Guild Wars 2

This was posted by an nvidia employee, I thought everyone should read.

“Again, the state of the game currently is horrible. ANET are seemingly either being naive to issues or ignorant in general performance debugging etc.

As far as them refusing help from nVidia, the same story is true of AMD. It seems that Arena Net is attempting to take the “we can do it ourselves, go away” approach to the help either company is offering.

This, to me, suggests an air of pure arrogance on their part… Their guide for improving FPS on the forums does next to nothing, and it includes sacrificing graphical quality to achieve any (even if essentially insignificant) results.

Honestly, I’m losing respect for a company I really thought so highly of; ANET’s behavior is shameful and completely asinine and it’s not understandable in the least. They refuse to optimize the game’s engine in any meaningful way, they refuse to offload more resources to the GPU, they refuse to implement improvements in their DX9c call functions, much less take the game to DX11 (which would help significantly, even if they’re using the laziest programmers on the planet). All of this equates to an image of “We really don’t care, you’ve already bought the game”. Now, I’m sure this isn’t the case, but I am failing to see what the reasoning is for refusing industry standard help from the two companies (and I’m not sure the last time AMD solicited to help) that make the kitten graphics cards.

So… all blame, at this juncture, falls on Arena Net. nVidia can only optimize up to a specific point, same holds true for AMD. nVidia is attempting to further optimize things for GW2, but their hands are tied by the sheer fact that GW2’s engine is a flaming piece of kitten, to put it bluntly. System performance is so erratic, that even on closed loop synthetic testing, I get a variance of nearly 300%… the worst of ANY game I’ve ever played (which is not to say it has the worst optimization, just the most variation between configurations and system variables) Truly, I am disappointed.

Would you be able to share why optimization attempts were blocked?

All client side assistance offered by nVidia recently was refused. That means any non-driver optimization was refused. Reasons? I don’t know them, but there really are no reasons to refuse the help offered except for ignorance or pride/vanity, or some combination of that. "

I´m not saying this all has to be true, and I hope ArenaNet has something to say about this soon, but if it is true it´s a HUGE punch in the face for everyone who has performance issues with Guild Wars 2. And that are a lot people.

Not only does this drag on for almost a year, it seems they don´t even care to do anything to improve the situation and refuse to have anyone else improve the situation.

IF that would be true it would make me lose all my trust in this game which gradually decreased over the past months.

I was and still am a huge fan of ArenaNet, Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2,
but honestly not for much longer if things stay this way.

I am not surprised in the least.
At this point in time this game should have had atleast 1 major ‘significant’ performance patch. It hasnt, unless u count the now client side WvW culling options, which did nothing to improve performance.
When a £500 OverClocked CPU can only get ~25 fps+ in a WvW zerg, u know there’s a game engine issue. When its a mmo with people paying into the game, be it be via subscription or microtransactions, there is an expectation of improvment for said performance. We have not had it, nor heared any specific word from Anet to say its coming.
Im a stickler for completing things that are only available for al imtied time, so events for example i always complete. The last 2 or 3 GW2 events i havnt completed, becouse i just dont give a flying monkeys anymore. I havnt played much if at all in the last 2 or so months.

Something similar to this was posted during game launch last year… Sad to see that after 9 months, nothing has been done about it.

The erratic nature of performance in this game is a direct result of the lack of polish that the entire game has.
I can’t remember any game let alone a AAA title that has had 0 performance tweaks in 9 months.
I spent over $1000 upgrading my pc(had to be done anyways) and have witnessed very little improvement overall.
I remember when Anet turned down Nvidia and AMD help with optimization and I really couldn’t believe it.
The game needs less cutesy gem store items and more performance patches!

Stormcrow.7513:

[…]
I remember when Anet turned down Nvidia and AMD help with optimization and I really couldn’t believe it.
[…]

So they really did turn down an offer to get help with optimization?
Do you remember where and when you read about it?

And why would they not want help with it?

I mean it´s a really important part of ANY game that should
get as much attention as posible, especially when there are
big problems like in this case.

Arkanis Drako.5169:

I´m not saying this all has to be true, and I hope ArenaNet has something to say about this soon, but if it is true it´s a HUGE punch in the face for everyone who has performance issues with Guild Wars 2. And that are a lot people.

Not only does this drag on for almost a year, it seems they don´t even care to do anything to improve the situation and refuse to have anyone else improve the situation.

IF that would be true it would make me lose all my trust in this game which gradually decreased over the past months.

I was and still am a huge fan of ArenaNet, Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2,
but honestly not for much longer if things stay this way.

The worst part about this is that this was posted about 9 months ago and the FPS issue still continues. Yes I remember where I read it but I don’t want to post outside links, I would rather keep it in here for the devs to see.

