Guild Wars 2

Doam.8305:

Great Gif

It’s straight forward

Think of the game before their shift to esports
Think of the game after esports

Forget the QQ for HoT and forget the QQ for raids and those going on about build diversity and so forth. The first major pivot in the game was Esports and the most detrimental was esports. That gif is a modification to the Sab commercial a time when gw2 had more options the gif was made when the game started to contract.

Think of HoT and all the complaints people had and the back and forth however there was one universally hated. They shrunk our skill animations to make it easier for esport viewers to watch. The game came from one that was balancing all modes to one that cares first and foremost about esports. Talk to all those who have quit and talk to all those who no longer post and you’ll typically find esports as the number one. HoT was some nuclear bomb that broke the masses it was the straw that broke the camels back that was overloaded with all the bad decision that started and came out of a shift to esports. All MMOs are known for certain things like toxic raiders but raids didn’t exist back then this Gw2 was and still known as the MMO that threw all but a handful of players under the bus in the name of esports. ESPORTS!!!!

I feel the same way about the eSports situation in GW2. I think Guild Wars 2 would have had some interaction with eSports either way, but with the devs trying to push the eSports side of things it’s kind of like when LoL announcers grab too much spotlight. Nobody cares about the announcers, they’re just there to tell some folk what’s going on. Sure some announcers have their moments where they do their job decently. Yet mostly everyone is interested in the “professional gamers”. The devs are playing their eSports like it’s a big scene but in reality who is going to watch someone they don’t even know?

duster.7013:

I really don’t mind 1v1/2v2 balance. If you get a few thousand hours in a moba you can see how physically painful it is to count on random allies in pvp, especially when you play support and they boast about their kills. Go ahead and add in a few big support skills, but most of the decisive skills should be INDIVIDUAL and OFFENSIVE.

Pvp would kinda suck if your matchup was decided from minute 0.

Idk, I enjoyed Guild Wars pvp quite thoroughly. The choice of skills made up for an arguable inbalance in classes/skills. (Bunny thumper was good, but not good enough to take down a dervish etc.). Necros could be as tanky and take down a team as well. Elementalists could be difficult to kill and offer CC or just burst someone down real fast. The balancing point was making the secondary class much weaker to level, so an elementalist/monk was still much more squishy than, say, a monk/ele.

http://i.imgur.com/eACzJ4e.gif

In case the .gif is too quick to read, i’ll make a complete list of things the “Charr” have wiped off the table of importance:
- Class Balance
- Guild Features
- MMO 2.0
- Build Variety
- Manifesto
- User Interface
- Home Districts
- Bugs

What is replaced on the table of importance is: “eSports”.

I’ll start by guessing about Class Balance. In Guild Wars, class balance was balanced in a way where “opposites attract”. A monk couldn’t really go into battle and win a fight alone, he had to have teammates. Sure the 55(hp) monks would troll arena and try to godmode but a solid dervish would win eventually. There were occasional broken builds where classes outshone others (bunny thumper comes to mind, along with initial dervish release). I doubt I need to look far to find a broken build in GW2, so clearly classes are just as bad. Bunnythumper was strong but it was counterable by an equally situational build.

Instead we have this cookie cutter “everyone is terrible at everything” kind of classes now. It’s difficult to tell the difference between a guardian and a warrior. “Look for the blue guys, that’s how you can tell he’s a guardian.”

Why would you want more when you can have less?

Less skills
Less henchmen
Less censorshp
Less credibility as a game
Less fps
Less greatness

http://i.imgur.com/eACzJ4e.gif

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I don’t need to send a complaint because the game is working fine for me.
Since you obviously don’t want help i’ll leave it at that. Good day sir.

I do want help. Unfortunately this amount of help requirement is likely out of your scope.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

A time they used to create content. Imagine a content drought of more than a year… No thanks. That’s how long upgrading to DX12 and implement multithreading is going to take, if we are lucky. It’s not a simple matter of just ‘fixing it’. You are asking them to redesign the entire game because you are having FPS problems.

You can either keep blaming anet for your problems, or you can try and let us help you.
And as i’ve told you before, i’m running the game just fine. And I know plenty of people who have no problem running the game either. So evidently the game is capable of running smoothly.

