Guild Wars 2

So it’s been almost 4 months now the game is out, we’ve seen everything from patches / new events / new jumping puzzles / new weapons….skins…armor/etc/etc/etc…

Yet the game still runs like crap when there’s an abundance of players clustered together.

Enough defending the poor coded engine by telling people to get new CPUs… Upgrading from a 200-300$ CPU to a 1000$ CPU SHOULD NOT BE THE SOLUTION. Neither should be attempting absurd amount of overclocking.

Not to mention a more demanding MMO was released not too long ago, which also has clusters of players in a small location with stable fps. I’m referring to Planetside 2. So the technology / coding is there. It’s also CPU bound, just like GW2, yet the lowest fps i’ve ever gotten was around 45fps during insanely large 3-way battles.

I want to get into WvWvW, but I just can’t because of the slideshow-feel of it once you come across a cluster of players running around like sheeps. At least Dragon Encounters weren’t aren’t that bad, mostly cause they aren’t really as large scale as the others… but what about the Karka invasions… low framerate / lag…

I don’t understand why this isn’t prioritized yet… ANET has created a beautifully artistic game with so much detail, why are we forced to reduce the games visuals, when we have hardware that can handle it with no problem, but since the engine isn’t properly optimized, we get poor performance. ANET is a company that develops for PC only… I cannot fathom as to how they aren’t using the hardware to their potential. I know, this game was mostly trying to cater to the folk that still use Windows XP and have really old CPUs / GPUs… Why the horrible scaling for the people who has higher-end PCs? With the performance I’m getting, I don’t want to know how bad the game runs for the older PC owning players…

We were kept being told that after release the game will be optimized, be it from an official or not… Since the beta there have been almost no improvements at all. What gives?

I get bad culling effects on a pretty new, pretty high-end (i7) system. The times when it’s been really bad, such as the ancient karka event, my cpu and gpu aren’t even maxed out. The problem is not client side.

Now we all know that no developer in the world wants a game that runs as bad as GW2 often does. They’re surely at least as frustrated as we are. Hopefully they can find some solutions and get them implemented.

your post does not invite any help because it is lacking all the specific details of your system. Try posting your specs.

Tbh i think there is just not that mutch they can do at this point without an excessive engine rewrite, or they would have done it allready. They probably also think it will sort itself out with newer hardware generations, fact is the game needs a very powerfull system to run at an acceptable framerate more so then any other MMO curently on the market. This will probably hurt the game in the long run considering the majority of the Pc Gamers now have no clue on hardware or overclocking and just run some older complete system from a discounter(just look at the steam hardware charts for a clue^^) or something like that, thats why WoW is still the top MMO any POS PC can run it fine, it was almost the same situation with EQ2 and look where that game is now.

I agree that the game engine isn’t that good. i bought a new pc a few months ago, all specs are to the top except the GPU which is Nvidia GTX560ti – i run every latest game with maximum settings and easily above 30 fps.

it doesn’t matter what system you have – if you code smth wrong – the power of the machine becomes unrelevant very quickly.

They can’t optimize it for every system. My boyfriend has this for a system

i7 3770k @ 4.7ghz
16gb DDR3 1600 Ram
2x 3TB SATA III HDD
1X 2TB SATA III HDD
256GB OCZ Vertex 4, SSD,

and is able to record big events with 50 people on screen with allsettings on the highest at 40 FPS.

I’m on a AcerAspire 5742G laptop
(specs
Intel Core i5-480M
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
4GB DDR3 Memory)

Can normally run the game on medium at 50 FPS, but when there’s huge events my FPS count drops to 5. I’m actually surprised that it even runs for me. I mean this is a laptop I’m on and Guild Wars 2 is a pretty new, advanced game.

I wouldn’t say that the coding is wrong. I would say that it’s just not perfect for all systems. The same way that I can’t play Planetside because it stutters for me, the same way that some games refuse to run for my boyfriend.

Part of the problem is the engine doesnt seem to scale with the settings at all if you have a (overclocked) high end cpu it runs ok no matter what settings you use if not you can change pretty mutch whatever setting you want with no effect, there need to be atleasr some sliders to minimize the cpu load like how many players/npcs to render or to reduce the effects during combat.

