Guild Wars 2

Hey, I was just wondering if Anet has a dx upgrade on their minds. If not is there any chance of it happening?

Jaws.1569:

Hey, I was just wondering if Anet has a dx upgrade on their minds. If not is there any chance of it happening?

Most likely not, DX12 according to Microsoft will only be released in Windows10 you may not see to many existing games being reworked for DX12 and Windows10 any time soon after the Windows8 fiasco but who knows there are rumors that you will be able to play Xbox games on 10 so there will not be any shortage of game to play on 10, just not GuildWars2 at least not to its full potential maybe GuildWars3. It’s cool that Windows10 upgrade will be free to 7 and 8 users looking at 10 I like it better than 8 let’s hope Anet is working with 10 so there or no issues for the game when 10 come out we will most likely need to run Guildwars2 in compatibility mode if we do upgrade.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Most likely not, DX12 according to Microsoft will only be released in Windows10 you may not see to many existing games being reworked for DX12 and Windows10 any time soon after the Windows8 fiasco but who knows there are rumors that you will be able to play Xbox games on 10 so there will not be any shortage of game to play on 10, just not GuildWars2 at least not to its full potential maybe GuildWars3. It’s cool that Windows10 upgrade will be free to 7 and 8 users looking at 10 I like it better than 8 let’s hope Anet is working with 10 so there or no issues for the game when 10 come out we will most likely need to run Guildwars2 in compatibility mode if we do upgrade.

Oh ok, but by the sound of the developers at pax south, it seems like they’re going for a long term investment into guild wars 2, so I don’t think guild wars 3 is coming any time soon, so I still have confidence they’ll try their best to improve gw2, hopefully make it so that more than one cpu will work at maximum potential.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Most likely not, DX12 according to Microsoft will only be released in Windows10 you may not see to many existing games being reworked for DX12 and Windows10 any time soon after the Windows8 fiasco

Microsoft will be offering free upgrades to Win10 from 7 and 8/8.1 for the first year after 10’s release. I know for sure I will take that opportunity. Maybe I will wait a month or two for bugs to be ironed out, but yeah, sounds good.

Also, Windows 8.1 is fine. I like it more than 7, and I think it is objectively better as well (in terms of background processes/services hogging the CPU).

I think adding DX12 into the mix for GW2 for better performance and future-proofing would be a really good move.

I don’t think so. They already explained why they kept to dx9, so people with older systems could still play it. Moving the game to dx12 would go in the opposite direction from the one they took.

Also, the performance has improved quite a lot since the release. I remember having less than 10fps in soft ZvZ with my laptop at release, last year I could get 10-13fps while recording big ZvZ and nowadays I don’t drop 17fps from recording the same.

With this better optimization and the fact that in next years it is expected big hardware improvements, in both cpu (Skylake and Zen) and gpu (r9 300/Pascal and new HBM memory), moving to a much newer graphic API will not be primordial, not when nowadays an i5 + 200 bucks range gpu has solid +60fps at ultra anywhere besides ZvZ and big bosses…

Ansau.7326:

I don’t think so. They already explained why they kept to dx9, so people with older systems could still play it. Moving the game to dx12 would go in the opposite direction from the one they took.

This is based on a misconception. The game wouldn’t move over from DX9, the game could support both APIs at once, where users select which one to run from the graphics options menu. This is what WoW has done.

Apart from the fact that using a more efficient API would work better on all systems, allowing more people to attain playable experiences with poorer hardware configurations.

Ansau.7326:

Also, the performance has improved quite a lot since the release. I remember having less than 10fps in soft ZvZ with my laptop at release, last year I could get 10-13fps while recording big ZvZ and nowadays I don’t drop 17fps from recording the same.

Okay, good, I’m glad it’s improved, but It’s still not good enough.

