Guild Wars 2

THIS BUG HAS BEEN CONFIRMED MULTIPLE TIMES

It is still present in the 2014 build of the game.

Testing on this Performance Issue:

Go to lion’s arch, and go to the refugee camp.
Stand directly over the campfire and look straight down on top of your character with the camera zoomed all the way out. Your FPS should be fine at this point. However if you zoom in all the way, your FPS will tank to maybe a third of what you should be getting.

NOTE: this does not affect everyone, especially if you turn your animations setting down to low, you still not see any smoke coming from the fire meaning that you won’t be able to reproduce this performance issue.

see screenshots below as examples
it has been shown that this does not affect everyone.
For those that are replying to the thread, it would be helpful to include system specs, as well as a driver versions, anet log, etc.

Thanks in advance!

SMOKE EFFECTS not well optimized in game.

Engineers Bombs, Campfire, Dredge Bombs, Trebuchet, Mortars, Fire Elemental Spawning, Living Story Personnel Carrier Event Explosions etc etc.

If I zoom in on the smoke effect, my normally acceptable frame rate tanks to 5-10FPS.

I’ve search the forums, but only really old posts have surfaced. It’s clear that this problem has been around since launch and has never been addressed. This problem occurs in almost all aspects of the game, because smoke effects are used extensively throughout.

If this problem is solved, then there would be a significant performance gain for a large portion of the player base, especially during larger battles.

My Specs:

i5-3570
8GB DDR3
Samsung 830 SSD
nV GTX 460

Update 1 : SOLVED FOR THE CAMPFIRE
but issue still persists elsewhere in the world
ANYWHERE there is smoke…

At least for me, I’ve figured out a workaround for this issue, only for the campfire.

Animation quality, HIGH / MEDIUM settings FPS tanks to nothing when viewing smoke at close proximity, LOW setting for animation quality only fixes this issue because it completely removes smoke from the campfire.

If this setting were to remove all smoke effects from the game that would solve this performance issue.

Update 2 : This issue still persist as shown by the many posts below. It’s magnified the closer your point of view is to the smoke effect. For example during the dredge fractal at the bomb carrying spot, if you are downed next to a wall, your FPS will essentially stall from all the explosions and smoke effects being so close to your point of view.

Update 3 : It seems like this issue has cropped up more frequently for people after some of the most recent patches. I myself have experienced this since beta, which is also evident by some of the other threads that have posted on essentially the same topic. However, I am entertaining that this is a recently intorduced issue and hopefully Anet can iron it out for all of the affected parties.

Update 4 : I performed a completely new install of guild wars 2 and it didn’t seem to have any affect regarding this bug. So we can most likely rule out an issue with the patcher.

Update 5 : Fire Elemental Spawn has now been fixed, because Anet removed all smoke effects during the spawn. The performance issues remains a problem with all other smoke effects, including engineer bomb kits. My suggestion again, is that there be a checkbox to remove all smoke effects from the game in the options menu.

Does this happen when many people are on the screen or just yourself? If it happens when its just yourself, then this is odd behavior, but if it only happens when you are in a crowded area then things seem amiss.

Might I ask, have you checked your CPU/GPU usage during these anomalies?

this problem has been reported before…

I just wanted an update or if anyone has found a solution, that’d be helpful

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Asura-Pistol-Bug-Massive-FPS-Drops-From-Explosions

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Huge-FPS-dip-when-effects-close-to-the-camera

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/61956-slow-downs-when-tribushe-hits-the-ground/

All of these are the same exact problem, this happens when there are explosion effects.

I want to reiterate that my game runs perfectly fine when there are NO explosions, but drops SEVERELY when I have large explosions on screen, especially when zoomed in.

still nothin’ on this huh?

dumping it, hopefully if others still have this same issue we can get some attention to this

probably doing explosions on cpu or some such……would explain gpu useage dropping like a rock in heavy WvWvW battles…..

http://ashentech.com/index.php/topic,3103.msg20616/topicseen.html

dont expect any fix for it, read the thread linked in my sig, and read the links in the thread above……

I think you will see why alot of us have high hopes for ESO…..

