Guild Wars 2

G´day ladies and gents and Anet:)
So as soon as I enter The crown Pavilion, my framerate drops 25-30(max), just by standing in the middle square where the vendors are. And doing the events them self are barely playable. 3-10 ish.
I have had no issues what so ever in the world up til this point with that low numbers. And I played the game for 600 hours since launch.
My pc: i7 2600k. 16 gig ram, GTX 680(latest drivers)

Anyone else have this problem?
Is this new “hub” that poorly optimised?

Thanks for your time:)

The pavilion is awful in terms of performance, and I’ve also seen fps drops across all zones since the patch it’s just worse there. Even dropping all settings to lowest I barely break 20 frames doing the events around the edges.

A fair few people are reporting similar problems. I’m guessing their update to how effects are rendered in large groups is bugged somehow.

I’m guessing some of the pavilion’s lower frame rate is due to the sheer number of people in the zone, plus many of the “zones” have their own lighting & effects that need rendering, even a layer of water just beneath.

Also, this patch changed the in-game graphics settings everyone had saved, so it’s possible (if you haven’t checked it) that something may be turned on or up.

Some people have said restarting their computer helped.

In my experience, I noticed that the memory gw2 uses has increased by more than .25 gb, it’s possible they also tweaked some of the GPU handling. (Possibly by having the GPU handle some render that the CPU was previously handling) If that’s the case, this will cause more usage and heat from your GPU. Heat is one of the top causes of fps dips.

It’s never a bad idea to peek into your system and clean fans and heat sinks and evict dust bunnies. But do monitor your temps. This is a great app for it, it also shows other useful info to help diagnose other problems:

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Also, are you guys enabling the new LOD setting?

~~~just wanted to post a side note here, I run on a Mac laptop and once I re-tweaked my graphics settings, I’m back to normal fps and I average between 15-25 fps in the pavilion. I do, however, dip insanely low while running up the narrow glass catwalk ramp leading to the gauntlet ringmasters, but come on, this is between zones that need rendering and arena domes that also need rendering… So it’s expected. Just wanted to say that not everyone is having these issues. So maybe it will get better.

Kyllaa.1385:

~~~just wanted to post a side note here, I run on a Mac laptop and once I re-tweaked my graphics settings, I’m back to normal fps and I average between 15-25 fps in the pavilion. I do, however, dip insanely low while running up the narrow glass catwalk ramp leading to the gauntlet ringmasters, but come on, this is between zones that need rendering and arena domes that also need rendering… So it’s expected. Just wanted to say that not everyone is having these issues. So maybe it will get better.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but it sounds like you’re getting 15-25 fps in the pavilion and are satisfied. I’d hardly call 15-25 fps an acceptable framerate.

My machine usually runs steady at 60 fps with v-sync. During large world boss fights and large WvW zerg battles I might dip as low as 40 fps. In the pavilion I’m getting around 25-30 fps and I consider that totally unacceptable.

I get there is a lot going on, computationally, but when performance is so poor on even a fairly high end computer I feel that they should have done something to attenuate the load. When you consider that the framerate is so poor, especially when coupled with culling, it feels like adding insult to injury.

I don’t know what the solution to the problem is, whether it can be addressed through optimization or engine upgrades, or if the problem is more design and conceptual with just trying to do so much on screen at once, but I think most people agree that it is a problem, and a very large one, and this latest content update only serves to further highlight how bad the game’s performance can be and how critical it is that something changes to address the problem.

So obviously this is all just one person’s opinion, but let me say one more thing. The way I see it, if a game can’t deliver 60 fps consistently through all content on reasonably high graphics settings using today’s best consumer hardware, then the game is broken.

Fixed it for you…

“can’t deliver 30 fps consistently through all content on even the lowest graphics settings using today’s best consumer hardware”

Chaba.5410:

Fixed it for you…

“can’t deliver 30 fps consistently through all content on even the lowest graphics settings using today’s best consumer hardware”

I strongly disagree. There’s a big difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. Also, there’s a wide range of hardware out there. Your assertion that high end hardware be required to run low settings is very silly. If a high end computer can’t run a game on low settings, what are lower end computers supposed to do?

http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

EDIT: Oh, you were being sarcastic, weren’t you. Sorry. I’m out of coffee.

Kahzi, I don’t run a high end machine, I’m content when I run ~30fps or greater consistently. I also play on the Mac client and a laptop so I get a strike or that lol (all in all, it runs fairly well for a cider wrapper). I typically get ~14-23 in LA. If I can run as well as LA in a place with just as much population or more, then I’d say I’m not having any significant issues. I play on mostly medium settings, so my performance is as expected on my system.

As comparison, I do have a bootcamp partition with win 7-64bit and I did have better fps and prettier graphics, so I know what I am missing. I also have a higher end pc available, but I haven’t tested it with the newest content.

:) Moar coffee!

FWIW, the game auto-detects the settings to very high for the card I have yet I have to normally (pre-patch) turn them down to low just to maintain around 25 FPS in the large WvWvW battles. Post-patch, on same lowbie settings, I’m getting down to 7 fps just from standing around, not even in a large battle. I can’t imagine what it must be like for lower end computers.

Seems am not alone with this delicate problem. I also noticed a drop in the rest of the world.
Thanks for the answer guys.

I would love some recognition from ArenaNet. And inform us if its a known problem. Or do they just focus on other things atm?
Just curious. Dident mean to sound entitled

Same thing here. Played for while on my girls modest machine (i3 2120, HD6850 @ 1280 × 1024 low settings, no vsync) and it’s brutal in the pavilion. During events single digit frame rates are the norm.

Even at home with a 4.6ghz 4770 and SLI Gtx 780s I see sub 30fps often (and I play with no reflections or shadows) That pretty much speaks for itself… too much of the engine is severely bottlenecked and regardless of the hardware you throw at it performance nose dives in any scenario with many players be it wvwvw zergs, world events or the pavilion events. The rest of the game is much more agreeable but it’s still very frustrating. Shadows in particular take a stupidly high toll and are very cpu limited ( I normally play with high shadows but not in wvw and now the pavilion content)

Not much can be done by the user sadly at this point.. it’s merely limitations of the engine.

Working towards a more smp friendly design and a dx11 renderer could do a lot to improve the status quo so hopefully those are long term considerations the engine coders have for the game. Easier than done I appreciate but I’ve seen the gains to be had with other engines / renderer and it’s nothing to sneeze at…

OwnusMaximus.6385:

Even at home with a 4.6ghz 4770 and SLI Gtx 780s I see sub 30fps often (and I play with no reflections or shadows) That pretty much speaks for itself…

Indeed it does. I play on a 3820 @ 4.8 GHz with a single 680 GTX, so your hardware easily trumps mine, and I get similar if not identical performance as you and that’s with shadows on high and reflections enabled.

This game, for whatever reason, just doesn’t scale well with large numbers of people, and then they make content designed to get large numbers of people to congregate.