Having a $1000-$1600 system won’t fix the issue. Don’t bother.

Apparently you have to actually be working at ANet to see how great things should be during events. Clearly it’s “us”.

Occlusion culling is done by Umbra´s middleware , so that means ANet can do squat about their main performance problem.

BTW ANet has ALL the metrics they ever gona need about this problem, as the client is constantly “phoning home” your performance on every part of the map.

Check out their GDC lecture: Guild Wars 2 programming tricks revealed

Yeah well as you can see on that page for example Planetside 2 does use Umbra too so why dont they have the same problems?

Simple solution:
Give us the ability to turn off other PCs off, and seeing only their NAMES, no need to see all players on screen, with all those effects added is just a tragedy of FPS dropping to 5-.
Aion done that and even low end pcs could have 20FPS during large scale battles-sieges!

ARENANET DO THIS PLS!!!! TY

tetsuo.7318:

Yeah well as you can see on that page for example Planetside 2 does use Umbra too so why dont they have the same problems?

That is indeed the 99Silver question.

Why does this client work seemingly flawlessly(until the next patch) on most computers but on not a few it´s pretty much hopeless, although they work perfectly good with any other game?

I suspect the ANet “hackers”.
This game often does things “too” smartly and the coders seem to be enamored with their own coding prowess so much, that they routinely seem to reinvent a “better” wheel.
All those install problems that plagued this client from the very start(i.e. 10125K download crash) are a good example.

Great when it works.
But when it doesn´t, simply a waste of my time to even bother error shooting.
ONE of the main reason why my main is currently on lvl53 and the other 6 alts around 15. Playing since launch.

HawkMeister.4758:

Occlusion culling is done by Umbra´s middleware , so that means ANet can do squat about their main performance problem.

BTW ANet has ALL the metrics they ever gona need about this problem, as the client is constantly “phoning home” your performance on every part of the map.

Check out their GDC lecture: Guild Wars 2 programming tricks revealed

I was listening to that lecture this morning… So now the question is… Would it be optimal to run the game on everything high and endure the even worse framerate so it’ll give a more accurate depiction of my experience for the metrics or stick with my current settings that at least make it slightly playable… Either way, no word from the devs in terms of any improvements anytime soon aside from the typical ‘we know about it and are working hard on it’.

iSmack.1768:

HawkMeister.4758:

Occlusion culling is done by Umbra´s middleware , so that means ANet can do squat about their main performance problem.

BTW ANet has ALL the metrics they ever gona need about this problem, as the client is constantly “phoning home” your performance on every part of the map.

Check out their GDC lecture: Guild Wars 2 programming tricks revealed

I was listening to that lecture this morning… So now the question is… Would it be optimal to run the game on everything high and endure the even worse framerate so it’ll give a more accurate depiction of my experience for the metrics or stick with my current settings that at least make it slightly playable… Either way, no word from the devs in terms of any improvements anytime soon aside from the typical ‘we know about it and are working hard on it’.

If you do whatever it takes to be playable, they’ll get that info, too.
Someone with a good rig running on low graphics is as much an indictment as someone achieving low fps.

Don’t expect miracles. The other thing in the lecture is ANet prefers to reinvent their own wheels, rather than get outsourced code. That was an “ah ha!” moment that shed light on why so many simple common things give them difficulties.

“Upgrading from a 200-300$ CPU to a 1000$ CPU SHOULD NOT BE THE SOLUTION.”

I agree we need performance updates, but no reason to exaggerate either. For $325 you can get MB/Proc and Ram to run this game well. The best news, everything else will run better to.

Lol, I only have i3 quad core and —-→INTEL HD GRAPHICS <—— And I run this game on low and NEVER crash, not even at the Karka events, I had many lagg, what is normal if there are many people close to eachother but I never crash.
And what do you expect, about 50 people in one small area and no lagg? Please, name me only one MMORPG that doesn’t have a 10 year old engige that does not have this problem

FWIW, I did run the event without lag with an i7/660ti. So it can happen. 25FPS was my low, but the mouse was still smooth, so all was still good.

