Although the keys are rare, I like the Black Lion chests. They’ve given me a chance to get hold of items that I would otherwise not have (or reluctantly) bought from the Gem store. The most useful is definately the Black Lion Salvage Kit; I don’t know how I’d get by without it. I’ve managed to accumulate around 75 (2-3 kits) uses without paying a coin or gem, which I think will tie me over for a while.
I had frame rate problems when I first started playing then game. Then I upgraded my MB, CPU, memory (cos it was getting old) and now the game runs sweet!
So what effort is involve for Anet to switch to DX11? Is it a simple ‘flick of a switch’ or does the game or graphics engine have to be designed with DX11 in mind?
I can’t see what the big deal is about Directx 11. The game looks and runs great as it is. I’m not against Anet improving the appearance or performance of the game, but whether they use Directx 11 or not to do that seems irrelevant.
To me, Chamone’s argument seems equivalent to “why should I have to pay to use a taxi to cross town when I can walk for free?” The answer to this real-life dilemma is that it’s quicker and more convenient to take the taxi. The same applies in GW2. When you compare the few seconds of using a way point with ‘walking’ to LA and then on to whether your want go, it may not seem much difference. However, over the life-time of the game, the difference can mount up to hours or days of game-play.
Some players might be prepared to save time by paying to use waypoints, while other players might prefer to save coin by running. Charging for waypoints makes the game more interesting by allowing players to make choices that suits them.
Bear in mind it’s not just graphics rendering that impacts frame rates. All the events taking place within the game take CPU cycles to compute and if your CPU isn’t up to scratch, then lowering graphics settings will likely have little impact. There’s a good chance that your CPU is the bottleneck.
When I first played GW2 I had an Intel Core 2 Q6600 and a NVidia Geforce 560 Ti. I was using medium settings and getting poor frame rates (< 30 fps). I was a bit disappointed seeing as other modern games (e.g. CoD:MW3) played very well on my system. I recently upgraded my MB/memory/CPU to include an Intel Core i7 3770K while sticking with the 560 Ti. I got a massive boost in the performance. This goes to show how CPU intensive GW2 is. Allowing for even lower graphical setting will probably have little if any impact for you.
I friend of mine told me that the reward for completing a map scales with the level of the player and suggested I wait until level 80 before completing any zones in order to get the best possible rewards. However, according to the GW2 wiki the rewards scales to the level of the zone, which would make doing this pointless. So which is it? Does the reward scale with the level of the player or the level of the zone?