So I’ll ask again, are your drivers in order? How old is your PC? What generation i3 do you have? And so on. The more we know about your system, the more likely we are to find a solution for you.

Lol you don’t even realize the extent of what you’d have to learn to be at the point where you could help me improve FPS. Most of it would be behind Anet’s approval, too.

What you could do is be like a lot of other players and send a complaint to Anet, because it’s been a problem through the past four years, and many more if you consider how long GW’s been around.

Crinn.7864:

Switching to DX12 wouldn’t magically unlock all of DX12’s functionalities. To take advantage of DX12 fully a game’s engine has to be constructed around DX12, simply converting to DX12 would bring little gain while at the same time resulting in years of bugs.

Anet’s had a long time to fix their engine. A long, long time.

OriOri.8724:

How old is your computer? And how much RAM does it have (also if you happen to know, could you tell me what kind of RAM it is)? Your processor is not the only thing that a game’s performance relies on, and even then, the performance differences between a fourth generation i3 and a sixth generation i3 are huge (and from what I can gather, the i3-4150 is a Haswell processor, which makes it the fourth generation of “i” processors from intel). Anyway, no matter how good your CPU might be, it will always be slowed down when it has to read something from your disk (like game assets). RAM makes stuff go faster by being faster to access information from, but the type of RAM is important, as well as how much you have.

You can’t simply say that you have dual xenon processors and that this automatically means you should be having top FPS on this game. Even if your RAM and CPU are top of the line, this is still an MMO, which means lag can easily come from a not so great wireless card or internet connection (do you know your speeds?). And no, upgrading to DX12 will not help with any of these problems as they are hardware based and on your end.

Yeah i’m not going to explain how I know this is a CPU issue.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Almighty Dervisher.6720:

penelopehannibal.8947:

If the game still works, what difference does it make?

The difference being GW looks great and runs at a flat 60+, no issues. While GW2 won’t go above 40 no matter what kitten settings I pick. Whatever Anet did, they really kittened up their engine.

Something must be wrong with your system then. I play at 60 FPS (130 FPS with the frame limiter turned off). At medium/high settings.

Have you checked if your drivers are properly installed and up-to-date?
Also what are your specs?

Dual Xeons, which are a benchmark equivalent of an i3-4150. Unfortunately since Anet doesn’t know what multicore coding is, instead of getting 60+ fps like an i3-4150 does/can do, I get ~20~30fps at similar settings/specs (other than CPU).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63YvHmc0C5k

Don’t talk about drivers. Honestly.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Almighty Dervisher.6720:

penelopehannibal.8947:

If the game still works, what difference does it make?

The difference being GW looks great and runs at a flat 60+, no issues. While GW2 won’t go above 40 no matter what kitten settings I pick. Whatever Anet did, they really kittened up their engine.

You’re comparing a 2012 game to a 2005 game though. One of which is more open world than the other as well. If they’re both on the same level playing field, no matter what is changed, one is going to perform better than the other no matter how many times you update whatever drivers or hardware you do.

40+ FPS is rubbish to you? Think about us Mac users for heaven’s sake!!

There’s a reason I don’t click on Apple/Mac links, or interact with Apple users.

penelopehannibal.8947:

If the game still works, what difference does it make?

The difference being GW looks great and runs at a flat 60+, no issues. While GW2 won’t go above 40 no matter what kitten settings I pick. Whatever Anet did, they really kittened up their engine.

Randulf.7614:

Almighty Dervisher.6720:

nottsgman.8206:

here’s a dev reply from last year about dx9, bad optimization etc.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

also 6 months ago someone asked about updating things to dx12 on the AMA
Jon Olson said “There are currently no plans.”

as to what’s taking so long…. well it could be because they aren’t actually working on anything to do with this, and have never promised to do so, and have no plans to at the moment.

So Anet knows there’s a problem with their game, and won’t address it? Alright, well guess i’ll have to intentionally not purchase any expansions or gems.

That is not what they said at all. I would suggest reading that link, since it does explain why moving beyond DX9 wont gain much benefit overall.