I’m not here to start a ESO v GW2 v WoW or whatev thread.
I don’t care about how the games compare.

I just care if the devs acknowledge or even know of this issue.
If so, is it on their to do list.

Or if the problem has already been solved, via drivers or a specific direct X fix, a link to the fix would be appreciated.

Official response would be much appreciated.

want the truth Lediath?

read the link in my sig, read that whole thread, then hopefully you will understand, that in anets eyes there really is no issue, continuing to say their is just leads to locked threads, and infractions/bans, anet dont want to know about your problems with the game they just want you to shut up and buy gems.

your not going to get an official response, try submitting a support ticket if you want any hope of a response from anet……even then, i wish you more luck then most people get.

the main fix for gw2’s poor perf, play another game.

I’m assuming that they are not actively working on this issue, so I’m going to bump this for a while, maybe get some more people to notice this.

Yes I read the thread. The support from Anet has been disappointing, however I still like the game, the minor performance hiccups aside.

submitted a ticket as advised, hopefully I get a response

good luck with that, but bumping this will end like bumping any other thread thats not pro anet, its gonna endup locked, most likely for being “inflamitory”

then, I’d appreciate not posting anything that isn’t further addressing the issue at hand.

I understand your opinion of anet, but please keep that out of this thread.

I just want my issue resolved, and they’ve already answer my ticket with a reply.

Not the one that I was looking for but, at least it’s something, I will continue to have discussion through the ticket, and hopefully come to some resolution on this problem.

As proof of this issue, some screenshots
Before spawn 81FPS
during spawn (notice the smoke effect) 24FPS
immediately after spawn 61FPS

and this is all while on LOW shaders, if it was on high shaders, it would be more like 0-5FPS.

so… full disclosure, I use combat mode 1.1
I don’t think anyone has ever been banned specifically for their use of combat mode…
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10s4s6/combat_mode_11/

see reddit thread
the 3rd party program offers absolutely no advantage to me as a player other than rebinding my keys and allowing for full time mouse look without me having to hold down the right mouse button all the time.

It contains absolutely no macros, and clearly does not read any memory from the game during runtime, or modify any game files. I srsly don’t know why this would be against the terms of service… NOW.

I’ve also never had anyone, anet or otherwise, say that I’m cheating or hacking…

Further, it clearly doesn’t have anything to do with the performance issue that I’m having, since this issue has been around since launch, waaaaay before combat mode existed.

and this is the response I got from anet

Hello.

I reviewed the data you provided and it appears you are using an illegal 3rd party tool called “Guild Wars 2 Combat Mode.”

The use of any third party addon or mod is in direct violation of our Rules of Conduct (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/) and User Agreement (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/) can be subject to action. We can not offer any support for this type of issue as you are not using the game in a manner that it was intended. Please note, continued use of this mod/addon can result in actions taken against your account, including but not limited to account closure.

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any additional issues, questions or concerns.

Regards,
*NAME BLEEPED OUT FOR PRIVACY*
NCsoft Technical Support
________________________________________________

I am speechless >.<

I have been a loyal fan of guild wars 2 since launch, but this support has really got me flabbergasted.

In my reply, I have offered to uninstall combat mode, and to resubmit my logs if it will get this issue resolved…

I await their next response.

now they want video proof?
sure I can try to get that, as well as screenshot proof WITHOUT combat mode

that’s fine
I’ll get it taken care of soon, just don’t blame fraps

Hello.

I know full well what combat mode does and that it’s not supported. Providing links to reddit does not support this case and I am sorry for that. As a player myself, I really do understand why it’s use would be desired. However, I must follow the rules and regulations set forth by Arenanet. If you can show that Guild Wars 2 is still having this issue while running in it’s intended mode, then yes, I would be happy to keep troubleshooting this issue with you. However, that means I need a Game Advisor showing that the intended Guild Wars 2 executable was being used and a video showing that with this executable being used, explosions are slowing down your performance.