Riselight.3695:

Lol, I only have i3 quad core and —-->INTEL HD GRAPHICS <—— And I run this game on low and NEVER crash, not even at the Karka events, I had many lagg, what is normal if there are many people close to eachother but I never crash.
And what do you expect, about 50 people in one small area and no lagg? Please, name me only one MMORPG that doesn’t have a 10 year old engige that does not have this problem

Like the example I just gave. Planetside 2. You have 2000+ people on a given continent (3 in total) per server with the potiental to add even more people later on down the road, which i might add, is FULLY persistant, no portals within the continents. During 3-way battle which involves the 3 factions in the game, concentrated in a small plant/lab/whatever, there’s probably over 200 people there, if not more. No lag – No rubberbanding – no teleporting enemies – bullets go where they are supposed to (thanks to client side detection), just framerate dips to 45 which is still quite playable. Not to mention that battles like these occur at key locations on each continent, which means lots of stress for the Servers.

As for the crashing, that’s a different story. My GW2 client hasn’t crashed once yet, while my friends crashes during Dragon encounter (due to the siren issue) and his PC is much more powerful than mine.

And for reference sake:

I run an i5 2500k OC-ed to 4.5Ghz w/ 16GB Ram and 2x GTX 560Tis on 2560×1440@120Hz res with mostly High/Medium Settings – FXAA – Native render.

My friend has a i7 3960k @ 4.8Ghz w/ 8GB and 2x GTX 670 4GB on 2560×1440@120Hz on all High/Ultra – FXAA – Supersample.

Both of us get as low as 10fps in WvWvW when we’re near a cluster of players.

Horrorscope.7632:

“Upgrading from a 200-300$ CPU to a 1000$ CPU SHOULD NOT BE THE SOLUTION.”

I agree we need performance updates, but no reason to exaggerate either. For $325 you can get MB/Proc and Ram to run this game well. The best news, everything else will run better to.

CPU as in Processor.

“Going from an i5 / i7 (200-300$ CPUs) to an i7 Extreme (1000$ CPU) should not the solution.”

mulch.2586:

iSmack.1768:

HawkMeister.4758:

Occlusion culling is done by Umbra´s middleware , so that means ANet can do squat about their main performance problem.

BTW ANet has ALL the metrics they ever gona need about this problem, as the client is constantly “phoning home” your performance on every part of the map.

Check out their GDC lecture: Guild Wars 2 programming tricks revealed

I was listening to that lecture this morning… So now the question is… Would it be optimal to run the game on everything high and endure the even worse framerate so it’ll give a more accurate depiction of my experience for the metrics or stick with my current settings that at least make it slightly playable… Either way, no word from the devs in terms of any improvements anytime soon aside from the typical ‘we know about it and are working hard on it’.

If you do whatever it takes to be playable, they’ll get that info, too.
Someone with a good rig running on low graphics is as much an indictment as someone achieving low fps.

Don’t expect miracles. The other thing in the lecture is ANet prefers to reinvent their own wheels, rather than get outsourced code. That was an “ah ha!” moment that shed light on why so many simple common things give them difficulties.

From what I understood, the program they are using puts green-yellow-red blips on the maps we’re adventuring in. So say if on low I’m getting 60fps+, it would put a green blip on the locations i visit. Wouldn’t that kind of make them ignore this type of data since they’ll see it as a green, so everything is working fine there, next problem. I mean sure if they dive into the details, they’ll see our specs and settings, but i’m sure red blips are what they concentrating on more rather than the greens/yellows.

Mirta.5029:

They can’t optimize it for every system. My boyfriend has this for a system

i7 3770k @ 4.7ghz
16gb DDR3 1600 Ram
2x 3TB SATA III HDD
1X 2TB SATA III HDD
256GB OCZ Vertex 4, SSD,

and is able to record big events with 50 people on screen with allsettings on the highest at 40 FPS.

I’m on a AcerAspire 5742G laptop
(specs
Intel Core i5-480M
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
4GB DDR3 Memory)

Can normally run the game on medium at 50 FPS, but when there’s huge events my FPS count drops to 5. I’m actually surprised that it even runs for me. I mean this is a laptop I’m on and Guild Wars 2 is a pretty new, advanced game.