Arkanis Drako.5169:

Stormcrow.7513:

[…]
I remember when Anet turned down Nvidia and AMD help with optimization and I really couldn’t believe it.
[…]

So they really did turn down an offer to get help with optimization?
Do you remember where and when you read about it?

And why would they not want help with it?

I mean it´s a really important part of ANY game that should
get as much attention as posible, especially when there are
big problems like in this case.

It was when the last optimizations were done to the Nvidia drivers and that was the last time they did anything for GW2. It was probably about 8 months or more. There was a link(which I cant find) from an Nvidia dev that explained how GW2 is very CPU bound and that they offered to help Anet with optimizations for their cards only to be turned down. I wish that I could find the link but it might be lost to the annals of the internet.
As to why they would turn down any help? I have no idea. Maybe they figured that the inhouse techs could handle it or maybe that there was no issue in their minds.
Either way, there has been 0 work done for GW2 on both AMD and Nvidia drivers since that point about 8 months ago, and it shows. There are still issues with AO and graphic bugs, textures and the like.
After Anet said in a patch note that they were doing optimizations to the game I really haven’t seen any improvement. I get the feeling that we will be stuck with the performance of this game throughout it’s life cycle.

Just to play Anet’s defender for a moment, I’ll mention 2 reason that may be a factor in ANet accepting these offers of help in optimizing.

1) Lack of resources. If Anet has not allocated resources to work with nVida / AMD to optimize the code, then the refusal would be based on, “we just don’t have the manpower to do this.” I’m not saying the reason is good or that they shouldn’t “find” the resources to do it, but it is a possible reason.

2) I’m guessing the REAL reason is that in order to do this optimization, ANet believes (rightly or wrongly) that they would have to reveal certain tech details of their network encryption and security and are not willing to risk them with a 3rd (or 4th) party. All the NDAs n the world can’t put the single posting of a code hack on the internet back in the bottle.

Stormcrow.7513:

Arkanis Drako.5169:

Stormcrow.7513:

[…]
I remember when Anet turned down Nvidia and AMD help with optimization and I really couldn’t believe it.
[…]

So they really did turn down an offer to get help with optimization?
Do you remember where and when you read about it?

And why would they not want help with it?

I mean it´s a really important part of ANY game that should
get as much attention as posible, especially when there are
big problems like in this case.

It was when the last optimizations were done to the Nvidia drivers and that was the last time they did anything for GW2. It was probably about 8 months or more. There was a link(which I cant find) from an Nvidia dev that explained how GW2 is very CPU bound and that they offered to help Anet with optimizations for their cards only to be turned down. I wish that I could find the link but it might be lost to the annals of the internet.
As to why they would turn down any help? I have no idea. Maybe they figured that the inhouse techs could handle it or maybe that there was no issue in their minds.
Either way, there has been 0 work done for GW2 on both AMD and Nvidia drivers since that point about 8 months ago, and it shows. There are still issues with AO and graphic bugs, textures and the like.
After Anet said in a patch note that they were doing optimizations to the game I really haven’t seen any improvement. I get the feeling that we will be stuck with the performance of this game throughout it’s life cycle.

The problem with this though is that my CPU is only at about 11-20% while playing GW2 but my GPU “Graphics card” is at 90%+. And I even notice low FPS when NO players are around. I currently have the GTX 690

What CPU are you using CrazyDuck? The CPU could be bottlenecking your card, although I know they are doing optimizations so it could also be that.
A GTX 690 is overkill for GW2 at the moment at shouldnt be using 99%
My GTX 680oc is running at 99% as well during the same situations, but I have noticed my CPU use is more than 11-20%.
Don’t forget that GW2 will only use 3 heavy threads and doesn’t use the full resources of a 4core8thread CPU.

If you are running a GTX680 and getting 99% GPU, you think that is normal? Lol, imagine players who have the average video card not top of the line. The CPU isn’t bottlenecking, I can run any other game on full max settings and not use 100% of my GPU. My CPU is only at 10-20% while playing GW so where is the bottleneck lol.

Yeah.. well. I don’t know if they turned down offered help, and I don’t really care. The truth is though, stuff doesn’t work properly. I’m one of the people who bought a new computer especially for this game. And it’s considered powerful (3570k,16GB ram, Nvidia 660Ti). And I’ve been having a crap load of problems ONLY with this game. I’m not even talking about FPS – it’s great on my machine, excluding the big battles and stuff.

I’m having random freezes and complete PC lockups while playing Guild Wars 2. Only when playing Guild Wars 2. All of a sudden my screen turns solid red, or green, or orange color and my PC becomes completely unresponsive. I need to hard reset or shutdown. And I sent it back because it’s still in warranty and the dudes said that the GPU is perfect. Then they sent it to the manufacturer, which also said that it’s fine.