Ansau.7326:

With this better optimization and the fact that in next years it is expected big hardware improvements, in both cpu (Skylake and Zen) and gpu (r9 300/Pascal and new HBM memory), moving to a much newer graphic API will not be primordial, not when nowadays an i5 + 200 bucks range gpu has solid +60fps at ultra anywhere besides ZvZ and big bosses…

We shouldn’t need state of the art hardware to smoothly run a game that looks like it’s from pre-2010 (technologically).

(Just to clarify, I’m not trying to bash on the game out of frustration. I like the aesthetic and colours of GW2. But the lighting, the shaders, just the technology in general, holds the game back, and probably holds the art devs back as well, which is obviously very unfortunate).

Gazareth.7230:

This is based on a misconception. The game wouldn’t move over from DX9, the game could support both APIs at once, where users select which one to run from the graphics options menu. This is what WoW has done.

Apart from the fact that using a more efficient API would work better on all systems, allowing more people to attain playable experiences with poorer hardware configurations.

Even if they move or implement, this would require a lot of time, and what I tried to say is if they didn’t do it in the developing state, they pretty much won’t do it now. That would require months of coding, and with the new expansion and their policy of new content, something would need to be stopped for a long time.

And funny you talk about wow, a lot of people have reported worse performance in dx11 than dx9, even in W8 dx11 crashes and people has to use dx9 to play. Which means the problem is not the API, but the game code, how it’s designed and coded. So bringing gw2 to dx11 or dx12 is not garanteed to have better performance.

Gazareth.7230:

Okay, good, I’m glad it’s improved, but It’s still not good enough.

If you want better performance, get better hardware, welcome to pc gaming I mean, the game is quite graphically complex and it’s a MMO, so a minimum hardware is required. Also, gw2 is not like AAA games that you need r9 290 or more to max graphic setting at acceptable fps. Here an i5 and a mid range gpu does that job perfectly.

Gazareth.7230:

We shouldn’t need state of the art hardware to smoothly run a game that looks like it’s from pre-2010 (technologically).

(Just to clarify, I’m not trying to bash on the game out of frustration. I like the aesthetic and colours of GW2. But the lighting, the shaders, just the technology in general, holds the game back, and probably holds the art devs back as well, which is obviously very unfortunate).

First, you can actually run this game smoothly with a decent cpu and a mid range gpu.
Then, graphics depend more on Engine than API’s(in this case is the same engine from GW1, but heavily modified), so using dx9 or a different API won’t improve them.
And finally, really gw2 has that crap graphics? Because I see other mmo like WoW, Archeage, Wildstar… and gw2 looks way better than them. And that is just without SweetFX, because with it kitten … the game looks superb.

Gazareth.7230:

Ansau.7326:

I don’t think so. They already explained why they kept to dx9, so people with older systems could still play it. Moving the game to dx12 would go in the opposite direction from the one they took.

This is based on a misconception. The game wouldn’t move over from DX9, the game could support both APIs at once, where users select which one to run from the graphics options menu. This is what WoW has done.

Apart from the fact that using a more efficient API would work better on all systems, allowing more people to attain playable experiences with poorer hardware configurations.

Do not underestimate what $1,000,000,000 a year in income can buy you toward development. This game gets 1/10th of that. I agree with your assertion that it’s a binary choice Dx9 or Dx11/12 but Blizzard could poach 3D engine devs from every major engine software house as leads and hire a building full of fresh out of college to throw at the problem of developing a new engine with multiple paths of support while maintaining backward compatibility with all the game’s existing assets. It is not a small task nor is it one that only a handful of people can pull off.

Ansau.7326:

Even if they move or implement, this would require a lot of time, and what I tried to say is if they didn’t do it in the developing state, they pretty much won’t do it now. That would require months of coding, and with the new expansion and their policy of new content, something would need to be stopped for a long time.

How do you know they won’t do it now? With the announcement of the “first” expansion (as it says on the official website), it appears that they want the game to live on and prosper. You say it would take months of coding, well the expansion also won’t be here for months, and the people who are working on that are not the same as the graphics engineers needed to implement a new API, it’s not like they’d get in each other’s way, it’s completely separate departments.

