Guild Wars 2

I have been monitoring this forums for 2 days now and it is fun to see moderators merging (including my extensive post) and closing posts about fps/performance issues but not replying with at least a macro like “We are aware”.

I know that ANet has been very communicative about the game, but regarding performance they are quiet.

While this can be a solution, I think it’s a bit game breaker.

Playing without seeing the other characters breaks the immersion and seems a poor solution. However, if ANet can’t fix their engine this should be a good workaround.

majestic.8129:

I really wish they would implement a option to remove that horrible camera smoothing, feels like input lag x1000 it’s so unresponsive. :/

This! I have been complaining about that since the first betas but my post was never answered by a Dev.

The “Camera Smoothing” makes the low fps feel even lower.

Check this post m8: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/draw-distance-for-players-npc-s/first#post44440

You are not alone. The draw distance was changed on a patch.

Serbius.1256:

Specs:
– 2x Xeon Quad Core Processors 2.26GHz (8 physical cores)
– Asus HD Radeon 7970 Direct CUII @ stock settings
– 12GB DDR3 RAM (6 × 2GB Modules, Triple channel)
– 256 OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
In anticipation for the release of GW2 I purchased a brand new Asus HD Radeon 7970 DCUII. This was an upgrade from my 6970. While playing I"ve run into several performance issues and they seem very sporadic. Lately everything seems to be falling apart. My FPS is very inconsistent ranging from 15 to 120. Whenever I’m on a flat surface I see grid lines running through all parts of the polygons. I get random screen flashes and my camera zooms in randomly. I get light blue windows through sides of polygons where they join others. Sometimes I’m running the game at 60fps solid and full graphics. Other times I can barely play, its so choppy. Amount of people and movement doesn’t seem to effect things. Sometimes I get good performance in large groups. Other times I’m all alone and 15fps. Lowering graphic settings doesn’t increase fps. Sometimes I get better performance at higher graphic settings.

My question is, should I RMA this card, or is this just something with software/drivers?

I got the same GPU and I get 20 fps in WvWvW. There is nothing wrong with your GPU. Sadly, it’s the game. However, it’s worth checking your drivers.

Vibb.9750:

Mightynandui.3467:

This seems a quick “cheap” way to boost performance in large scale events. However, you will be fighting invisible players in WvWvW with this draw distance.

Not really feeling motivated to PvP with no view of who I am fighting.

I can feel your pain. PvP in GW2 is awesome but with performance issues and “cheap” ways to try get a quick fix like this is making me give up on the game. I know the game has just been released but this is a major issue that deserves full attention.

And now (again) my post will be merged with the general FPS issues by a mod.

This seems a quick “cheap” way to boost performance in large scale events. However, you will be fighting invisible players in WvWvW with this draw distance.

Shaamaan.1349:

Mightynandui.3467:

In my case, the GPU sits bored at less than 30% while the CPU is on fire.

To be honest in today’s processing Cpu/Gpu usages don’t mean much. If a GPU is at 50% and the CPU 100% it doesn’t mean that the game is not using your GPU, it means that the GPU is waiting for the CPU to send the rendering instructions and it is not being fast enough.

This can be caused (and in most cases are) by poorly optimized code. Example: CPU processing two files when only one was needed to achieve the same effect (abstract example).

I’m a coder myself (albeit I code business apps, not games).

Just for the record, there’s never any need to render stuff close to the player/camera; that just needs to be kept in memory.

And that’s pretty much what I said; if a game is using CPU at 100% and the GPU isn’t utilized, then something is wrong with the game code.

I think I misunderstood you on the CPU/GPU usage part then. Sorry for that.

Regarding the coding, I had my experiences of coding apps for mobile platforms and generic windows programs. While I am not an expert I know a bit more than the basics.

I know that stuff not being seen on the camera doesn’t need to be rendered but, in fact . What you mention is the way everything should be done. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen a lot nowadays. Coders use “cheap” techniques to achieve the results (you know what I am talking about)

Shaamaan.1349:

Mightynandui.3467:

For those of you with computers that are 3 to 5 years old, it’s very much a reality that you may have to invest in a better computer to get the results desired (especially if you’re a big pvp’er and want all the WvW goodness you can get your hands on).

Unfortunately, this is the sad truth. You must invest in your PC components to get more performance. Technology is always on the move and even 2 year old components get outdated very quickly.

Yes… and then no. If someone with a 5 year-old system is expecting 60 FPS on a brand new game on the highest settings… well, I’d like to know what they’re smoking.

But after lowering the resolution and turning off some bells and whistles it’s normal to expect a decent framerate, even on older computers. Of course there’s a certain limit after which no amount of coding magic will make things smooth, but the specs I’ve seen people post aren’t there yet.

Also, the game, while good-looking, doesn’t warrant the requirements. I mean, hell, Crysis looks better and runs on my system, so go figure.

Yes, you are right. I didn’t clarify myself there. You must get new components if you want to run the game with all the nice graphical features that it gives you. Of course you can run games on machines even worst than the minimum requirements of a game but you have to go with low settings and even lower the resolution (it looks crap on a lcd display).

