavior too.

I don’t feel ashamed of the conduct of the complainers, even if I did it doesn’t change the duties of support, which are to read every post and to give adequate feedback. I can appreciate it’s not an easy job, customer service certainly isn’t my forte from experience.

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

Hi, my name is Gavian and I am the head of production for ArenaNet and I am also a Mac user. I am enjoying the discussion of various development methedologies, and that is something I could talk about endlessly, but I wanted to drop in and let you know what we are doing on the Mac.

Our current focus, like what we are doing right now, is reproducing Mac specific bugs and issues we see reported on the forums and working towards fixes. I will say that it is heartening to see everyone here helping each other out and it helps us out as well.

As has been pointed out, we do have a Mac specific client, it just happens to be using Cider.

We will try and post more to keep you in the loop about issues we had addressed that are Mac specific.

As a side note, for development methedology we use a number of different approaches, depends what the team make up is and what we are trying to accomplish.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update, Gavian. I have a couple of questions if you’re still around.

Are you guys working on the issue where the game crashes from running out of memory at large events as this guy shows here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Client-Crash/first#post4360855
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/165825/GW2_MacBETA_OOM.png
This is sort of a big deal since the client consistently crashes in large scale events and, with megaservers, that is almost every world boss. Also, it makes wvw impossible to enjoy.

Thanks!

Look you people apparently have no clue you say rewrite the game to come out of wrapper as if they actually ever wrote anything for mac. This is an incorrect assumption they hired out to a separate company to borrow the wrapper to work around the windows based client. There was and has not been anything special done by Anet in the sense of a mac client nor in designing the mac cider wrapper. So please be sure to understand this before giving credit where it is truly not due.

https://www.transgaming.com/cider these are the people who made this game possible for us. Not Anet all I have seen in my 2 years playing this game is Anet’s team dodging us and giving these sorted answers with this short speak. We are planning on doing something that we cannot speak of but know that maybe at some point we will do something. These are the types of answers we get. Its all a load and I’m frankly tired of and let down by it all. So to answer OP yes this probably is it for the mac beta and the reason is because Anet does not own transgaming and therefor can never really pull it out of beta until they start actually deving for this OS and stop piggybacking off a cider calling it a client. It is like me taking Day-Z throwing it in to a Wine Wrapper slapping a Beta sticker on it and saying look I coded Day-Z for Mac. Lets get real folks and call it what it is.

Furthermore the game does see updates for the Windows based client which is exactly what we play on. If we think of the wrapper this game uses as a box that box runs on Mac OS X and the client runs on Windows well Transgaming has made it possible so that the game will “Function” on Macs this is not the same thing as a company who takes our money and actually i dunno invests it into something like a Native client utilizing OpenGl as opposed to DirectX. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenGL_and_Direct3D.

/endRant

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

ananda.5946:

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

Hi, my name is Gavian and I am the head of production for ArenaNet and I am also a Mac user. I am enjoying the discussion of various development methedologies, and that is something I could talk about endlessly, but I wanted to drop in and let you know what we are doing on the Mac.

Our current focus, like what we are doing right now, is reproducing Mac specific bugs and issues we see reported on the forums and working towards fixes. I will say that it is heartening to see everyone here helping each other out and it helps us out as well.

As has been pointed out, we do have a Mac specific client, it just happens to be using Cider.

We will try and post more to keep you in the loop about issues we had addressed that are Mac specific.

As a side note, for development methedology we use a number of different approaches, depends what the team make up is and what we are trying to accomplish.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update, Gavian. I have a couple of questions if you’re still around.

Are you guys working on the issue where the game crashes from running out of memory at large events as this guy shows here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Client-Crash/first#post4360855
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/165825/GW2_MacBETA_OOM.png
This is sort of a big deal since the client consistently crashes in large scale events and, with megaservers, that is almost every world boss. Also, it makes wvw impossible to enjoy.

Thanks!

We are still looking into this – we are actively trying to recreate it in a bunch of different ways. I know it is annoying.