Ansau.7326:

And funny you talk about wow, a lot of people have reported worse performance in dx11 than dx9, even in W8 dx11 crashes and people has to use dx9 to play. Which means the problem is not the API, but the game code, how it’s designed and coded. So bringing gw2 to dx11 or dx12 is not garanteed to have better performance.

Source? I find it difficult to believe that this is not just a scarce minority of cases. Each iteration of DirectX is generally an across-the-board improvement. Hell, just look at this line from the wiki page about v11.1:

Direct3D 11.1 includes new feature level 11_1, which brings minor updates to the shader language, such as larger constant buffers and optional double-precision instructions, as well as improved blending modes and mandatory support for 16-bit color formats to improve the performance of entry-level GPUs such as Intel HD Graphics

…Even the relatively poor Intel GPUs were getting some love in what is currently one of the latest versions of DX.

Ansau.7326:

If you want better performance, get better hardware, welcome to pc gaming I mean, the game is quite graphically complex and it’s a MMO, so a minimum hardware is required.

I’m very familiar with PC gaming, thank you very much, and that’s how I know that a game released in 2012 that looks like a game from 2010 should run at >90fps on hardware from 2013. What you’re arguing is besides the point.

The game isn’t graphically complex, that’s the problem. If it was graphically complex, like with realistic lighting and tesellation and super high-res textures, then I’d be like, “Okay, you can make my system chug a bit, at least you earned it with your good looks.”

The art design is spectacular, but the graphics technology is basic. I know that it’s an MMO, but let’s just look at Crysis 2 for a second, a game that came out a year earlier than GW2. Look at the complex shading, the motion blur, the detailed textures. Guild Wars 2 barely looks half as good, but it runs twice as bad. That’s not how it should work.

Ansau.7326:

so using dx9 or a different API won’t improve them.

Well apparently Microsoft are boasting 50% performance improvements with DX12, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see who’s making things up when Win10 drops.

Behellagh.1468:

Do not underestimate what $1,000,000,000 a year in income can buy you toward development…

It’s no excuse. I buy an expansion pack for a game in 2015, I expect it NOT to come with a graphics API that’s from 2002. Especially when you consider that there have been multiple signifigant improvements with that very technology since then.

Everyone who’s getting the expansion will be paying for it, and it’s expected that part of that cost goes into graphics technology, as it does with every other game you buy ever.

I want to buy the expansion. I want it to be great. The aesthetics, lore and gameplay of GW2 are so good, and will be even better in the expansion… But I don’t want to go through the same disappointment as GW2, where the technology is 10 years behind, and runs as smooth as a tractor on a road of a million potholes, with a machine built the year the game came out.

I think that in general, there’s a certain standard that today’s games should meet in terms of performance. After all, games are just as much art as they are technology. It’s easy to see how GW2:HoT will be an objectively poor game if you factor in the weight that technology has on enjoyability of games. I will likely resort to calling it that, “a bad game”, if the peformance is not resolved, and it’s a real shame.

Gazareth.7230:

Behellagh.1468:

Do not underestimate what $1,000,000,000 a year in income can buy you toward development…

It’s no excuse. I buy an expansion pack for a game in 2015, I expect it NOT to come with a graphics API that’s from 2002. Especially when you consider that there have been multiple signifigant improvements with that very technology since then.

Everyone who’s getting the expansion will be paying for it, and it’s expected that part of that cost goes into graphics technology, as it does with every other game you buy ever.

I want to buy the expansion. I want it to be great. The aesthetics, lore and gameplay of GW2 are so good, and will be even better in the expansion… But I don’t want to go through the same disappointment as GW2, where the technology is 10 years behind, and runs as smooth as a tractor on a road of a million potholes, with a machine built the year the game came out.