So it’s back with me. The thing that the guys at the store said was, that another dude who plays GW2 and has the same GPU (Nvidia 660Ti), has had the SAME problem..

What can I say guys. I want to play this stupid game, because it’s the only one I play, and I can’t do it.

Nowadays I doubt that ANet will do something about it.

I use supersampling and everything at max(high/ultra) settings with 1920×1080 rez so 99% seems high but within the realm of reason.
I think that maybe Anet is testing(with us as guinea pigs) offloading some processes from the CPU to the GPU.
I agree with you though Duck that a GTX 680 and especially a GTX 690 shouldn’t be running at 99% considering the graphics that GW2 brings to the table.
Hank, I have read about other players having that issue with the 660Ti as well, and that specific issue has been known for quite some time and to my knowledge there hasn’t been any resolution to the problem.
In a nutshell the game is the most unoptimized game that I have ever come across…ever. With an antiquated API and dreadfully old engine(GW1 engine modded) I can’t really see any “miracle” patches…ever.

Yeah, and now I have to save more cash to get a new graphics card, because it’s a “gray area” and the PC store won’t replace it, nor Anet would replace it or fix my issue. $300 bucks on the waste.

And after 9 months, people wonder why no one replies to their “fix your game” questions. Well, logic leads to “We aren’t able to do anything at this point”. Maybe they just don’t want to say it.

And.. darn.. according to Anet, they started developing the game in 2007, so 5 years. They had 5 years, and they couldn’t create a new engine? Or at least buy one or something. It doesn’t make any sense to me, except for cutting costs, but for a project as big as this..

Stormcrow.7513:

I use supersampling and everything at max(high/ultra) settings with 1920×1080 rez so 99% seems high but within the realm of reason.
I think that maybe Anet is testing(with us as guinea pigs) offloading some processes from the CPU to the GPU.
I agree with you though Duck that a GTX 680 and especially a GTX 690 shouldn’t be running at 99% considering the graphics that GW2 brings to the table.
Hank, I have read about other players having that issue with the 660Ti as well, and that specific issue has been known for quite some time and to my knowledge there hasn’t been any resolution to the problem.
In a nutshell the game is the most unoptimized game that I have ever come across…ever. With an antiquated API and dreadfully old engine(GW1 engine modded) I can’t really see any “miracle” patches…ever.

I’m actually having a tough time deciding the worst between this and Rift;

On Rift I managed an amazing 8 FPS on maxed graphics with a 680GTX, facing nothingness with an 8core CPU. xD

Stormcrow.7513:

I use supersampling and everything at max(high/ultra) settings with 1920×1080 rez so 99% seems high but within the realm of reason.
I think that maybe Anet is testing(with us as guinea pigs) offloading some processes from the CPU to the GPU.
I agree with you though Duck that a GTX 680 and especially a GTX 690 shouldn’t be running at 99% considering the graphics that GW2 brings to the table.
Hank, I have read about other players having that issue with the 660Ti as well, and that specific issue has been known for quite some time and to my knowledge there hasn’t been any resolution to the problem.
In a nutshell the game is the most unoptimized game that I have ever come across…ever. With an antiquated API and dreadfully old engine(GW1 engine modded) I can’t really see any “miracle” patches…ever.

Ya and the worst part is at 99% GPU usage over a long period of time will harm my card. I think anet should fix this before people start asking them to pay for a new video card. But hey, if anet is fine with buying me a new GTX690 after it fries then I don’t care about any fix.

as frustrated as I am with the current state of the game , I’m going to give Anet the benefit of the doubt. There must be a reason.

9 months? What reason could that be after all the $ they are making from RNG boxes. That’s the problem, everyone is saying what you are saying Ricky. We need more people PUSHING Anet to fix the problem.

i’m considering my experience from doing a research project with fbx and 3D software ….fbx is a popular format ..but in order to get the latest sdk for it the companies have to pay a license fee…as a result, very few 3D companies have the latest fbx version ( which changes every year and a I think new license has to be obtained to update to stay current ). Now I can be all for pushing, but I want to give Anet the benefit of the doubt and understand their side of it ….. is nVidia running some sort of illuminati game on our fav developers!! That original message posted on this thread did sound pretty harsh for a pro rep – it was very “Hey, we gave em a discount on our extortion rate and they didn’t want it” lol

I mean think about it, nVidia is a dominant graphics card in most computers, they could if they wanted to , break someones software 1nce a month and charge outrageous fees to fix it. GW2 did run good at one point, it’s hard to believe Anet would break that just because they added a few events. ….adding a new 3D model causes the computer to become unstable ? – not likely. #3DGate