I am sorry for having to request you jump through more hoops just to get the same level of support but in this case, my hands are tied.

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any additional issues, questions or concerns.

Regards,
********
NCsoft Technical Support

Lediath: good luck with the runaround, honestly, you being shocked at their reactions makes me laugh…

lucky they didnt ban you for using the mod….after all, you should play the game as they intended…….even if you prefer another style of play…..

well im off to play some neverwinter……at least it runs decent and funny enough, has less bugs then gw2 still has……LOL

ROFL, yeah we’ll see how all this turns out, I’ve provided all the appropriate information as instructed by their support staff, now I’m just waiting on an answer.

At worst, I can get a temp ban or using the mod, at best I can get my issue resolved.
I’m assuming the outcome it going to be somewhere in between. Perhaps my bug will get reported…

have fun in NW
I’ve heard its a good game

yeah nw is good, but, cryptic have experience building true mmo’s, take a look at startrek online, you gotta try it, and its toon creation/editing features….bloody amazing!!!!

one thing both have over gw2, they both have beta dx11 support, they also both have the ability to not turn into a slide show in crowded areas and large events, take a ship to ds9 in sto, most of the time i see the area outside FULL of so many ships that you cant count them all…..yet…..no slide show….

been playing some dc universe online, pretty fun really, and crowded area’s dont drop my fps nearly as much as they do in gw2…..and before anybody says it, yes dcuo uses far lower poly count environments, and lower res textures, but, heres the other part of that……my system dosnt have an issue with the texture size or poly count of gw2…..7870*2 is massive overkill for gw2, yet it still runs like poo…..

hehe, we’ll see how NW turns out, and I’m pretty excited about ESO, but I really don’t wan to pay a sub fee haha =P

Just a side note, my game runs at a completely acceptable level even during zergs (20-30FPS), it’s ONLY during these explosions and smoke effects do I completely tank, so if they can help me get that resolved w/o threatening anymore bans LOLZ, I’ll be happy.

As an update to my issue, they are now asking me to run a bunch of diagnostics and try a bunch of different settings, so we’ll see how that goes.

Also, here is proof that this is not just happening to me…

In this recent video (not by me) that shows off the start of the fire elemental event

Notice the lag during the smoke effects, and as soon as they clear, the player’s FPS gets smooth. This is the exact same thing that happens to my system, so I don’t think it’s an isolated problem.

Here are some more examples (again, none of these were created by me)

here
and here (less noticable, but it’s there)
and here

All of these videos were posted within the past month…

I’d like to emphasize that this FPS drop is not isolated to the fire elemental spawn event, it occurs anywhere there are heavy smoke effects, especially when the player’s point of view is extremely close to the smoke effect, it tanks the FPS to almost nothing.

IMO, this is very clearly a problem with the game and not any individual system…

This is what I expect to be the final correspondence from NCSoft support

Hello *,

Thanks for getting back to us. I reviewed you issue and unfortunately we’re out of ideas to improve your FPS issue. We’d be happy to forward your information to Arenanet for further investigation if you like. Otherwise my hope is that your issue may be resolved with the next patch.

If you have any further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
******
NCsoft Technical Support
________

So after two days of diagnostics and installed several of third part data gathering programs, and tweaks to my system, they inform me that they will forward the issue to Arena Net.

Hopefully Anet sees this

I will continue to harp on this issue until I get an official response that this is a known performance issue, and is on their to do list, since it affects not only the fire elemental spawn, but any time that i play w/ an engineer… or go into wvw or participate in any event with mortars/trebs…. essentially anywhere that there are smoke/explosion effects.

what i have read, its quite likely ESO will be b2p or f2p, in todays market its pretty clear p2p is a dieing model that is kind of foolish to choose.

i just hope i get a beta invite

hehe I wish you the best of luck, I will play it when it comes out most likely.

I REALLY hope its B2P similar to gw2 model.
That’s one of the things I really like about gw2, no sub

To stay on topic … anet fix this please, will improve game performance for MANY people in MANY situations, all listed above.