I think that in general, there’s a certain standard that today’s games should meet in terms of performance. After all, games are just as much art as they are technology. It’s easy to see how GW2:HoT will be an objectively poor game if you factor in the weight that technology has on enjoyability of games. I will likely resort to calling it that, “a bad game”, if the peformance is not resolved, and it’s a real shame.

Your point was WoW could do it so … but you ignore that WoW had an order of magnitude or more income for multiple years before their Dx10/11 and 64-bit upgrade came out. We are talking Scrooge McDuck piles of money here. My point was that they could have had more programmers than ANet has in it’s entirety tasked solely on rebuilding the engine over multiple years. It’s entirely and manpower/cost problem and GW2, as successful as it is, simply doesn’t bring in the income where a major undertaking like this would be attempted. Maybe if they had a tiger team secretly working on it since launch but like US’s highway system, infrastructure sadly gets ignored once initially built. MMOs is all about content and most content development is setting up scripts, art, animation and modeling. Not tasks you have people who could sling code that this would require.

You have an interpretation problem if from making the game more alive a proper it you understand better performance… All I’ve seen is new content, but nothing is about improving game performance.
And about the time, note that the engine of this game is anet owns, they created it. Coding for any other API would require a full team of programmers working for maybe 1 year. It’s not a thing devs can do at the same time they develop the new expansion.

Souces about WoW problems are all over the internet, just search wow dx11 w8…

Again, the fact that new APi’s allow better graphics doesn’t mean a game will have them. You need to code the new things, which will take even more time. Porting a game to a new API is what most games have done, and there’s no graphic difference.

About the graphic level, again, gw2 only has performance problems when there are +50 people combating on your screen. But in open world, in dungeons, while roaming… performance is quite good. Hell I’m getting 70-80 fps in pve maps with a midrange pc.
And if you feel the game doesn’t look good, then be our master and develop a wonderful game ngine that will blow our eyes.

If you could post your pc… but I think I already know where they come all those complains.

And finally, gw2 is a mmo, probably the best looking mmo out there. If you want astonishing graphics not this game neither this genre is for you.

Ansau.7326:

You have an interpretation problem if from making the game more alive a proper it you understand better performance… All I’ve seen is new content, but nothing is about improving game performance.
And about the time, note that the engine of this game is anet owns, they created it. Coding for any other API would require a full team of programmers working for maybe 1 year. It’s not a thing devs can do at the same time they develop the new expansion.

Souces about WoW problems are all over the internet, just search wow dx11 w8…

Again, the fact that new APi’s allow better graphics doesn’t mean a game will have them. You need to code the new things, which will take even more time. Porting a game to a new API is what most games have done, and there’s no graphic difference.

About the graphic level, again, gw2 only has performance problems when there are +50 people combating on your screen. But in open world, in dungeons, while roaming… performance is quite good. Hell I’m getting 70-80 fps in pve maps with a midrange pc.
And if you feel the game doesn’t look good, then be our master and develop a wonderful game ngine that will blow our eyes.

If you could post your pc… but I think I already know where they come all those complains.

And finally, gw2 is a mmo, probably the best looking mmo out there. If you want astonishing graphics not this game neither this genre is for you.

Hey! I got the i5 4960k + R9 290 (both stock) myself and I’m getting 25fps when running around the center of Hoelbrak with settings set to best appearance and 60s on all low settings. What gives? I check my HWinfo and it’s reading ~35% cpu usage with 100% gpu regardless of what setting I use. Any idea what’s happening?

mambastik.8735:

Ansau.7326:

You have an interpretation problem if from making the game more alive a proper it you understand better performance… All I’ve seen is new content, but nothing is about improving game performance.
And about the time, note that the engine of this game is anet owns, they created it. Coding for any other API would require a full team of programmers working for maybe 1 year. It’s not a thing devs can do at the same time they develop the new expansion.

Souces about WoW problems are all over the internet, just search wow dx11 w8…

Again, the fact that new APi’s allow better graphics doesn’t mean a game will have them. You need to code the new things, which will take even more time. Porting a game to a new API is what most games have done, and there’s no graphic difference.

