Guild Wars 2

My native desktop resolution is 1920×1080 and I run the game at max resolution available to me, namely the same one and everything looks crisp clear. However I recently tried playing in windowed (both fullscreen and not) mode due to faster alt+tab window switching, but whenever I choose the windowed mode option the resolution drops to what appears to be 800×600. I heard somewhere that windowed mode should have taken the resolution from my desktop settings, but it isn’t behaving like that for me (changing desktop resolution changes nothing in GW2 for me), I tried googling similar issues, updating drivers and meddling a bit in my Catalyst Control Center but nothing seems to help raise the resolution while windowed at all. Any ideas how to fix this? It’s completely unplayable like this because everything is really blurry and pixelated and I can hardly read any of the letters displayed.

Really, nobody has any ideas or knows some tricks?

My tip is to use windowed-full screen, its the setting I use. Is there a reason you would rather play in normal windowed mode than windows-full screen?

If you can choose 800×600 option in the game, that is not Windowed mode. That is Fullscreen.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

My tip is to use windowed-full screen, its the setting I use. Is there a reason you would rather play in normal windowed mode than windows-full screen?

The option I am trying to use is in fact Windowed Fullscreen, and I do not have an 800×600 anywhere under the available options, but when I choose any of the windowed options (both normal and window and fullscreen) the game automatically resizes the resolution even further than the lowest I can select manually (which is 1024×786) to what I can only guess is 800×600.

Doomguard.5094:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

My tip is to use windowed-full screen, its the setting I use. Is there a reason you would rather play in normal windowed mode than windows-full screen?

The option I am trying to use is in fact Windowed Fullscreen, and I do not have an 800×600 anywhere under the available options, but when I choose any of the windowed options (both normal and window and fullscreen) the game automatically resizes the resolution even further than the lowest I can select manually (which is 1024×786) to what I can only guess is 800×600.

I would try deleting the local.dat file and then launch the game and change the settings you desire. Perhaps you can even edit the local.dat file to see that the settings are being forced to run at 800×600 and change it to whatever resolution you desire. I’ve never opened the local.dat file to see what is inside, but I do know it contains all the game’s settings that you set, like whether you play on high or low graphics settings, etc.

DJRiful.3749:

If you can choose 800×600 option in the game, that is not Windowed mode. That is Fullscreen.

I’m not choosing this option, there is no 800×600 under the options, only 1024×768 is the lowest, but when I go into any windowed mode from my 1920×1080, the game shifts down to even lower than that by itself, I tried playing in 1024×768 and the screen is still clear, but in windowed mode its way more pixxelated and blurry, meaning it must be much much lower, and I don’t really know why.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Doomguard.5094:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

My tip is to use windowed-full screen, its the setting I use. Is there a reason you would rather play in normal windowed mode than windows-full screen?

The option I am trying to use is in fact Windowed Fullscreen, and I do not have an 800×600 anywhere under the available options, but when I choose any of the windowed options (both normal and window and fullscreen) the game automatically resizes the resolution even further than the lowest I can select manually (which is 1024×786) to what I can only guess is 800×600.

I would try deleting the local.dat file and then launch the game and change the settings you desire. Perhaps you can even edit the local.dat file to see that the settings are being forced to run at 800×600 and change it to whatever resolution you desire. I’ve never opened the local.dat file to see what is inside, but I do know it contains all the game’s settings that you set, like whether you play on high or low graphics settings, etc.

Hmm good ideas, will I have to redownload anything again when I delete this local.dat? Also is editing local.dat legal?

Turns out I can’t even open the local.dat. It goes into “not responding” immediately so I guess I’ll have to delete it and let the game create another one.

Doomguard.5094:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Doomguard.5094:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

My tip is to use windowed-full screen, its the setting I use. Is there a reason you would rather play in normal windowed mode than windows-full screen?

The option I am trying to use is in fact Windowed Fullscreen, and I do not have an 800×600 anywhere under the available options, but when I choose any of the windowed options (both normal and window and fullscreen) the game automatically resizes the resolution even further than the lowest I can select manually (which is 1024×786) to what I can only guess is 800×600.

I would try deleting the local.dat file and then launch the game and change the settings you desire. Perhaps you can even edit the local.dat file to see that the settings are being forced to run at 800×600 and change it to whatever resolution you desire. I’ve never opened the local.dat file to see what is inside, but I do know it contains all the game’s settings that you set, like whether you play on high or low graphics settings, etc.

Hmm good ideas, will I have to redownload anything again when I delete this local.dat? Also is editing local.dat legal?

You shouldn’t have to download anything new when you delete the local.dat, the game will just auto-magically create a new one. As for the legality of editing the local.dat, no idea. I can’t imagine that it would cause anyone any harm what-so-ever since its just messing with the game’s settings.

Turns out even deleting it didn’t fix it, so my best guess is that it has to be something with some other settings of mine, I also updated my display drivers but that also apparently does nothing…

Interesting trivia though, I just tried taking a screenshot while in this low-res windowed mode, and then looking akittens resolution in some pic editing programs and it was 1920×1080, but the game just messes it up for some reason.

Ok so here’s a little update on my issue, I was playing GW2 on my HDTV, then I switched to another HDTV and suddenly this issue was non existant. My first thought was that the HDMI port in my other TV might be faulty or something. However today I started GW2 and now the same keeps happening on this other TV as well. My suspicions are still on the Catalyst Control Center, as it detects and does something with my displays which I can’t quite put my finger on. I’ll try changing HDMI ports and rebooting the PC to see if I might get some winning combinations.

Ok so I finally managed to fix my issue and I’ll post here once more purely for archive reasons in case someone has a similar issue in the future. It wasn’t in my graphics drivers but in windows, in control panel I had an option set up to increase the font size a bit, once you switch GW2 into windowed mode it applies this effect for some reason not only to fonts in the game but to every other element as well, making it appear very stretched and zoomed in resulting in a very pixelish picture. Once the font size is returned to 100% GW2 can display ok in windowed mode.