The devs are half way to being kittened. You expect me to read through all of what some Anet member said? The game is CPU bound. There are plenty of other games that show fps can be better.

Blude.6812:

Simple answer would be not for GW2.
If it is ever implemented it would be in the next version of the game (3??) IF they ever plan to make one.

Doubt it. Seems like Anet decided to put little effort into GW2. Dev team removed anything that make GW decent, and made GW2 simple enough for braindead players to use. Not to mention how p2w WvW/PvP is right now.

http://i.imgur.com/eACzJ4e.gif

nottsgman.8206:

here’s a dev reply from last year about dx9, bad optimization etc.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

also 6 months ago someone asked about updating things to dx12 on the AMA
Jon Olson said “There are currently no plans.”

as to what’s taking so long…. well it could be because they aren’t actually working on anything to do with this, and have never promised to do so, and have no plans to at the moment.

So Anet knows there’s a problem with their game, and won’t address it? Alright, well guess i’ll have to intentionally not purchase any expansions or gems.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/265018/proportion-of-directx-versions-on-the-platform-steam/

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Based on those statistics, barely anyone actually uses DirectX 9 through the past 3~4 years. If those users do use Dx9, it’s probably because the developers don’t care enough to update the game to something better.

The community has been wanting this upgrade, Anet. What’s taking so long? Guild Wars 2 using DirectX 11 has been talked about in the community before even closed Beta was released. As your little message in-game indicates, it’s been four years.

I’m fairly certain we all want to see our CPU usage in the <30/50% and GPU usage at 100%, finally. Instead of 100% CPU usage and 50% GPU usage.

Well this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c-0pmSxiEE

Shows that 980 TI SLI is capable of running GW2 at 4k Resolution, at 60fps. Probably a problem with Temperature, PSU, or GPU. The problem may also be running the triple monitors, as optimization for running a game in multiple monitors is hard to come by and a very niche environment.

Kiza.5630:

Underking.2694:

“Just use the 64 bit client, that’ll fix it.” I am. And I wish that were true. I really do.

Are you sure, you’re starting the correct executable? Just to be sure, check in the windows task manager. If there is a “*32” next to the process name, it’s the wrong one. Also, how much RAM do you have? The 64bit client improves nothing if you only have 4GB RAM. Might even be problematic if you have 6GB.

I went from 32bit client to 64 bit client and immediately had a better experience in GW2. No more crashes ingame, no more fps stutter. This PC only has 4GB of RAM. So apparently “64bit needs more than 4GB to be different from 32 bit client” is an exaggerated myth. There’s a bit more to 64 bit systems than just more memory capacity.

3/8 elites are usable. Says a lot about GW2.

Weird. Does the brightness change when you adjust graphics settings? I do also find that the character selection screen is as bright as the game ever gets. The closest spot that i’ve found to that kind of brightness is somewhere in the Shiverpeaks, like wayfarer foothills. Though the difference in brightness of color shouldn’t be that much.

Since this issue has been around for over a year now, and i’m amazed (not really, my expectations of humanity are quite low) that the dev team doesn’t play GW2 enough to test their own code. I’m not going to specify which skill is causing issues in WvW, because a year+ of the same problem is kind of ridiculous.

It’s a skill of the Guardian’s, and is one of the five skills that the Staff has. Good luck.

echo.2053:

seriously there’s a rumble over skins and skills? Surprise there’s no competition – gw1 had unique clothes. gw2 repeats the same concept – heres long drape with a mask, oh get pumped new black lion clothes about to drop…..and its the same long draped cloths and mask with added flames

as for skills lulz

http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Category:All_working_general_builds

gw2 – such skills much diversity

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

I see about the same amount of build options, and the Guild Wars list is lacking a lot of very viable builds. Especially the non elite builds, which were a lot more common and a lot more successful. That’s coming from a heavy Arena player, who used to main Dervish, that used to bring down the Avatar Dervishes plus their friends. A lot of very viable builds that could 1v3/1v4 aren’t in that list.

Interesting. That seems to be the only reason people buy Just Cause 3 as well. Worth the price tag? Probably not. If I wanted an air flight simulator, i’d purchase a game with planes and air combat.

