Guild Wars 2

Since we seem to be getting ignored here on the forums I suggest we all submit a ticket in the support section to try and get some answers/resolution.

Please post any responses you get from the support team here for the rest of the community. Thanks everyone

I just submitted a ticket myself and will update here as soon as I receive a response from the support team.

What are we unhappy about exactly? I’m much happier with the mac version than the PC version. Both crash occasionally but the mac version is a bit more stable and loads faster for me. The crashing needs fixed for both clients though.

I haven’t sen any problems on the mac client crashing, besides some lower fps.

All betas take time to develop, so what’s the hurry! We are lucky we can even play the game on a mac.

So, as bschultz.1462 explained, what exactly is the problem?

I know that it is a beta, but how long we have to wait???
A lot of little problem at finish are a big problem!
I submit a ticket for some error, wait for reply…

bschultz.1462:

What are we unhappy about exactly? I’m much happier with the mac version than the PC version. Both crash occasionally but the mac version is a bit more stable and loads faster for me. The crashing needs fixed for both clients though.

You must be playing a different Mac client than the rest of the community because the Mac beta has worse framerates, worse graphical performance, no high textures, audio issues, major camera issues, world map lag making the map unusable and frequent crashing that the Windows version doesn’t suffer from.

I’d like to add that these issues have been present since launch over three months ago, we haven’t received a patch or an update from devs in almost 3 months now.

Do you work for ArenaNet or something?

Not sure what there is to be unhappy about. All of my issues have been addresses except one.

I have BootCamp installed on my Mac Pro 2009. I use it to play certain games with no Mac clients. Once GW2 released the Mac beta, I was done with BootCamp. Haven’t gone back.

Things that are better on my Mac:
-The client never crashes (Granted, after the initial install, a couple months later, I completely deleted Mac GW2 and redownloaded/installed. Don’t forget prefs in the ~/library. This stopped the crashing.)
-On my Radeon 5870 (exact same card Windows uses in BootCamp) I get 70-80 fps in Lions Arch on the Mac Beta Client and 30 fps on the Windows client I know some will say that the Mac graphics are lower quality, but I can’t tell. The game looks amazing with all settings at highest point.)
-Taking screen shots is infinitely easier (though everything is on a Mac, so…)
-The Mac Client loads and puts me in game so fast, the only delay is the 4 second count of Auto-Play.
-Some people complain about the mouse, the F keys, and such, but these are all setting in Mac System Prefs. Game runs like a champ with my Razor Naga mouse (as does OS X)

One remaining issue: Splitting stacks in the inventory… This eludes me.

P.S. To those using a MacBook and complaining about video performance: An Intel video card sharing your system RAM is the problem. Never ever ever ever buy any computer (Mac or otherwise) that uses an Intel video card. Might as well be using my old Atari 800 to process your graphics.

diabluz.2860:

You must be playing a different Mac client than the rest of the community because the Mac beta has worse framerates, worse graphical performance, no high textures, audio issues, major camera issues, world map lag making the map unusable and frequent crashing that the Windows version doesn’t suffer from.

I’d like to add that these issues have been present since launch over three months ago, we haven’t received a patch or an update from devs in almost 3 months now.

Do you work for ArenaNet or something?

Umm… I do not work for Anet… I have been running the Mac Beta since it came out.

I do not see any of these problems. Of course I am running on a 2009 Mac Pro quad core with Radeon 5870 and 16 gb of ram. I have not crashed in over a month. Since I deleted the game and redownloaded it. I think the crashing issue for me was caused by the fact that I had copied the game data from my BootCamp drive.

I have been playing GW2 almost 8 hours a day everyday for the past week and have not crashed once.

Update***

Below is the support ticket I submitted and following is the response I just received. I plan to reply to the email for further clarification of the issues we’ve been having and ask if they can provide a status on fixes or if this could be escalated further.

I as well as many others in the Mac Technical Support forum have been posting about issues we are consistently having with the client yet we are getting no responses from anyone at ArenaNet. We have paid good money to play your game and deserve more attention than what we are getting.

The issues we are having include but are not limited to

1. random crashes
2. map lag (the world map is not able to be scrolled around without huge delays/freezes).
3. strange audio problems where the audio gets all distorted and very loud and makes popping/thumping sounds at random.
4. Very bad camera control issues where the camera just begins spinning very rapidly (only fixed by closing the client and restarting).
5. Very poor framerates making the game close to unplayable in many cases.

I have purchased like 4 or 5 copies of this game for friends now and have been one of your largest most supportive fans but this is really putting a very bad taste in my mouth. The fact that it’s been over 2 months since we’ve had any updates from anyone at ArenaNet on the issues with the Mac client is very poor customer service. We’ve all paid good money to you for your product and we have every right to expect that we should be able to play it and be informed of fixes or what is being worked on to better the client. We deserve the same amount of attention and respect the Windows community is getting as we paid the same price for this game as them.