“of’course we can help you fix your software, we broke it! Ahahahaha, you mad bro ? "

So Anet cheaped out and didnt pay for the most recent sdk? That doesn’t really make sense but who knows :P
I actually think that the problems are with Umbra really.
http://www.umbrasoftware.com/en/

The cause is semantical since the issue is affecting many users and most of them don’t even realize it.
I will pop in and out of the game for now until they decide to fix the performance and optimization nightmare that is GW2

dunno man, the way he brought amd into the picture was like “look bro, we got you cornered….see if you can do those pretty graphics with an intel video chip …ahahahahaha” truth is …gw2 isn’t the only game that got ganked in nVidia’s latest update, they might be trying to do payroll on everyone lol

Whats funny is one of my guild teammates has an onboard graphics card that runs smoother then my dedicated graphics card GTX690.

1/ I don’t believe this actually came from an nVidia employee. It’s forged, almost certainly. If I sent such an email to a customer, I’d be rightfully fired.

2/ if not forged, it was written by a hater who shouldn’t be working for nVidia anymore. Such a rant is decidedly bad practice and grounds for immediate contract termination. Forward that email to his superiors if you still have the original.

3/ I can’t believe any company would turn down an offer for free help.

4/ the facts clearly show that GW2 has been optimized a lot over the last 10 months, whether you want to believe that or not. Do you even read patch notes, did you play the game? My PC hasn’t been upgraded and yet performance steadily increased over time.

5/ Furthermore, both nVidia and AMD have optimized their drivers a lot for GW2 and it shows, therefor this email contradicts the company itself. It’s forged.

The wording of the email is unprofessional, wrong and references direct competitors while attacking a potential ally. It is an outright forgery, anyone with working experience in customer support knows that.

marnick.4305:

1/ I don’t believe this actually came from an nVidia employee. It’s forged, almost certainly. If I sent such an email to a customer, I’d be rightfully fired.

2/ if not forged, it was written by a hater who shouldn’t be working for nVidia anymore. Such a rant is decidedly bad practice and grounds for immediate contract termination. Forward that email to his superiors if you still have the original.

3/ I can’t believe any company would turn down an offer for free help.

4/ the facts clearly show that GW2 has been optimized a lot over the last 10 months, whether you want to believe that or not. Do you even read patch notes, did you play the game? My PC hasn’t been upgraded and yet performance steadily increased over time.

5/ Furthermore, both nVidia and AMD have optimized their drivers a lot for GW2 and it shows, therefor this email contradicts the company itself. It’s forged.

The wording of the email is unprofessional, wrong and references direct competitors while attacking a potential ally. It is an outright forgery, anyone with working experience in customer support knows that.

Well you are entitled to your own opinion, how can anyone be terminated if they don’t have the employees name? GW2 hasn’t optimized from what I have seen at all so I don’t know what you’re saying. This issue has been here for 9+ months, what optimization has helped this problem? None. And yes nVidia and AMD have “tried” optimizing their drivers but they can only do so much without anets support. Also this wasn’t meant to be professional and I didn’t contact via customer support.

CrazyDuck.4610:

marnick.4305:

1/ I don’t believe this actually came from an nVidia employee. It’s forged, almost certainly. If I sent such an email to a customer, I’d be rightfully fired.

2/ if not forged, it was written by a hater who shouldn’t be working for nVidia anymore. Such a rant is decidedly bad practice and grounds for immediate contract termination. Forward that email to his superiors if you still have the original.

3/ I can’t believe any company would turn down an offer for free help.

4/ the facts clearly show that GW2 has been optimized a lot over the last 10 months, whether you want to believe that or not. Do you even read patch notes, did you play the game? My PC hasn’t been upgraded and yet performance steadily increased over time.

5/ Furthermore, both nVidia and AMD have optimized their drivers a lot for GW2 and it shows, therefor this email contradicts the company itself. It’s forged.

The wording of the email is unprofessional, wrong and references direct competitors while attacking a potential ally. It is an outright forgery, anyone with working experience in customer support knows that.

Well you are entitled to your own opinion, how can anyone be terminated if they don’t have the employees name?

You posted this letter. Where did it come from? Did you personally get this or did you find it on the internet? Just looking at it from my professional experience, it’s a forgery. If you found it on the internet, don’t repost it as real because it isn’t.

GW2 hasn’t optimized from what I have seen at all so I don’t know what you’re saying. This issue has been here for 9+ months, what optimization has helped this problem? None. And yes nVidia and AMD have “tried” optimizing their drivers but they can only do so much without anets support. Also this wasn’t meant to be professional and I didn’t contact via customer support.