About the graphic level, again, gw2 only has performance problems when there are +50 people combating on your screen. But in open world, in dungeons, while roaming… performance is quite good. Hell I’m getting 70-80 fps in pve maps with a midrange pc.
And if you feel the game doesn’t look good, then be our master and develop a wonderful game ngine that will blow our eyes.

If you could post your pc… but I think I already know where they come all those complains.

And finally, gw2 is a mmo, probably the best looking mmo out there. If you want astonishing graphics not this game neither this genre is for you.

Hey! I got the i5 4960k + R9 290 (both stock) myself and I’m getting 25fps when running around the center of Hoelbrak with settings set to best appearance and 60s on all low settings. What gives? I check my HWinfo and it’s reading ~35% cpu usage with 100% gpu regardless of what setting I use. Any idea what’s happening?

Try this:
- Monitor cpu and gpu temperatures (should be lower than 85ºC).
- Make sure your cores are unparked (look for google if you don’t know how to do it)
- The gpu has to be placed into the closest pci-e line to cpu and running at x16.
- In graphic options put frame limiter to unlimited.
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Low-FPS-100-usage-and-minimal-CPU-usage/first#post4731885 That guy has similar hardware than you and enabling VT-d seemed to solve his problem.

Ansau.7326:

Try this:
- Monitor cpu and gpu temperatures (should be lower than 85ºC).
- Make sure your cores are unparked (look for google if you don’t know how to do it)
- The gpu has to be placed into the closest pci-e line to cpu and running at x16.
- In graphic options put frame limiter to unlimited.
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Low-FPS-100-usage-and-minimal-CPU-usage/first#post4731885 That guy has similar hardware than you and enabling VT-d seemed to solve his problem.

Thanks for the quick reply. I do have all those checked. Both cpu and gpu are <60c, so thermal throttling is out. I did apply the patch which unparks the cores, did not set an fps limit, the gpu is installed at x16, and my VT-d was set to enabled by default (tested it with it disabled but got same results). My mobo is linked here. I’m gonna have to keep going through bios and see what things I can change, at this point I really have no idea what’s going on.

And because my cpu is pretty much locked at 35-40% usage, any overclock provides 0 fps gain.

Behellagh.1468:

but you ignore that WoW had an order of magnitude or more income for multiple years before their Dx10/11 and 64-bit upgrade came out. We are talking Scrooge McDuck piles of money here. My point was that they could have had more programmers than ANet has in it’s entirety tasked solely on rebuilding the engine over multiple years.

I’m ignoring it because it’s irrelevant. Every other game that is created has the budget for graphics programming. It’s a necessity. Using the latest DX version is a basic standard, to provide paying consumer with the best technology. We will be paying for the expansion, but the game still incorporates technology a decade old. Technology with readily available updates, that accommodate for people with all kinds of system configurations. And an API update could easily be included as part of the cost of the expansion.

To have a game release in 2015 with an API from 2002 is, in my eyes, a colossal failure from Anet to provide the consumer with acceptable technological standards. Granted, it’s only an expansion of a game that’s actually three years old, but it’s still ridiculous. I don’t care if they need to hire a graphics team. The game performs disappointingly on all systems.

Ansau.7326:

You have an interpretation problem if from making the game more alive a proper it you understand better performance… All I’ve seen is new content, but nothing is about improving game performance.

I never said they were going to improve performance, I’m trying to argue that they should.

Ansau.7326:

And about the time, note that the engine of this game is anet owns, they created it. Coding for any other API would require a full team of programmers working for maybe 1 year. It’s not a thing devs can do at the same time they develop the new expansion.

I’m not sure it would require a ‘full team’ (how many is a full team, anyway?), but if that’s what it takes to have up-to-date technology, that’s what I expect from them. Y’know, seeing as they are a professional/experienced video game developer and all that.