Their response:

Hello,

Thank you for providing us with that information.

I would like for you to delete both the local.dat and .plist files associated with your Guild Wars 2 instillation. You can do this by following the instructions below.

Please follow the steps below to locate and delete the local.dat for Guild Wars 2.

1 Click on the “Finder” icon located in your dock or the desktop of your computer to make “Finder” the active program in the finder menu bar.

2 Hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard while clicking “Go” in the finder menu bar. A dropdown will appear.

3 While still holding down the “Option” key, click on “Library” in the “Go” dropdown.

4 Once in the Library folder click on Application Support > Guild Wars 2 > p_drive > User > App Data > Guild Wars 2.

5 Inside the Guild Wars 2 folder you should see a file called “Local.dat”. Move this file to the trash.

Once this is done please follow the instructions below to locate and delete the .plist file.

1 Click on the “Finder” icon located in your dock or the desktop of your computer to make “Finder” the active program in the finder menu bar.

2 Hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard while clicking “Go” in the finder menu bar. A dropdown will appear.

3 While still holding down the “Option” key, click on “Library” in the “Go” dropdown.

4 Once in the Library folder click on Preferences.

5 Inside the preferences folder you should see a file called “com.transgaming.guildwars2.plist”. Move this file to the trash.

Once both files are moved to the trash, please empty the trash and restart your computer.

After your computer has restarted please try to run Guild Wars 2 again.

Let me know if you need further assistance.

Regards,
Luis
NCsoft Technical Support

I will follow his suggestions which I believe are just general troubleshooting steps for any Mac application. I don’t expect any of these steps to address our issues but I will post here after doing so with any benefit I see.

Fresh install on my iMac and haven’t crashed once ever.

I really think deleting everything including the application support folder (especially the application support folder and MANUALLY modifying the config file in the application support folder) should solve any issue other than you just having poor system tech specs.

Skippygoober.3051:

Fresh install on my iMac and haven’t crashed once ever.

I really think deleting everything including the application support folder (especially the application support folder and MANUALLY modifying the config file in the application support folder) should solve any issue other than you just having poor system tech specs.

The crashes aren’t the only issue people have with the Mac beta, you’re aware of that right?

1. world map lag
2. camera issues where the camera goes crazy and starts spinning uncontrollably
3. audio gets distorted and makes loud thumping sounds etc
4. weird streaks coming from light sources and shadows
5. significantly lower frame rates than on the Windows version
6. no high texture option

I recive The same reply from support center..

Let’s get into some details, shall we?

diabluz.2860:

1. world map lag
2. camera issues where the camera goes crazy and starts spinning uncontrollably
3. audio gets distorted and makes loud thumping sounds etc
4. weird streaks coming from light sources and shadows
5. significantly lower frame rates than on the Windows version
6. no high texture option

1. Never had that issue. Can you be a bit more descriptive? What exactly happens? When does it happen? What did you try so far to avoid it?
2. Faintly remember that one right after launch of the Mac beta. Never occured since I changed the camera sensitivity settings.
3. Not a Mac-specific problem
4. Not a Mac-specific problem
5. Technical limitation due to Cider port.
6. Not a Mac-specific problem

Actually, no high texture option is a mac-specific problem because as far as us never being able to get it (since cider can’t pretend to be 64 bit windows or something). I’ve been crashing up a storm recently too (sometimes the textures just flat out do not load too).

Textures not loading at all is definitely a problem that needs looking into.
The high-res texture limitation needs to be fixed where it occurs, in the 32bit Win client.

It’s not Mac specific because users of 32bit Windows have it too. If you mean they have the option to upgrade to 64bit Windows , well, so do you.

Besides, crashing up a storm doesn’t do anything usefull besides wasting the forum moderators ’ time. Report whatever problem you have, then your job here is done.

sparkbibo.5042:

One remaining issue: Splitting stacks in the inventory… This eludes me.

Step 1: Press Alt/Option and keep it pressed
Step 2: Click with the left mouse button on the stack you want to divide
Step 3: While keeping pressed Alt and the left mouse button, move the stack you want to divide to a blank space in your inventory; it will appear a small window asking how many stacks you want to move.

It may not work at the first attempt (it happened to me a couple times) but I constantly divide stacks for sharing materials in my guild.

Hope it helps.

Naqaj.6219:

Let’s get into some details, shall we?

diabluz.2860:

1. world map lag
2. camera issues where the camera goes crazy and starts spinning uncontrollably
3. audio gets distorted and makes loud thumping sounds etc
4. weird streaks coming from light sources and shadows
5. significantly lower frame rates than on the Windows version
6. no high texture option

1. Never had that issue. Can you be a bit more descriptive? What exactly happens? When does it happen? What did you try so far to avoid it?
2. Faintly remember that one right after launch of the Mac beta. Never occured since I changed the camera sensitivity settings.
3. Not a Mac-specific problem
4. Not a Mac-specific problem
5. Technical limitation due to Cider port.
6. Not a Mac-specific problem

No problem

1. When you attempt to use the world map (by hitting M) and then attempt to drag the world map around using your cursor the map doesn’t move until 5 seconds later or so and then sometimes doesn’t at all. It’s like the map is hanging up or something, it’s a common problem as stated on these forums. I’m far from the first person to mention it.