Found an ez way to test if this bug affects you or not.

Go to lion’s arch, and go to the refugee camp.
Stand directly over the campfire and look straight down on top of your character with the camera zoomed all the way out. Your FPS should be fine at this point. However if you zoom in all the way, your FPS will tank to maybe a third of what you should be getting.

Lediath.7593:

I will continue to harp on this issue until I get an official response that this is a known performance issue, and is on their to do list, since it affects not only the fire elemental spawn, but any time that i play w/ an engineer… or go into wvw or participate in any event with mortars/trebs…. essentially anywhere that there are smoke/explosion effects.

I’m in the same situation over at Blizzards forums about Diablo III having broken gamma, for everyone in fullscreen mode (people must not actually calibrate their monitors, or have perfect gamma calibrated screens out of the box). Bumped a thread for almost two months, no response from Blizzard. They felt the need to delete my bump posts though, but whatever since the bump still goes through :p

Sorry for the off-topic though. As for the explosions causing low FPS, I imagine the CPU is trying to process every pixel involved in the smoke, probably a better task for the GPU itself. Even worse when AA is involved (except post-process AA like FXAA). Supersampling I imagine makes it far worse.

yeah… I guess they don’t want to bring attention to bugs they can’t fix yet…

either way, have you tried the test I suggested?
in the post directly above yours, give it a shot and see if it affects you

Lediath.7593:

Found an ez way to test if this bug affects you or not.

So to lion’s arch, and go to the refugee camp.
Stand directly over the campfire and look straight down on top of your character with the camera zoomed all the way out. Your FPS should be fine at this point. However if you zoom in all the way, your FPS will tank to maybe a third of what you should be getting.

This does not affect me at all,matter a fact my Fps rises above 80 when i zoom in ( maxed out ).The game can certainly use some perf fixes,but honestly its all down to your hardware,how well your pc runs,and how well you optimize everything.

I’ve had confirmation from at least four different sources that this is an issue. Please do not dismiss this as “I don’t have this problem, so he must be him”. My hardware is well tune, I ran all the diagnostics and tests that tech support asked of me during the Ticket, and they found nothing wrong w/ my system. I had a score of 750 for Heaven Benchmark, and generally the game runs fine. EXCEPT during smoke!

I understand this is not a problem for everyone but a significant portion of the user base is affected by this performance issue that I must bring it to light.

Check the links to the youtube videos, all are the fire elemental events within the past month. Each one recorded by a different person, and in each instance there is a frame rate dip exactly during spawn where there is the smoke effect and the FPS jumps after the smoke clears.

Lediath.7593:

I’ve had confirmation from at least four different sources that this is an issue. Please do not dismiss this as “I don’t have this problem, so he must be him”. My hardware is well tune, I ran all the diagnostics and tests that tech support asked of me during the Ticket, and they found nothing wrong w/ my system. I had a score of 750 for Heaven Benchmark, and generally the game runs fine. EXCEPT during smoke!

I understand this is not a problem for everyone but a significant portion of the user base is affected by this performance issue that I must bring it to light.

Check the links to the youtube videos, all are the fire elemental events within the past month. Each one recorded by a different person, and in each instance there is a frame rate dip exactly during spawn where there is the smoke effect and the FPS jumps after the smoke clears.

You made that post for us to “reproduce the bug”…i tried it,and i simply replied that it does not affect me At All.I doubt your hardware is well tuned if your fps drops from 80 to around 30 when you zoom in on fire/smoke.Matter a fact,i just mainly think its your 460 that is the culprit to lowering your fps like this,eventhough you will never admit it and continue to blame it all on anet.

I have a feeling that you didn’t even bother to look at the videos links that I posted above.

I quote “I understand this is not a problem for everyone but a significant portion of the user base is affected…”

that’s what I said.
You said that it doesn’t happen to you, great! But that doesn’t mean that the problem doens’t exist. You’re the one making assumption saying that just because this doesn’t happen to you that it’s inherently a problem with my computer. Isn’t that the exact kind of logic that you’re arguing against?