Ansau.7326:

Souces about WoW problems are all over the internet, just search wow dx11 w8…

Just because a few thousand cases of hardware problems comes up on Google, doesn’t mean it’s a majority problem. Out of the millions of players and hardware configurations that run WoW, obviously some people are going to have issues. For those people, we will help them through it, or they can continue to experience the game in DX9 (read: like they have been doing this whole time!) until they can get a change of hardware.

Ansau.7326:

Again, the fact that new APi’s allow better graphics doesn’t mean a game will have them. You need to code the new things, which will take even more time. Porting a game to a new API is what most games have done, and there’s no graphic difference.

No, but it’s likely that a newer API will use everyone’s hardware better and more efficiently to improve performance inherently.

Ansau.7326:

About the graphic level, again, gw2 only has performance problems when there are +50 people combating on your screen. But in open world, in dungeons, while roaming… performance is quite good. Hell I’m getting 70-80 fps in pve maps with a midrange pc.

Depends what you consider to be performance problems. Considering how the game looks, a high-end system should always be running at >60fps. Also you should be getting more than that with a mid-range PC, because GW2 is less than a mid-range-looking game. I know that MMOs generally look worse than other games but honestly GW2 feels just like GW1 but with higher texture resolutions and a fresh art design.

Ansau.7326:

And if you feel the game doesn’t look good, then be our master and develop a wonderful game ngine that will blow our eyes.

This argument is a violation of Ebert’s law.

Ansau.7326:

If you could post your pc… but I think I already know where they come all those complains.

Look at this video, of someone with a 4790k, the best single-thread performing CPU on the market. And a GTX 780, a high-end video card that released a year after Guild Wars 2. A card that can achieve 60FPS in Metro: Last Light Only getting up to ~90FPS in GW2 (not even the most intensive city either), and the GPU is only using 60-80% of its power, meaning the best single-thread CPU in the world is bottle-necking it…

[Continuation since I ran out of characters…]

What if I wanted to fork out and buy a system that runs GW2 on a 144Hz monitor? You can’t. You literally cannot buy the hardware to achieve this. It doesn’t exist. The game demands hardware so much more powerful that it’s worth. The game does not look good enough to deserve that powerful of a system!

Also…

mambastik.8735:

Ansau.7326:

Try this:
- Monitor cpu and gpu temperatures (should be lower than 85ºC).
- Make sure your cores are unparked (look for google if you don’t know how to do it)
- The gpu has to be placed into the closest pci-e line to cpu and running at x16.
- In graphic options put frame limiter to unlimited.
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Low-FPS-100-usage-and-minimal-CPU-usage/first#post4731885 That guy has similar hardware than you and enabling VT-d seemed to solve his problem.

Thanks for the quick reply. I do have all those checked. Both cpu and gpu are <60c, so thermal throttling is out. I did apply the patch which unparks the cores, did not set an fps limit, the gpu is installed at x16, and my VT-d was set to enabled by default (tested it with it disabled but got same results). My mobo is linked here. I’m gonna have to keep going through bios and see what things I can change, at this point I really have no idea what’s going on.

And because my cpu is pretty much locked at 35-40% usage, any overclock provides 0 fps gain.

When did this become a tech support thread?

What we are trying to say is that, even the game needs better optimization, it won’t happen. It would need tons of resources and time to achieve that, and the need to code a new game engine, which could literally take years.

The more I read, the more I think the problem is in the game engine, not the API. Gw2 began development in 2007, back then the game engine was fresh and new, dx11 wasn’t launched yet and dx10 only supported vista.
This game engine has major problems than dx9 exclusivity, like it doesn’t support 64 bits, so no more than 2GB of ram can be used, or since they use deferred renderer, hardware antialiasing methods don’t work well and there are problems and bandwidth bottleneck when using multiple materials.

So, will a new API help solving performance problems? Now I doubt it. Here are some examples of games that have both dx9 and dx11 implementations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fOj7U_sVMc

Ansau.7326:

What we are trying to say is that, even the game needs better optimization, it won’t happen. It would need tons of resources and time to achieve that, and the need to code a new game engine, which could literally take years.