Does that happen when you are near other people? If so, it means you CPU is rendering people that is near you and may drop the FPS. However shouldn’t drop that much if you are in a low population zone.

My guess is that the GPU or CPU clocks are changing to idle state while ingame. This is fairly common.

Test this with some software that checks the clocks. If the clocks drop when you get 15 fps you need to look for advice on how to keep the clocks in 3D mode while playing.

Things could be a lot worse. Rift, for instance, was my mmo of choice since it came out before starting GW2. In Meridian (the capital city of the Defiant) I see generally 30-40 fps, and even less if its full, on the very same system.

I didn’t want to mention names because this would end up on another comparison that will get us anywhere but what you said is one of the reasons for my post. Rift was one of the best mmos I played. I love the game but I had to stop playing it due to performance issues. The Dev’s are great but did very little to optimize the game performance wise. That is one of the things I don’t want to see happening in Guild Wars 2 and that is why I decided to post. I know that the game was only released 3 weeks ago but I think for the first time in MMO’s Dev’s should care a bit more about performance.

For those of you with computers that are 3 to 5 years old, it’s very much a reality that you may have to invest in a better computer to get the results desired (especially if you’re a big pvp’er and want all the WvW goodness you can get your hands on).

Unfortunately, this is the sad truth. You must invest in your PC components to get more performance. Technology is always on the move and even 2 year old components get outdated very quickly.

Also please stop comparing GW2 to the likes of Battlefield 3 or any other game that uses very little CPU power and much more GPU.

Comparisons with any other game are pointless. Each game is one world and different things can happen. If you really need to make comparisons at least do it with some MMO’s and not online fps or single player games.

I would love to ear from ANet Dev’s about this issues.

Keep this polite conversation going on guys, it is good to exchange opinions politely.

Uhm… unless the map designer(s) accidentally copy-pasted all the map objects on top of each other causing the whole thing to use twice as many polygons, I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it.

Basically it is all about the coding in my opinion. There is million ways to achieve one thing, you just need to find the most efficient one. So for example, if the game is rendering stuff that is not shown in the screen it’s a waste of resources. However, if you don’t render everything near you, you can create stuttering while loading assets each time the engine needs to render a new thing that was not being shown on the screen. It’s all about coding balance and achieving the most efficient way to deal with specific cases. That is my view of the things.

In my case, the GPU sits bored at less than 30% while the CPU is on fire.

To be honest in today’s processing Cpu/Gpu usages don’t mean much. If a GPU is at 50% and the CPU 100% it doesn’t mean that the game is not using your GPU, it means that the GPU is waiting for the CPU to send the rendering instructions and it is not being fast enough.

This can be caused (and in most cases are) by poorly optimized code. Example: CPU processing two files when only one was needed to achieve the same effect (abstract example).

And is there any significant difference between ASUS and ASRock?

AsRock components are built from Asus pieces. AsRock has some good motherboards in the market. If your budget is tight and you don’t need extra features that you will probably never use go for AsRock.

I believe that they will fix this in time.. I’ve seen many zones of the game double in fps performance since the 1st beta.. I believe they have to go zone by zone optimizing them for every possible setup that we have.

My report of the low performance issues is even on lower level zones. I agree that some zones have much better performance than it had in the Beta, but to be honest the whole game has more fps after it went live than it had on the Beta.

I agree that the performance should be much much better.. I’ll keep my hopes up for the game to run much better soon enough.. the game is perfect we just need that performance boost to really enjoy it

Exactly. The game is just awesome and that is the reason I don’t want it to fail due to some performance issues.
I really hope ANet comes up with something. However, I must be honest, after what I have seen in another MMO’s, my hopes are not very high. I don’t want to start comparisons but any recent mmo has performance issues that have not been addressed.

Maybe ANet can show that they are better at this, who knows.

I’ll be perfectly honest… I was expecting issues at launch, but not this kind. I thought there would be massive lag, connection issues, server downtime. In fact, I think I would be more happy if that WAS the problem.

When the servers are laggy or down, you can pretty much bet the developers are working on getting things to run, and it WILL be fixed eventually.

But with performance issues like this, despite acknowledging their existence, there’s no guarantee it’ll be fixed, especially if the problem is rooted deeply in the graphical engine.

I agree 100% with you. That is my feeling at the moment.

Also, that camera issue Mightynandui mention? Unless it’s directly tied to the low performance people experience, I doubt it’ll ever get fixed.

The camera doesn’t seem to be tied to the low performance because even when I am in areas with very little things going on it’s still “elastic” (don’t have better words to describe). I think this effect was implemented on the camera to allow smooth changes from perspective but it ended up creating a feeling where the game feels unresponsive.

However, I am afraid that regarding the camera we will not see much changes in the near future as I think it is not easy to change it without affecting general gameplay.

I believe in one of the first of these threads that a rep said that they are aware that people are not getting the performance they should be getting.

Yes, they said that on the Blog/News regarding performance improvement. And it is good to acknowledge it.