That would be great. If it helps, this issue, I think, goes all the way back to when the amd improvements in the eotm patch broke the mac wrapper and the subsequent fix. If this got fixed in the interim, I don’t know as my husband and I stopped playing from april till last month as we got tired of fighting the mac wrapper, but it seems like it is still the same problem introduced then. Prior to the eotm patch, the wrapper was in pretty good shape. Since then, not so much.

This is one part of the mac beta that hasn’t hurt me too bad, I’ve rarely crashed from bosses and other big pve events, do get bad lag and game freezes but that’s never been just a mac issue.

Michael Walker.8150:

Selno, your optimism is admirable and I don’t think you are wrong on the developement points your make.

There are several problems with the “GW2 Mac Community”

• People expected a Mac Client, not a Wrapper. To be fair, people also expected GW2 to revolutionize MMOs and were left a little confused about the highly iterative/evolutionary steps it took and is taking. Beta, I know.
• After every update the bugs came in all different shapes and colors, Beta I know.
• People have been ignored. Don’t be “fooled” by the presence of a mac specialist. Over a long time the pattern looked like this: Mac users complain, dev/mod/xy appears and promises to communicate more/take care of xy/forward our issues and then vanishes into thin air. This process repeats every other month. Appeasement at its worst.
• Anet advertises it as a beta client suggesting it is a client in developement even though it is more the wrapper that is in developement, not the client.
• Anet advertises the beta “client” to run well (well, well is well for everybody in a different way) on a number of systems. They do so on their store page, for people to buy GW2 and without proper warnings for the mac client.
• If we are supposed to be beta testers, there has been very little incentive to do so due to a lack of communication and no feedback has been given to the user that their reports and pleas were actually heard.
• Anet did realize they had bad communication with the player base in general. A small subsection like the mac client was “hit” even worse by this. At least this is my opinion.
• Anet introduced this draconian policy of not talking at all about anything remotely in developement, this alone makes/made it extremely hard contributing.
• We aren’t getting any loot, really where is the Mac Mini? :P

Really, go back a few pages/months if you really feel like it but the communication here has been horrendous and insulting how they stalled users and tried to appease the same way over and over again. Which is what it boils down to, Anets communication problem.

Again, a native client is what people expected when they announced a mac client and working on a wrapper for the whole time suggests a native client not being developed at all, not the other way around like you hope.

I have summarized the last few pages of this forum for you, ratio is aprox

• Users: “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “Can’t install sadface” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “Can’t install sadface” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “why do i get a black screen?” “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “why do i get a black screen?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again”

Approximately two months later:

• Anet: “We hear you, there will be improvements to somethingsomething and we will get a mac specialist”

• Users: “Great news!” “Thank you for acknowledging us” “Thank you” “Thank you, is there any news on a native client?” “can we get an update on the mac native client?” “hello?” “why do i get a black screen?” “Can’t install sadface” “Hey I’m late, thank you for answering, is there any news on a native client?” “hello?” …. “Can’t install sadface” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “why do i get a black screen?” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “Can’t install sadface” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again”

You can now copy paste this 6 times for a total of one year.

Trying not to be overly cynical but this is very close to the truth.

Very nice post.. sadly true. GW for Mac is not a beta but stolen money.

Stop complaining, the only thing you will get is a removal of the mac client beta and you will discover the “happiness” of wine/dualboot/virtualization.

Okay the client is not fully optimized and it’s not a real port but a kind of emulation layer, but it works better than 99% of the MMORPG on OS X (I only know WoW that works better as a full port).

I’m using the mac beta client for months, and the only issue I have is the keyboard shortcut synchro between the PC and Mac version that reverse some keys.
I’m playing on a 13" Macbook not really made for gaming and it works better than almost any other game on this platform.

It’s better than nothing, you should thank the devs for this working beta client.

Why are you even on the support forums if you haven’t any real issues? I’d like to see you remaining so glass half full if or when you start to get problems that seem specific to the mac client. Last year my client also had very few faults, I had a more seamless experience than my windows friends even so there really was little reason to read or even post in the mac beta forum, certainly not to try and score brownie points by brown nosing the company, just as well I didn’t as they certainly haven’t done well this year, not one but two major problems this year.