Well, then it isn’t an nVidia employee and that post is worth just as much as yours or mine. Such an unprofessional letter is literally worthless as an argument even by an nVidia employee. However, anonymous post claiming to be an nVidia employee … garbage bin.

If it wasn’t meant as a professional letter, it’s worth absolutely nothing as an argument against optimization.

You claim it hasn’t been optimized at all … that presumes you have access to the entire sourcecode? Pretty bold claim …

I am not surprised at ArenaNet’s stubbornness at all. Extremely unprofessional and it shows that they are not willing to lose a bit of their pride for the benefit of their customers.

Nothing surprises me about Anet anymore, They have already proven their arrogance on a number of occasions. They have transformed from the respectful company they where when they managed GW1 to a company that couldn’t give a kitten but give us your money.

One things for sure! There are many other MMO’s released later this year and Anet better start giving a kitten otherwise they are going to lose a large chunk of the market.

On another note: Bill Freist has “Apparently” Made it his number one priority to fix SKILL DELAY yet hasn’t had the decency to make a sticky and keep us updated on any progress made even though he knows how severe and game breaking problem it is.

The problem is with the engine itself. The game was created using an old API with a modified GW1 engine.
The design of GW2 requires multiple players on the same map but the engine cannot handle it.
You can have a $5000 custom loop system and still have performance issues.
Skill lag is a combination of the client and Anet’s servers not being able to handle the data.
Culling in PVE was supposed to be addressed but I don’t really see how it will help at all since it really doesn’t in WvW.
The WvW culling patch took the onus from Anet over to the end user.
Try doing WvW with Highest/Highest in a T1 zerg..it doesn’t matter what system you have.
I agree that they really need to get working on this because there is going to be some steep competition coming very soon.

Storm I agree, this will probably make me stop playing soon. And I won’t risk my expensive computer just to play a video game. I will move onto something else where devs care about the end user. I would rather pay a monthly fee then burn a GTX690 which is worth 10+ years of subscriptions.

I don’t get why developers lately are just uncaring of how the game runs. It’s the same story with Bioware and SWTOR. They just don’t care enough to get their game in a working state that everyone can enjoy. It’s all about content and money to them. It boggles me how they can think that fixing their engines will not help them in the long run.

They couldn’t be more wrong. The more people you have able to play your game because of how easy it is to play on any setting, the more money you have coming in from purchases, etc.

This game isn’t the worst optimization I have ever seen. It’s up there though. I am sPvP and my GPU Usage is through the roof as well as my CPU being at 80%. Unacceptable in my opinion. I run a i5 2550k @ 3.4 Ghz and a GeForce GTX 660 2GB.

Just don’t understand why they don’t put some more priority on this. I understand how companies work where they have a team on each part of the game. So why is the coding team slacking? Why no improvements? The first wave of optimizations was ok, but they are far from done.

SolarNova.1052:

I am not surprised in the least.
At this point in time this game should have had atleast 1 major ‘significant’ performance patch. It hasnt, unless u count the now client side WvW culling options, which did nothing to improve performance.
When a £500 OverClocked CPU can only get ~25 fps+ in a WvW zerg, u know there’s a game engine issue. When its a mmo with people paying into the game, be it be via subscription or microtransactions, there is an expectation of improvment for said performance. We have not had it, nor heared any specific word from Anet to say its coming.
Im a stickler for completing things that are only available for al imtied time, so events for example i always complete. The last 2 or 3 GW2 events i havnt completed, becouse i just dont give a flying monkeys anymore. I havnt played much if at all in the last 2 or so months.

There’s a lot more to smooth gameplay than sheer graphical power. Maybe your connexion is acting up and your computer is not receiving informations fast enough, making it need to compute changes more for the game not to feel clunky. Maybe your overclocked CPU isn’t coupled to a good enough graphics card or your drivers are bad, old and/or do poorly with guild wars 2.
I fail to see how your computer having trouble in WvW is Anet’s fault when some are doing great and not having troubles. If you were talking about the skill lag then ok, but fps drops ? You have tons of options to reduce if you want to improve FPS and if you want to play it with everything on max then…maybe you need to stay in a dungeon and not go to WvW

Do you even have the slightest clue of the difficulty of making an online game ? This game is not quake III, the number of players on a battlefield is huge and your computer has a lot of work to do to bring them to your screen…add the network factor, the collision detections, the game logic, anti-cheat checks, the differences in hardware with all the drivers, processors, OS, ram, gpus and such. Optimizing a PC game is a really hard task.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Just to play Anet’s defender for a moment, I’ll mention 2 reason that may be a factor in ANet accepting these offers of help in optimizing.