I will continue to post about this bug, until it is resolved.

Or, if you know what’s wrong w/ my GTX460 please let me know… Drivers are up to date, settings are as per recommended by the NCSoft Tech Support, or numerous other settings that I have tried. Do you have a 3rd party driver or tuning program that I could use to fix this problem?

If you have a solution please offer it, otherwise don’t assume its my system.

oh by the way, this hasn’t been fixed in the latest patch, just FYI

I hope this helps.

I took a lot of screen shots with different graphic settings. The settings should be quite visible. I tested it pre-screenshot and got what I felt was an analogous response with higher settings, which I’m not sure if it skews or improperly correlates with your results. By that I mean, with higher settings I think I got the same results as you.

I’m sorry there is so many screenshots, I was trying to get as close to my pre-screenshot setting without the benefit of knowing what it was, so I just tried several settings. My last two, should ultimately demonstrate a dip to a lower FPS, granted with the benefit of high rendering setting. My first few screenshots should be close to your settings. There is still a dip, but just not the kind of dip that I think you wanted to see.

My computer hardware is:
GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256bit GDDR5
Intel Core i73700K
16GB of RAM
Seagate Barracudea 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache
Two Monitor Setup

well spoke too soon, smoke still produces the problem, I found out that if i put animations down to low it will eliminate some of the smoke in the world, however when there IS smoke, the FPS hit is still present

This still needs to be FIXED!

thanks very much for your tests rental

Well one of the recent patches messed up particle effects. Im getting low fps spikes as well when hit with sige weapons or in some locations with alot of smoke, fire etc.

Previous patch, Also the game is un-optimized, needs to be re coded and be in Direct X 10/11 instead of dx 9 lol….. alot if not ALL of the performance issues with this game are due to the above and anyone else to say otherwise is a fanboy.

I agree that the game should have DX11 support, but that is for another thread.
I still would like to bring attention to this performance issue.

If anet can’t replicate this at the office, then please maybe let us know what we can do to fix this issue. Because it clearly is not an isolated problem.

I have 915 hours playing GW2 and the only time I ever system crashed is during FE. And I have crashed regularly at that same exact times.

My system doesn’t hit critical temps any other time – I have a quad SLI setup. My temps while in game (not WvW) hardly exceed 60C per GPU and fan power stays at around 40-50% but when FE spawns these numbers go crazy.

I try to stay outside the chamber when it spawns to avoid the smoke. Everything is fine up until the spawn part. CLEAN does his countdown – he pauses for a bit – and then FE spawns and I experience a serious system hit. I would say about 10% of the time my system crashes. I am unsure if my camera angle at the moment of spawn has an effect on this, but I don’t want to test it.

It could be that my Motherboard settings need to allow for higher temperature readings before forcing emergency shutdown, but to allow this exception just for 1 event in 1 game is short sighted. I am able to play other games fine in high/ultra settings on a 3 monitor setup, but this kitten thing crashes me in 1 monitor windowed.

I know that the Fire Shaman’s second Stage Elemental in Scorchland is optimized, why isn’t this Fire Elemental optimized?

Thanks for your reply SirHypnotoad, have you tried my bug reproducing technique listed above?

Find any campfire with a smoke effect (make sure animation setting is at medium or higher). Zoom all the way out while looking down at the fire, and look at your FPS, then zoom all the way in and check your FPS again.

As confirmed by the other posters as well as all the youtube links that I provided, this is a problem regarding the way gw2 chooses to render smoke effects…

Check it out and let us know your results.

I have the very same issue at the Fire Elemental, where my FPS tanks to 24fps just when there is smoke. When the smoke goes, back to 60fps.

I have a GTX580 3g, 16 gig ram and a 2600k OC @ 4.6ghz. I also have 2 X Intel 510 SSD’s (very expensive hardware) at raid 0. I use no 3rd party programs, and play GW2 as intended. I can run all games at 60fps on ultra usually. I can run GW2 at 60fps everywhere, even with supersample (around 40fps in main cities though) and even with low settings, this smoke hurts my system bad.