How about something with more context and immersion. Like being able to sit on chairs, or actual decent clipping on characters and the environment. Could even get fancy and fix some of the racial elite skills. Perhaps fix the Guardian’s Staff skill, as there’s been a bug through the past year at least that hasn’t been fixed.

The list goes on, but gliders are at the bottom of the list of things I wanted to see from Anet.

Vukorep.3081:

31) I plaid the game for 3 years and now i have to pay 50$ for a expansion!?! And new players get to play the core game for free, and get it for free if they buy the expansion!?!!?

Guild Wars still isn’t free, and the game is close to 10 years old now. So yeah, when a company decides to drop its value to 0 just to increase its playerbase, that to me is alarm bells of: “Okay we weren’t as popular as we thought we’d be, going to plan Nexon”. Whic h happens to be: “Free to play game, lots of store items that can be purchased with real $”.

Difficult not to profit from that, there’s basically 0 effort from the company itself. Too bad Anet can’t keep track of who has which outfits, since the one I had disappeared completely.

Jockum.1385:

For example bunnythumpers make use of warriors hammer attacks combining them with ranger pet attacks and buffs. In GW2 you got traits and more complex runes and sigils.

Hah, thank you for reminding me of the bunnythumper warriors. That was a great build. That kind of variety shows how rich Guild Wars pvp is. As much as it was about teamwork, it was also about who was creative enough with their builds to throw the opponent off guard.

vesica tempestas.1563:

the problem with some people today is they obsess over the details in isolation ‘omg feature x doesn’t suit my personal needs i need to complain online’’ they don’t look at the game as a complete product because they don’t get it about large cohesive gameworlds. The roots of this issue comes from a generation used to playing single player or selfish mmo style shooters etc here instant gratification is > all. In reality they are playing a mmorpg when that game genre has always been niche and they are probably not a natural customer of that niche. Tied with a self entitled mentality we all know well and you get poison.

Guild Wars account is about 8 1/4 years old. This kind of invalidates your entire paragraph. I’ve had over double the experience in Guild Wars 1 compared to Guild Wars 2, and i’d personally prefer to continue in GW1. Unfortunately, after the tragedy of the nerf hammer to my favorite profession, the character is no longer enjoyable to play.

Well Guardians still have a bugged skill, and it’s been 3 years. Not sure what you’re expecting from HoT.

maddoctor.2738:

0 improvements? Are you even talking about GW2 now? Either you have very short memory or you started playing yesterday.

Ever seen League of Legends and balance patches? That isn’t fixing the game, it’s stemming a never-ending design problem. A limited developer creates limited things, and ends up having to “patch” them later on. It’s more profitable (with the least effort) to throw out a pile of trash and promise it’s going to be great, than actually create something great.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I don’t know, Zoltar. Doesn’t that sound like one of those auto-play games? Like you don’t even need to log in to gain wealth?

People do that with scripts anyway. That and the Trading Post merchants, which ruin the economy of the game. I’d go on but there’s a never-ending list that won’t get fixed.

maddoctor.2738:

Not this thread again…

I made a more complete comparison in another thread (or rather an actual comparison since yours isn’t comparing anything)

Here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HoT-living-world-season-3/first#post5764319

The tl:dr:

Exploration: HoT: 238, EotN: 98
Skills: HoT: 418, EotN: 150
Skins: HoT: 563, EotN: 403

Eotn was less than half of HoT and HoT is just 10$ more.

Okay, you keep telling yourself that.

Randulf.7614:

I am not disputing HoT has issues. I am disputing the comparison being used. GW1 is the wrong game to compare to in so many ways.

By that logic, no one should ever compare how they are doing compared to how they used to perform. Then the world would never improve. Guild Wars is the perfect game to compare Guild Wars 2, because it’s the successor of Guild Wars 2. At the very least, it’s a design sibling/child.

Randulf.7614:

The re-design happened. Whether you like it or not is a different matter, but the following bosses received updates to mechanics

- Tequatl
- Jormag (very minor though to fix exploits)
- Golem
- Wurm
- Maw
- Behe
- Shatterer

Sure, more could be done, but they still did updates to bring them to where they wanted to be. I think the main argument has been that Shatterer wasn’t updated anywhere near enough and I agree wit that.