1) Lack of resources. If Anet has not allocated resources to work with nVida / AMD to optimize the code, then the refusal would be based on, “we just don’t have the manpower to do this.” I’m not saying the reason is good or that they shouldn’t “find” the resources to do it, but it is a possible reason.

2) I’m guessing the REAL reason is that in order to do this optimization, ANet believes (rightly or wrongly) that they would have to reveal certain tech details of their network encryption and security and are not willing to risk them with a 3rd (or 4th) party. All the NDAs n the world can’t put the single posting of a code hack on the internet back in the bottle.

1. Look at all these people playing a game, we r making a killing. How about fixing the engine? No. Sure it would cost them and they d need the technical expertise but this is no excuse when looking at the profits posted by NC.

2. BS. This aint some scrubby 3rd party dev. Its nvidia and AMD we r talking about not to mention this has nothing to do with network code and encryption but client side graphical performance. Besides the obvious reason ($) there is no other to refuse help from them.

marnick.4305:

1/ I don’t believe this actually came from an nVidia employee. It’s forged, almost certainly. If I sent such an email to a customer, I’d be rightfully fired.

2/ if not forged, it was written by a hater who shouldn’t be working for nVidia anymore. Such a rant is decidedly bad practice and grounds for immediate contract termination. Forward that email to his superiors if you still have the original.

3/ I can’t believe any company would turn down an offer for free help.

4/ the facts clearly show that GW2 has been optimized a lot over the last 10 months, whether you want to believe that or not. Do you even read patch notes, did you play the game? My PC hasn’t been upgraded and yet performance steadily increased over time.

5/ Furthermore, both nVidia and AMD have optimized their drivers a lot for GW2 and it shows, therefor this email contradicts the company itself. It’s forged.

The wording of the email is unprofessional, wrong and references direct competitors while attacking a potential ally. It is an outright forgery, anyone with working experience in customer support knows that.

1,2,5/ I really dont care if this is from nvidia or not, inded it looks unofficial or fake as you said directly citing AMD. Fact is there was a real response 9 months ago and except for the rougher language stated the same thing: CPU bound, not under their control, no further possible optimization with great impact on their end. The only new thing is the refusal of assistance.

3/ Why not? If someone offers to help you but in term you d have to spend more money on something which you presume as being fine would you accept? In any case if assistance was offered or not this is completely up to ANET to fix.

4/ GW2 in the course of the last 12 months (since beta w2) has seen virtually no performance improvements. There was a spike in w3 IIRC when they turned very aggressive polygon culling on but then reverted it back due to graphical artifacts. All in all over a year and maybe a gain in the range of 10%. That is nothing for a game that had bad optimization to begin with.

Here s one of the responses from nvidia from back then: http://i.imgur.com/M4YgV.png

Also a few months back an ANET support employee promised us to deliver more info on this whole performance problem in the general forum. We havent heard a thing since. Instead of fanboys defending them how about the lead engine coder comes up here and finally gives us some real info on what is the problem and what is being done to fix it besides the usual “we are working on it” crap? Also we d like to know why they are not even considering adding an option to reduce effect gfx.

I enjoyed the last statement that says “Guild Wars 2 is a important and popular game and we will continue to investigate possible optimizations”…I don’t think there has been one since that initial driver release. It continues "…but like Skyrim I image the biggest improvement will come from a game update that improves the CPU side of things(if you’re unfamiliar with the Skyrim example, a patch improved performance by up to 25% by optimizing CPU-related code).
So Nvidia basically said that there is not much we can do just wait for Anet to patch the CPU side code like Skyrim did, but the problem is that there hasn’t been a patch that has optimized performance by 25%.
The game doesn’t run smoothly at the best of times and the introduction of a recent microstutter just compounds the issue.
I saw an interview where they were looking at ways to reduce the particle effects but in all honesty this should have been in the game since beta.

Ha, well it just makes perfect sense now, lol. Love how we haven’t had any issues with our PC since we dropped GW2 all together. Been playing Defiance and other games, no issues. I only wish we could get a refund. Honestly, never would have invested time into GW2, nor bought the game had we known there would be this many issues, and let alone a poor business decision to not actually work on and progress a game to function as smoothly as possible. Yes, let’s just throw out so much content out there to make our paying customers happy. Let’s just make as much money as we can, but have a build of a game that can at times for many be completely unplayable. Awesome.

I don’t know what others have done in the mean time or plan to do, but I will not touch GW2 with a 10 foot pole until they make an official statement about them bothering to fix the issues or if they actually update and fix the game performance wise….which might not be anytime soon.

I refuse to buy gems until the game is optimized.
With my system, I should have no issues in any situation the game can throw at me.