2. The camera spinning out of control happens frequently as well and once again I’m far from the first person to report this.

3. Wasn’t aware that this was an issue with the Windows client as well.

4. Once again wasn’t aware of this issue on the Windows client because I played it for the first few weeks and never experienced it.

5. Exactly my point. We are paying the same full price for this game as the Windows version so why should we get an inferior product for the same price? Why should we receive inferior customer support or tech support? No one from ArenaNet has posted in this forum in over 2 months now yet the Windows tech support forum has been addressed and assisted.

6. Unless I was missing something I was able to select high textures on the Windows client, that is not an option on the Mac client.

I’m simply stating here that we are getting an inferior product for the same price because they chose to give us a Cider port which is known to have major technical issues. This has been tried by other devs for other games and it’s always the same story. Tons of technical issues that never get addressed.

Thanks for the description. That map issue seems a genuine Mac client bug that needs reporting, preferably both an in-game bug report and one short concise post here. If you’ve done that, very good! Don’t wait for a dev to answer to it, that’s not how this works.

As a general rule, not being the first one to report an issue doesn’t make it a common issue. Having 10 other people have the same issue still doesn’t make it a common issue. Making up numbers about how many people have the issue still doesn’t make it a common issue. The only one who knows whether it is a common issue or not is Arenanet.

As mentioned above, the missing high-res textures is a limitation of the 32bit Windows client. That is where it has to be fixed. It’s a valid point to make, just make it in the right place. The difference in performance is a result of using a Cider port. This cannot and will not change anytime soon. Even if there was a native OSX client, performance would likely be worse, courtesy of OSX. We chose that fate when we chose the Mac.

Believe me, I’m not happy at all with the current OSX client. But feedback only works if it comes in the right form. This is essentially a budgeting problem. With the day only having a finite amount of time for a dev to spend, you’ll have to make a post that is worth spending the time to read on as opposed to spending that time working on the game. Don’t wait for a response from a dev, as that is almost never going to fit in a devs time budget.
Also, don’t flood the support ticket queue unless you have a support request that actually belongs there.

Back on that map issue: I haven’t seen your system specs anywhere, could you post them? Might help to check whether there is a common hardware configuration between the people who have that problem.

Bau Bau.7389:

sparkbibo.5042:

One remaining issue: Splitting stacks in the inventory… This eludes me.

Step 1: Press Alt/Option and keep it pressed
Step 2: Click with the left mouse button on the stack you want to divide
Step 3: While keeping pressed Alt and the left mouse button, move the stack you want to divide to a blank space in your inventory; it will appear a small window asking how many stacks you want to move.

It may not work at the first attempt (it happened to me a couple times) but I constantly divide stacks for sharing materials in my guild.

Hope it helps.

Thanks! Can’t believe I could not find this info sooner.

If the camera spinning is the same camera spinning problem I get then pressing enter to go to the chat window then click on the main screen or enter again to come out of the chat window usually clears that for me.

Naqaj.6219:

Textures not loading at all is definitely a problem that needs looking into.
The high-res texture limitation needs to be fixed where it occurs, in the 32bit Win client.

It’s not Mac specific because users of 32bit Windows have it too. If you mean they have the option to upgrade to 64bit Windows , well, so do you.

Besides, crashing up a storm doesn’t do anything usefull besides wasting the forum moderators ’ time. Report whatever problem you have, then your job here is done.

Oh come on, enough with the “you have the choice to use bootcamp” nonsense. This cider beta wouldn’t exist if everyone didn’t know that line was a long way of saying “here is the door”.

Lwio.7942:

If the camera spinning is the same camera spinning problem I get then pressing enter to go to the chat window then click on the main screen or enter again to come out of the chat window usually clears that for me.

I’ve found that when the camera starts spinning (or when my character starts running around in circles), tapping the direction key (the w,a,s,d direction keys, mind) that the spinning is moving in stops it handily. So far, it works every time.

Chronopunk.9167:

Lwio.7942:

If the camera spinning is the same camera spinning problem I get then pressing enter to go to the chat window then click on the main screen or enter again to come out of the chat window usually clears that for me.

I’ve found that when the camera starts spinning (or when my character starts running around in circles), tapping the direction key (the w,a,s,d direction keys, mind) that the spinning is moving in stops it handily. So far, it works every time.

I will try that in the interim. I know a friend that has an issue with it constantly but I believe it’s because he’s a clicker so he uses the mouse cursor more than I do. It seems like it’s more likely to happen the more you point and click in the game. Our only resolution for when it happened was to log out of the client and back in.