Tequatl: Still stand on right leg, press 1.
Jormag’s Claw: Still bugged for apparently an entire year, wings don’t detach from it when it lands. I’m uncertain if most of you remember how Jormag’s Claw used to work “properly”.
Golem: Seems about the same. I didn’t boss much a few years ago so i’ll assume it’s doing okay, because it’s the only boss in this list that plays somewhat decently considering it doesn’t move at all. Probably one of the exceptions i’d make, where it makes sense that the Golem doesn’t move.

Wurm: People fight that? Haha.
Maw: Yeah, seems about the same. All that happened is now those who use meelee are more likely to get slapped in the face. Kind of like Taidha. Anyone who has a bit of knowledge about the bosses will use a ranged weapon.

Behemoth: Another one of those bosses where not moving makes some sense. The rare time when it doesn’t get reset because the portals take too long to get taken down, the Behemoth does some okay things. It almost always uses its claws, which sometimes manage to down players. Other than that not much to see from Behemoth.

The Shatterer: Well I don’t know which is more annoying. The fact this boss has room to move around and use its skills and doesn’t, or those people who think The Shatterer is Kralkatorrik. This boss is always a party on the hill to the right of its foot, while we chat about what The Shatterer looks like/does.

“Hey guys, it’s Ivan Ooze!”
“Hey Shatterer, we’re over here!”
“Let’s give Shatnerer a nail clipping”
“Okay everyone, press 1!”
“There’s something in the water!”
Oh wait, how’d that one get here…

Randulf.7614:

If you want to make comparisons, then compare HoT to its contemporaries like TESO or FF14 and see if or how their expacs enhanced their respective games, but not by comparing GW2 to an old, different and significantly cheaper to develop for game.

So DirectX 9 is more difficult to develop in than DirectX 8? Seems kind of backwards of what updates usually result in, but i’ll take your word for it. I guess all of the money that were backing them up in comparison to when they began developing Guild Wars 1 isn’t enough.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You forgot to write ‘so far’ on the HoT side of the equation.

Once it is complete (as EoTN is), it will be more equitable to compare them.

Good luck.

Well it’s been 3+ years since Guild Wars 2 has been released. Still waiting on their re-design of basically all of the bosses in GW2. Have yet to see that happen, so good luck with the HoT additions.

Blaine Tog.8304:

You’ve also neglected to mention one of the biggest selling points of HoT: Elite Specializations, each of which is a much bigger deal than a few extra skills.

Ah so this is what a HoT player is like. You’re ignoring the skills listing, didn’t bother checking the Guild Wars wikis. I listed the Elite Specializations as part of the “Skill per profession”, because it’s almost the exact same thing. Skills are skills, no matter what fancy wording you use.

Heart of Thorns is a very lackluster Expansion. When we look back at the original Guild Wars Expansions, we can really see why HoT is an insult to the old playerbase. In this comparison, Heart of Thorns will be on the left, while Eye of the North will be on the right.. We’ll use a ratio(colon) to compare what the Expansions have in common, and include what each Expansion offers that is different from the other.

If you don’t want to see my comparison list, you can check the Guild Wars 1/2 Wikis. (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_Eye_of_the_North, https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns)

Hold on while I get coffee brewing, because this is going to take a long time to do respectfully.

Heart of Thorns : Eye of the North
Cost
$49.99 : $39.99

Features
1 Region : 4 Regions
Mastery System :
Professions
Revenant :
New Skills, per profession
9 ~ 18 : 10, + 50 new PvE only skills including 3 elites (works out to about 15 per profession avg.)
PvP Update : sip, ahh that’s great coffee
GvG Map, Stronghold :
1 new WvW Map :
1 new Siege Weapon :
1 new Guild Hall :
1 new Raid PVE Instance :
New Legendary Equipment Types :
Three new Legendary Weapons :
2 new armor sets : 41 new armor sets
5 new weapon sets :
“many other item skins and miniatures” :
: 10 new Heroes
4 (? Not certain about that, included fractals) : 18 Dungeons
(Non-Defined amount, perhaps HoT player can indulge) : 124 new Quests

and well, the cover comparisons:
GW2
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/5/52/HoT_Texture_Centered_Trans.png/400px-HoT_Texture_Centered_Trans.png
GW1, Eotn
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/08/Eye_of_the_North_Retail_3D_Box.jpg