I truelly love this game, but the constent issues with low fps make it impossible to play it.
Not the first time I post here due this issue, I play SWtOR and have no problem, play WoW and no problem, play Neverwinter online (f2p) and no problem at all, play LotRO (f2p) and no issue aswell. The only game I do have problems with low fps is GW2.
I do think is more then time for the devs to find a solution for this, and if in fact they are not accepting or asking for AMD and Nvidia help to solve this, they are making a really huge mistake, but then, they already sold the game and the idiots that bought it, counting on having a smooth play experience just lost their money.
Really a pity, the game is actually pretty nice.

I love how people are defending Anet saying it has been optimized in the past 9 months. Why is my GPU still at 99% and FPS even lower than it was 9months ago. This seems to be a deoptimization in my books.

According to my mad google skills, this was posted by Lord Sojar in the GW2 Guru forum in October 2012:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70452-nvidia-drivers-30697/#entry2011516
Since he was still studying not long ago according to his profile, he’s not been an NV employee for long. Also, we don’t know what exactly he does there. And finally, we don’t know what they have done in the last eight months after this was posted. But I guess not much has changed about this, since I know other guys working at NV on guru3d, beyond3d, 3dcenter and so on, and the last I heard of them was NV basically abandoned working on GW2 performance improvements because there’s not much they could do about it (I was asking for fixes to ambient occlusion and AA bits and got this answer). That information also is a few months old though.
Actually, you don’t have to be an NV employee to see that there’s not much GPU driver optimizations could do about GW2’s horrendous CPU load issues.
If you want some more insight into ArenaNet internals, I recommend reading the Glassdoor review if you haven’t already done so, it should give you some clues on why things are this way:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820.htm

You know, looking at everyones posts saying GPUs hitting 99% usage; I can’t stop but to get the feeling that a dev in one of the multi-threading patches has accidentally off-loaded a CPU focused calculation onto the graphics cards work list resulting in this pain-in-the-rear graphics card performance…

Because if you think about it; on-board chips running smooth compared to dedicated (keep in mind that on-board chips are within the CPU itself; this having higher calculating power)… Yeah… I think I’m right for once!

Iruwen.3164:

According to my mad google skills, this was posted by Lord Sojar in the GW2 Guru forum in October 2012:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70452-nvidia-drivers-30697/#entry2011516
Since he was still studying not long ago according to his profile, he’s not been an NV employee for long. Also, we don’t know what exactly he does there. And finally, we don’t know what they have done in the last eight months after this was posted. But I guess not much has changed about this, since I know other guys working at NV on guru3d, beyond3d, 3dcenter and so on, and the last I heard of them was NV basically abandoned working on GW2 performance improvements because there’s not much they could do about it. That information also is a few months old though.
Actually, you don’t have to be an NV employee to see that there’s not much GPU driver optimizations could do about GW2’s horrendous CPU load issues.
If you want some more insight into ArenaNet internals, I recommend reading the Glassdoor review if you haven’t already done so, it should give you some clues on why things are this way:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820.htm

Good find Only reason I didn’t post this was to keep developers/users on these forums discussing instead of going over there. And everything you said is correct yes. I also love how developers never reply to these threads like they are avoiding the truth.

well, after a bit of research I found this, which could very well be linked to the lag issues

http://www.examiner.com/article/guild-wars-2-publisher-inks-unreal-engine-4-guild-wars-3-coming

and this

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/ncsoft-hit-with-more-layoffs

if there are cut backs …and trimming of budgets…it’s not unreasonable to consider that they did something to cut back costs on the servers and it resulted in lag. Maybe they got pushed into a kmart internet situation for survival reasons ? – “Here’s a 96k modem…make it happen” ?

fuzzout.8652:

You know, looking at everyones posts saying GPUs hitting 99% usage; I can’t stop but to get the feeling that a dev in one of the multi-threading patches has accidentally off-loaded a CPU focused calculation onto the graphics cards work list resulting in this pain-in-the-rear graphics card performance…

Because if you think about it; on-board chips running smooth compared to dedicated (keep in mind that on-board chips are within the CPU itself; this having higher calculating power)… Yeah… I think I’m right for once!

Most peoples GPUs are not being used at all. My 560Ti has been sleeping in GW2 since the beta unless i turn on supersampling.
The 99% usage must be a bug probably related with newer gfx cards and drivers or some other issue only affecting a certain set of cards/etc. Still i havent seen any response to this issue from ANET either.

maybe the guy that posted the lazer tag comment at glass door was in charge of responding and doesn’t work there anymore ? #justsayin

btw, anet should put up some of them guildwars2 lazer tag guns up for sale on the site!! sounds like fun! lol

Nemhain.3906:

About 3 days ago was the last reply from support team about this issue, will leave the links below, same talk as usual and probably in a month we’ll get another reply asking and saying the same about it, and with the lag issue not solved.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Official-response-on-the-Lag-issues-please/page/2#post2224747

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Lag-issues-4/first

Either way, I will leave here aswell what they asked:

Location: Lisbon, Portugal
ISP: Meo Pt

While I mostly agree with you and also have mysterious lag issues from time to time,
that is absolutely off-topic.