I used Lediath’s tests and I get 4-5 fps drops doing that. but its when theres a lot of mist, smoke etc (any particle effect really) that I lose about 50% of my performance.

Fire elemental is easy to replicate, drops from 60 to 24 for 1-3 seconds and then back to normal once the smoke clears. This issue happened with 30+ in the room and with just 3 people in the room…I have 60fps in big zergs, so the issue is just the smoke/mists effects.

Glad, I’m bringing this issue to light for more and more people. Hopefully Anet sees that this is a serious problem.

If this were fixed, the FPS issues in MANY different smoke situations would be fixed.

Again, this problem has been around for a looooooong while. I hope it gets resolved soon.

FPS: 110-170 to 80-90 FPS when near campfire
Temps: 59-63C to 69-73C when near campfire

Please note: I do alot of WvW so my settings are so i get a better framerate in bigger zergs. I remove shadows completely, no AA, no Reflections, Native sample, no Post-Processing, and Low Shaders.

As Aenema said, in a full room of people and getting the screenwide smoke causes an occasional system crash for me.

I’ve never had any crashes related to system load, but the game’s poor performance with certain effects on the screen has been a problem for me since the betas.

Yesterday, I was doing the event chain that eventually unlocks CoF. Running fine at mostly high settings. At some point, a huge pile of Embers spawned on top of the group. No real FPS problem so far.

Then, every one of them popped their fire field on the ground at the same time. The FPS went from 40+ to about 10. Did the heat distortion effects above the fields cause that?

It seems to me like some of GW2’s skill effects are completely ignoring real scaling issues with the graphics engine tricks available to them.

I think it’s about time the developers took a serious look at the graphics settings and how they affect the game’s performance. Because right now those settings seem like they were just arbitrarily added in to toggle specific portions of the graphics code without considering how they affect performance on actual hardware, in actual gameplay situations.

Yes, maybe it was easy to toggle a particular feature on and off, or change some numeric threshold, or whatever, but the purpose of those settings is to tune the game’s behavior for a particular system, and right now most of them do nothing and there’s no way to deal with the real performance killers without making the rest of the game look like a bad PS2 port.

Thanks for the reports guys.

I agree with tota in that I really think there needs to be more comprehensive graphical settings to allow the user to pick and choose exactly what he or she would like to show on the screen. That way each user can tweak the settings to their heart’s content.

Further the effects of the game do seem they are rather poorly optimized. IIRC, there was an particle effects slider back in the beta, why not put that back, and let it affect smoke plzzzzzzz

I find even looking at a dredge mine chugs my PC! Smoke effects are a big problem for my set up

Evidently for many peoples’ setups

Others have reported this in dungeons as well, with heavy use of smoke effects, specifically CoF and SE as well as some fractals.

Also note that turning animations down to low removes many of the cool effects that have minimal effect frame rates, so I don’t consider this a “fix”, even for campfires.

I get a massive 22 fps drop to 38 fps (from usual 60) in Fishers Beach End…the only thing that was there was a few npc, no players, some ore and you guessed it….a bucket load of smoke effects/mist.

I only ever notice this issue when a thief does that smoke skill thing that they have and it’s in the foreground. Otherwise, I don’t notice it at all. :/

Have you tried turning off reflections? I found that dramatically increased my fps in all areas.

Running a HD7770.

I can also confirm fps drops when there’s smoke or chimneys around. Proof – http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/5193/gw020p.jpg
The fps in this shot is actually 52-3, it just dropped to 42 because of the screenshot.

As soon as I tilt my camera to the right and there’s no chimneys on the screen, my fps is 60.

Thanks for the confirmations guys! Really helps bring exposure to this issue.

@EtonMessy My reflections are set to none, try either my test or the fire elemental spawn with animations set to high and see if its still a problem. I know this is clearly not just a problem with nV cards, as people using ATI cards have also reported this problem.