I don’t think a whole new game engine is required. I mean, yeah it would probably help a ton, but too much work. I think a new API, on the other hand, could be implemented within a few months, but I am not a graphics programmer, so I am just estimating here based on assumptions. The thing is, though, I think you are, too.

Ansau.7326:

The more I read, the more I think the problem is in the game engine, not the API. Gw2 began development in 2007, back then the game engine was fresh and new, dx11 wasn’t launched yet and dx10 only supported vista.
This game engine has major problems than dx9 exclusivity, like it doesn’t support 64 bits, so no more than 2GB of ram can be used, or since they use deferred renderer, hardware antialiasing methods don’t work well and there are problems and bandwidth bottleneck when using multiple materials.

It might well be that the engine is the bigger problem, but you are missing something that I will discuss below. Also, 32-Bit applications can use up to 4GB ram I think, not 2GB.

Ansau.7326:

So, will a new API help solving performance problems? Now I doubt it. Here are some examples of games that have both dx9 and dx11 implementations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fOj7U_sVMc

That guy’s conclusion was pretty much “yeah DX11 is better in general.” It’s not a big enough improvement to warrant a team of graphics devs upgrading GW2 though. Not for DX11, anyway.

But DirectX 12, could be the salvation. Microsoft are reporting better use of both the GPU and (more importantly for GW2) the CPU. Apparently there’s up to 50% performance boosts. If GW2 could get a boost like that, just from implementing DX12, it would be phenomenal. Definitely worth the dev time imo.

It’s highly unlikely ANY game developer would attempt to re-write their existing game engine to completely revamp the performance of a 2.5 year old game. This is an MMO and not a FPS so running beyond 30-60 frames per second is not a huge issue for 95% of the player base. There are exceptions, but I would personally rather have the GW2 Dev resources pointed at new content (as my current performance is satisfactory for me).

Anyone expecting a 4K display to run at a HIGHER frame rate than what you can normally get at standard HD resolutions, does not understand how graphics in a PC work….at all.

Brother Grimm.5176:

It’s highly unlikely ANY game developer would attempt to re-write their existing game engine to completely revamp the performance of a 2.5 year old game.

Who’s asking them to re-write the engine? Adding in support for a newer API isn’t quite that big of a task.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Anyone expecting a 4K display to run at a HIGHER frame rate than what you can normally get at standard HD resolutions, does not understand how graphics in a PC work….at all.

What’s this in reference to? I don’t remember seeing anyone talking about 4k? GW2 could probably be fine on 4k, anyway. Usually the GPU handles higher resolutions, not the CPU. Guild Wars has CPU issues, so upgrading your GPU to accommodate for higher resolutions should already work fine.

I’m not assuming: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
In minute 8 of this video they say it took them 6 months with a full team dedicated to it, just to implement new tecnologies in gw1 engine, even before they created the engine for gw2. Coding is not that fast, and low level API’s like mantle or dx12 can be even harder, since you can simplify much more the code.

Finally, and to end this discussion, despite the game engine and API used, the game is already 2.5 years old, and a lot of performance improvements have been made over this time.
If they wanted to move to a much newer API or redo their engine, sure they’d have done it. But since it all has been small and continuous improvements without any announcement about dx10/11/12/mantle, it’s pretty clear they have made the decision to stay with what they have and try to crank it up as much as they can.

Ansau.7326:

I’m not assuming: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
In minute 8 of this video they say it took them 6 months with a full team dedicated to it, just to implement new tecnologies in gw1 engine, even before they created the engine for gw2.

You’re kind of misrepresenting what they said. What they were talking about is how they prototyped the ‘heart’ system in GW1. That has nothing to do with graphics programming. The 6 months was how long they spent testing out the new ‘quests’ system. They didn’t say anything about how long it took to do the graphics updates.