This thread is about frame rate issues, which aren´t even appropriately acknowledged
by ArenaNet.

Ricky.4706:

well, after a bit of research I found this, which could very well be linked to the lag issues

http://www.examiner.com/article/guild-wars-2-publisher-inks-unreal-engine-4-guild-wars-3-coming

and this

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/ncsoft-hit-with-more-layoffs

if there are cut backs …and trimming of budgets…it’s not unreasonable to consider that they did something to cut back costs on the servers and it resulted in lag. Maybe they got pushed into a kmart internet situation for survival reasons ? – “Here’s a 96k modem…make it happen” ?

I am a little worried now. Is ArenaNet actually in a very bad situation,
simply not able to invest money to adress problems, like the horrible frame rates?

That would explain a lot, even though it seems unlikely to me.

it’s why I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, it’s the difference between our friends being in tough spot, and the illuminati eating up bandwidth trying to snoop into what builds we are running! lol Many scenarios mentioned in this thread are possible, but I’d like to think of Anet being a friend in need of our support, before I suspect them of being part of the illuminati trying to curb world overpopulation problem by killing us off from stressing us out with low frame rates and high powered computer costs lol. = we are gamers, we kill stuff, that’s what we do….we just need to know who to kill first! lol

Arkanis Drako.5169:

I am a little worried now. Is ArenaNet actually in a very bad situation, simply not able to invest money to adress problems, like the horrible frame rates?

No they aren’t. A “very bad situation” would mean they’re almost bankrupt, which obviously is far from true. It’s probably quite the opposite, because MMO players are dumb sheep. But their internal processes seem to be screwed up, probably some important team members having left plays a role there. They simply have management problems leading to quality issues.

if that’s the case, then we need names, we need to know who to send the kittens to for leaving us lagging.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820.htm

Makes me want to stop playing this game :P

SonicTHI.3217:

1,2,5/ I really dont care if this is from nvidia or not, inded it looks unofficial or fake as you said directly citing AMD. Fact is there was a real response 9 months ago and except for the rougher language stated the same thing: CPU bound, not under their control, no further possible optimization with great impact on their end. The only new thing is the refusal of assistance.

However if it’s not from nVidia, this entire thread is pointless. The post hinges on the argument from authority that this is written by an nVidia employee. If it isn’t, there is no thread.

3/ Why not? If someone offers to help you but in term you d have to spend more money on something which you presume as being fine would you accept? In any case if assistance was offered or not this is completely up to ANET to fix.

You make two weak premises here.
1/ you presume the engine doesn’t work just fine.
2/ you presume that, if it doesn’t, that a.net doesn’t know that.

4/ GW2 in the course of the last 12 months (since beta w2) has seen virtually no performance improvements. There was a spike in w3 IIRC when they turned very aggressive polygon culling on but then reverted it back due to graphical artifacts. All in all over a year and maybe a gain in the range of 10%. That is nothing for a game that had bad optimization to begin with.

I’ve seen the game become far more stable, less crashes, less graphical bugs and increased fps across the board.

I run an i7 920@3Ghz and GTX650. I’ve got everything on high with a few tweaks to optimize performance with extremely stable 40+ fps. This PC is 3 years old except for the GPU, I do not claim it should run zerg vs zerg at 60 fps on highest … yet some people with similar setups do exactly that. Such claims are dishonest.

Here s one of the responses from nvidia from back then: http://i.imgur.com/M4YgV.png

Post date: September 2012. A lot has changed since then.

Also a few months back an ANET support employee promised us to deliver more info on this whole performance problem in the general forum. We havent heard a thing since. Instead of fanboys defending them how about the lead engine coder comes up here and finally gives us some real info on what is the problem and what is being done to fix it besides the usual “we are working on it” crap? Also we d like to know why they are not even considering adding an option to reduce effect gfx.

Building an engine usually takes between 2 and 4 years of dedicated work. If you think a complete engine overhaul would take less than 10 months … you’re stupid. However a lot of incremental improvements have been made, which take far less time.

The “we’re working on it crap” isn’t crap if you have any idea about the amount of work you’re referring to. Some things simply take time. This isn’t a geocities website or ti83 game you may have built once or twice, it’s an actual videogame. And in the real world, these kinds of projects take time and are inevitably delayed. Happens all the time. I can’t imagine anyone over 20 not knowing that.