But I wouldn’t worry as their comunication has been great, as has their patching.

Yes, the communication about game related stuff (bugs, gameplay, etc) had been good so far. My point is that, performance wise, I have not seen improvements since release, and there is no news about that. We know that they acknowledge that there is people with fps issues but do we know what is being done? Do we know what can improve things? We don’t have that kind of information from ANet.

Like I said, they should create a blog or a wiki page with some information on this matter. With regular updates on how things are going.

No MMO runs smoothly on release. At least none that I have played.

That is the sad truth. I have been in all the mmo releases that went live the past few years. The point here is, I have seen how many people take that as an excuse for the problems. I have seen many great mmos were Dev’s acknowledge performance issues but nothing was done. Even today nothing changed. To be honest I don’t want that to happen to GW2 and that is why I would love to see ANet sorting this stuff.

So, what do you all have to say about the current state of the performance in this game?

Let’s discuss it, but please keep it polite.

I hope ANet comments on this too.

This is my first post after game went live. During the Beta, I posted my concerns regarding the game performance and never got a reply from any Dev’s (didn’t expect to get one).
Performance has been improved since the Beta and optimizations were done. It’s really nice to see a mmo developer come to the public and post what was done in terms of optimization and show some graphs about that. While the Blog didn’t include much information on what was done, at least it proved that the Dev’s care about the performance. Believe me, this is a great thing! Most of MMO’s released recently (not mentioning names) had performance issues and Dev’s didn’t gave the proper attention to it as it was “not affecting many players” or they had “another priorities”. So, big Gratz to ANet to show that performance matters.

However, the optimizations done were not enough. The big problem now is that Dev’s seem to not care about fps issues anymore. If you look at the tech forum, you will see that they consolidate all the fps issues in one post and only reply to post regarding gameplay bugs or crash errors. It seems that they have another priorities like all the MMO developers on the market.

Sadly, most of the fps issues reported on tech forums are from players with low end or outdated computers. Players don’t realize that some components are outdated already. Due to this, real fps issues from players with medium/high computers get lost in the forums and don’t get the proper attention.

Graphical Engine

As I mentioned on one of my posts in the Beta, the game engine seems not well optimized. Camera movement is kinda “elastic” and not very responsive. Guild Wars 2 being an excellent PvP game, requires much more from the camera movement than the actual implementation.

Another thing that is not well implemented is AA. FXAA while not very taxing, creates a blur effect that is not for everyone tastes. While this is a let down, it is better to have FXAA than another AA technique that would slow the engine even more.

Supersample feature is worthless. It provides shiny graphics, yes, but do Dev’s believe anyone would use that? I see it being used by people running Xfire/Sli, but even then the game is not optimized to allow good fps with standard setting, let alone supersample. It would be better to add more AA options than having this (IMHO).

However, not everything is bad! The color scheme of the engine is amazing! World feels great and the artwork is very cool.

My Problem

So, I had the following system:

Core i5 2500k (SB) @ 4.5GHz
Asus RoG Rampage IV
8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR 3 1600 Mhz 8-8-8-24
ATI Radeon HD 7970 3 Ghz (OC to Ghz edition)
OCZ Agility 3 SSD 60GB
Western Digital 7200RPM 1.5TB

I used this system while testing the game in the Beta and Headstart. Performance with Auto-Detect settings was nothing really fancy. It bounced between 30 fps and 70 fps. Smooth in questing areas with not many people arround. However, the laggy feeling from the beta was still present in the game when the headstart begun.

Now my PC is the following:

Core i5 3570k (IB) @ 4.2GHz
AsRock Z77 Extreme 4
8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR 3 1600 Mhz 8-8-8-24
ATI Radeon HD 7970 3 Ghz (OC to Ghz edition)
OCZ Agility 3 SSD 60GB
Western Digital 7200RPM 1.5TB HDD

Many people say the game is CPU bound at the moment, so I would expect some improvement, little, but some.
After assembling the new components I tried the game again.
However, it is not different. The FPS are the same and i still drop to 20/25 fps in some areas, encounters or events. So, Low FPS + Elastic (slow) camera, makes the game a bit unplayable for me. I can’t have fun running arround with 20 fps and moving the camera like I am using a old computer.

Just for reference, normal troubleshooting (Drivers, overheating, reinstalling game, reinstalling windows) has been done. Even some advanced steps (reseating hardware, optimize Bios settings) were done.

So, basically I play with 60 fps in areas that have not much going arround and dip to 20/25 when there is something fun arround to do.

I can accept that, maybe, something is wrong with my system (I never said it is High End) but there is definitely and issue with the game engine and his optimization.

Final Notes

ANet please start caring about performance a bit more. We need some optimization. Also, think about creating a tech blog or page on your wiki, with solutions and updates on what we can expect performance wise. The community would be happy about that.

Even if the population that has performance issues is low compared to the players that have no problems (many people don’t even report this issues), we are your customers and we bought your game so we deserve it.

Excluding the performance issues, keep up the good work! Game is amazingly fun just the performance is ruining the experience.

Looking forward to ear from you Anet!