Ansau.7326:

Finally, and to end this discussion, despite the game engine and API used, the game is already 2.5 years old, and a lot of performance improvements have been made over this time.

It’s kinda sad, really. I wish I was a graphics programmer. I would totally apply to work at Anet and fix them up a DX12 version of GW2. Because, honestly I think the game is great. The ideas and mechanics are really enjoyable.

As it stands though, I’ve only done high level stuff like game mechanics programming in C++, so… sorry guys, it aint happening!

Gazareth.7230:

Brother Grimm.5176:

It’s highly unlikely ANY game developer would attempt to re-write their existing game engine to completely revamp the performance of a 2.5 year old game.

Who’s asking them to re-write the engine? Adding in support for a newer API isn’t quite that big of a task.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Anyone expecting a 4K display to run at a HIGHER frame rate than what you can normally get at standard HD resolutions, does not understand how graphics in a PC work….at all.

What’s this in reference to? I don’t remember seeing anyone talking about 4k? GW2 could probably be fine on 4k, anyway. Usually the GPU handles higher resolutions, not the CPU. Guild Wars has CPU issues, so upgrading your GPU to accommodate for higher resolutions should already work fine.

To take the most advantage of Dx11, they would need to recode the renderer for better multithreaded support. That’s one of the greatest way for speed improvement in Dx11, it’s thread safe meaning you can have multiple threads sending commands to the driver and it’s kept straight. Dx9 requires that only one thread talk to the driver without the driver messing up, badly (a simplification for non-programmer types).

While Dx11 does reduce setup overhead a bit and increases shader sizes, the prime speed advantage is the multithreading support.

Gazareth.7230:

Ansau.7326:

I’m not assuming: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
In minute 8 of this video they say it took them 6 months with a full team dedicated to it, just to implement new tecnologies in gw1 engine, even before they created the engine for gw2.

You’re kind of misrepresenting what they said. What they were talking about is how they prototyped the ‘heart’ system in GW1. That has nothing to do with graphics programming. The 6 months was how long they spent testing out the new ‘quests’ system. They didn’t say anything about how long it took to do the graphics updates.

Ansau.7326:

Finally, and to end this discussion, despite the game engine and API used, the game is already 2.5 years old, and a lot of performance improvements have been made over this time.

It’s kinda sad, really. I wish I was a graphics programmer. I would totally apply to work at Anet and fix them up a DX12 version of GW2. Because, honestly I think the game is great. The ideas and mechanics are really enjoyable.

As it stands though, I’ve only done high level stuff like game mechanics programming in C++, so… sorry guys, it aint happening!

That would involve re-writing the game engine. It’s a much bigger task than most people realize.

Also, DX11 APIs done poorly actually result in reduced performance.

abomally.2694:

That would involve re-writing the game engine.

Are you sure? I’m pretty sure the API is a separate thing to the game engine. Sure, they communicate a lot and in an intricate way, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel just to put it on a different car.

Gazareth.7230:

abomally.2694:

That would involve re-writing the game engine.

Are you sure? I’m pretty sure the API is a separate thing to the game engine. Sure, they communicate a lot and in an intricate way, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel just to put it on a different car.

yes they would. there are new instructions that would need to be installed into the game client, different ways that DX10+ would handle things like texture maps…ect.

its not just a bolt on, its a complete rewrite for it to work.

Fair enough. Guess Anet have their work cut out for them!

sirsquishy.8531:

its not just a bolt on, its a complete rewrite for it to work

… well. Some games have minimal Dx11 support just to say they have it. Doesn’t really improve either performance or look but is used as a marketing ploy. We wouldn’t want a half hearted attempt.

Behellagh.1468:

sirsquishy.8531:

its not just a bolt on, its a complete rewrite for it to work

… well. Some games have minimal Dx11 support just to say they have it. Doesn’t really improve either performance or look but is used as a marketing ploy. We wouldn’t want a half hearted attempt.

I think I would stop playing GW2 and never support Arena Net again if they did that…seriously.