Yes, Jora is looking quite fine. In memory of Jora: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/f/f8/Jora_statue.jpg
Location: Wurmhowl Spikes, Wayfarer Foothills. Region: Shiverpeak Mountains

Heart of Thorns has: 3 less regions, a Mastery System, the Revenant, 1 less skill per profession avg., a hefty PvP update, Stronghold map, Shield Generator, a new Guild Hall, new Raid PVE Instance, 2 legendary back items and 1 legendary armor set, 39 less Armor sets, 5 more weapon sets, skins and miniatures (which somewhat lighten the 39 less armor sets), a lot less Dungeons, and costs $10 more.

I don’t know about you, but i’d need one fine looking cover to convince me that HoT is worth more than Eye of the North. Especially since the new GvG/WvW map do not compare to 3 new regions.

tl;dr: We knew that Anet stated that expansions were not going to be as hefty, but this is basically 1/3 the content. I compared it to Eye of the North because it’s probably a bit more fair, considering most of the “Campaigns” have more content.

PvP is worse than it was in GW1, and WvW is just a “Who has the most players” battle. There’s very little reward for mastering a profession, because everyone else already knows how that profession works. You’ve got 10 skills, of those 10 about 5 will be used consistently. Unlike in Guild Wars 1 where all 8 skills were mandatory to be considered a decent pvp’er.

Aside from that, the stories are okay. It’s just a very dramatic “heroic story” that gives a bit of entertainment while everyone grinds the boss A.I. that doesn’t move. Voice Acting is a “You either love the character or hate it”. I wanted a Male Norn Warrior. Had to change because I couldn’t keep listening to that kind of V.A.

PvE is the only somewhat decent part of Guild Wars 2 right now. To get 100% World Completionist takes a few weeks of heavy hours, or around a month at most when done casually. So once that is gone and everything that can be experienced a bit is done, then we’re left with pvp, wvw, and dungeons/fractals. Oh and crafting, but everyone just follows a guide and spends ~60g to max the skill anyway, because crafting is a “defined design” type in this game and isn’t rewarding at all.

Wanted to have a decent PvP Esports, Anet? Make the game better by including more solutions to the same problem Professions every pvp event. Wanted a better WvW? Well, there is still the dervish to fix the zerging problem. I doubt you’ll add the Dervish though, because it’s been a consistent miniscule slope of disappointment through the 8~10 years. Dervish could fix a lot of crowding problems very fast. But hey, i’m not the “gentleman” being paid to mess up an entire company.

inb4 post gets removed because lack of “respect”, which has yet to be defined by Anet.

The argument can be made that it’s more weight when swinging the weapon. It may be a bit more weighty to use, but if the difference is denting leather vs. slashing through leather, you want all the extra advantage you can get.

Though the amount of games that are accurate with anything are quite few.

Unsure if support has found solutions for this error, I decided to make a thread dedicated to the topic of the 0xC0000005 exception code.

Essentially, in all likelihood the error is a graphics driver issue. The 0xC0000005 exception code means that at some point during the program, there was a pointer or a direction to a null area of memory. While applications such as explorer.exe and some more basic games (i.e. Minecraft, most flash games, some of the older games that were more CPU intensive) may launch fine, more graphically intense games such as Guild Wars 2 may not function properly at all due to incompatible drivers having been installed.

I.e. Using the default microsoft drivers (even the recent one, given to Microsoft sometime around Friday March 6th, 2015) causes this error code. Using an older driver from around mid 2014 results in no more 0xC0000005. If you experience similar issues, try using a slightly older (or perhaps newer) driver.

Some of the issues of the Driver Incompatibility may be because i’m using Windows 10 Pro Technical Preview, though i’m sure others have experienced similar problems when updating to new drivers.