I wouldn’t say that the coding is wrong. I would say that it’s just not perfect for all systems. The same way that I can’t play Planetside because it stutters for me, the same way that some games refuse to run for my boyfriend.

What? you mean like every other game out there? relativly to the polygon count/ screen effect – this game should run with 100 characters on screen without a sweat…

iSmack.1768:

Horrorscope.7632:

“Upgrading from a 200-300$ CPU to a 1000$ CPU SHOULD NOT BE THE SOLUTION.”

I agree we need performance updates, but no reason to exaggerate either. For $325 you can get MB/Proc and Ram to run this game well. The best news, everything else will run better to.

CPU as in Processor.

“Going from an i5 / i7 (200-300$ CPUs) to an i7 Extreme (1000$ CPU) should not the solution.”

My i7 was under $300. CPU’s in the 9000 marks area I can say run the game well, some i5’s live there to. I only say this as some may think everyone is struggling, with any kind of hw.

iSmack.

From my undertsanding i think i know what your issue is with WvW performance.

Your CPU is fine ! im happy to say ..as you probably already know. However….

I have seen alot of talk about SLI and GW2 ..it doesnt seem to work. Your pushing a 560ti way to hard in respect to resolution and settings. I run my OC’d 560ti (384CUDA, 950mhz core 4580mhz memory) at 1920×1080 on max settings EXCEPT SS is on NS, Reflections is on Terrain and Sky ..and shadows when in WvW is on High not ultra.
That keeps my fps between 35 and 60 on WvW (30-80 people on screen, havnt been in a 100+ battle yet). But my GPU does max out frequently, so i can only imagin that ur gpu is constantly maxed out due to the resolution ur running at. I render 2,073,600 pixels, your trying to render 3,686,400.

Anyway ..try disabling SLI completly and runing GW2 at 1080p with high settings all over like i am.. I know it isnt ur native resolution ..but its just to see if it is SLI and the resoltuion ur using Hope it helps.

EDIT: oh and its 3960(X) ..no (K) :P

SolarNova.1052:

iSmack.

From my undertsanding i think i know what your issue is with WvW performance.

Your CPU is fine ! im happy to say ..as you probably already know. However….

I have seen alot of talk about SLI and GW2 ..it doesnt seem to work. Your pushing a 560ti way to hard in respect to resolution and settings. I run my OC’d 560ti (384CUDA, 950mhz core 4580mhz memory) at 1920×1080 on max settings EXCEPT SS is on NS, Reflections is on Terrain and Sky ..and shadows when in WvW is on High not ultra.
That keeps my fps between 35 and 60 on WvW (30-80 people on screen, havnt been in a 100+ battle yet). But my GPU does max out frequently, so i can only imagin that ur gpu is constantly maxed out due to the resolution ur running at. I render 2,073,600 pixels, your trying to render 3,686,400.

Anyway ..try disabling SLI completly and runing GW2 at 1080p with high settings all over like i am.. I know it isnt ur native resolution ..but its just to see if it is SLI and the resoltuion ur using Hope it helps.

EDIT: oh and its 3960(X) ..no (K) :P

I’ll give that a try, hopefully tonight… I swapped my main HDD with an SSD and reinstalled Win7. GW2 should be downloaded by the time I get home from Work.

As for GPU mem usage at 2560×1440, i hasn’t gone past 900MB, even during WvWvW. I’d get a 2GB or 4GB GPU, but I’m waiting for the GTX 700 series in order to do so…

Thanks

Im also waiting on the 700 series or 8000 series ATi ..hence why i have a 560ti paired with a 3930k :P

Ok so after trying out 1920×1080, not much was different… Still dipped down… maybe gained like 5 fps, but i’d rather have the clarity of native resolution, so I just bumped it back up to 2560×1440.

I’m getting 120fps in some areas while I’m doing PvE… so I’ll just stick to those areas for now… Still need 100% map Completion.

in general shadow and lighting effect usually are the most consuming, if u really want to improve performence – start there