Guild Wars 2

HippieJoel.9537:

Metal is the new API that Apple released fairly recently and it does provide a substantial performance boost over OpenGL. That said, it’s a substantial amount of work to port the renderer to Metal so I don’t think it’s particularly likely that ArenaNet will do so any time soon.

Anet ported the game for OpenGL anyway, it’s a different API from DirectX 9, so they could have chosen the Metal route for almost the same amount of work.

The problem with OpenGL on macOS isn’t as much as its version as it is with the drivers. The drivers on macOS just didn’t have games in mind. There is not one single game in macOS that runs decently and it’s not OpenGLs fault (that works pretty well on other platforms, including Windows). Metal, on the other hand, is Apple’s new baby and I believe they’ve put some effort there to squeeze performance out.

Well, not that I care, I was curious. I would love to see how a full Metal game would look like. Maybe one day…

I’ll help you guys with pleasure, as well. One curious technical question, though, does this game use Metal or OpenGL as the renderer API? Apple seems to be making Metal kitten for gaming…

Did you guys make it work? I press alt+1, 2 but nothing happens (and yes, I am doing it as commander, with the tag over my head).

Wow! Really? I’m stuck in this event too. It says villagers to rescue 1 but there are no villagers (no shield icon).

TheLastNobody.8319:

This I do agree with. The only problem I find really is the Megaserver system putting people into empty maps, heck I once was commanding DS and then the game came up saying it was going to close map and move us to a more populated one in an hour…..WE WERE FULL!

I totally agree with you, including the “stupid” megaserver player allocation.

Helequin.2608:

Please, absolutely send me on a grand quest which will take 6 months to get my Cool Item 27, by all means. But make it a quest with interesting things to see and do, and not just a list of grind. If you make it fun and engaging to do, the complaints tend to go away even if it still takes a long time.

This! Yes. And I actually think the Legendaries are almost there. I love the collection items for legendary and how it sends you to all corners of the game to get it. Plus, the theme of each weapon and the “path” you take to forge them. Now, the crafting gating behind the intermediate steps of the legendary are a little exaggerated, I agree. The game became too gated, actually. You can’t do this, because you don’t have that. And in order to get that, you need to do this, this and that other thing. Other than that, I’d say the game is much better with “massive” events and player participation.

Great post Helequin!

OK, I had to come here and post that I don’t agree with the OP at all. The game still has all the casual content there, and now more options for those who would like more challenging content. About challenging content, do you guys honestly think they are hard? I hate to compare, but when World of Warcraft introduced new bosses, some super hardcore guilds (that raided like 12 hours a day) would take at least a month to defeat them. GW2’s raids are still easy compared to those.

In all honesty, I think the problem is in the community. It seems that all guilds can only ask you for more: more Flax, more X, more Y, more more… that turns me off completely. And you can still gather your legendary parts at your pace, are you kidding? How is the game pushing you into that?

I have to say, in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is a 100% better game after the expansion. 100% means twice as better as it used to be, it is still the same as it was but added the masteries and raids.

Not DX12, Vulkan guys, Vulkan. It is open source and not tied to any platform. It works even on Windows XP.

Well, I can’t say for sure, but I think Anet already has different teams working on different aspects of the game. Check WvW, for instance, it has its own dedicated team. Sure some resources are interchangeable, like designers, who can work anywhere. But maps and objective balancing is already separated into teams. It wouldn’t surprise me if the PvP teams would say “please nerf this” while the PvE team would say “no, please buff it instead” and the WvW would say “I don’t want any of it, can you please work on these other skills?”.

I think the random distribution in Marionette was on purpose and well thought. Back then there was no need for healers or “tanks”. The RNG there, as others have already said, was mixing too many players that didn’t know what to do on the same platform. But the game can’t be balanced for players that don’t know what to do, but for players willing to learn what to do. Check the raids.

Pointy.9308:

The rifle without all skills piercing is just not enough for my style of gameplay.

PLease, bring the piercing back.

What are you talking about? Warrior’s rifle skills pierce by default now, there is no need for Crack Shot.

Having game developers think of a PvE battle limited by what the boss can do in order to match the player’s skills is detrimental to the game. The PvE designers would have much more freedom to create battles if they were also free to balance player skills. I understand you don’t see any battle NOW, live in the game, that would require buffing players skills. But we are not talking about what is in the game now, but what could be if the PvE skills had their own niche application.

PvP and PvE modes are different anyway. Gear is different, map objectives are different, heck even traits are different. There is no problem having players “learn” PvE and PvP again. If anything, that makes the game richer, with more gameplay possibilities.

That is correct Xilllix. And to the point, I forgot to mention ANet shouldn’t be balancing the skills based on class popularity.

NO! A big resounding NO!

As I mentioned on my January 26th feedback thread, this is one of the “perfect” world events in the game. The Karka Queen? Seriously? What’s challenging about it? The fact that you are waiting for an organized map is a problem with the community not even bothering trying TT without the familiar commanders. Anyone could command it once they know what to do. Players can also contribute when they know what to do, the necessity for chat/TS use decreases with experience.

I mentioned the Marionette in comparison to Triple Trouble. I am not sure you played it when it came out. The Marionette failed almost every time in the first days and the rate of success was almost 50% by the end of its life. But the players still came to try again and again. God, I do miss those players… Good times.

OK, so you do read. This means it is worth contributing to this game I really really enjoy. Some feedback.

The new Shatterer fight, despite being still easy, is much for fun. Initially my reaction wasn’t good because, like other posters said before me, we were never in danger. But then I realized it wasn’t your intention to make it much harder, just not so brainless stacking on a sweet spot anymore. So great job here!

About boss fights parenthesis. I love Triple Trouble. I love how challenging that fight can be even when a lot of players know what to do. Tarir is similar, but Tarir’s timer is much more elastic than TT’s, meaning the other lanes can wait (and even send players to) other lanes to finish their job. TT doesn’t. So here is my disappointment to the community and certainly not to ArenaNet: force yourselves to do an event that might fail. This community is full of whining and crying and finger pointing when an event might fail or does fail. It is almost as if players were entitled to their daily loot on that event and if they don’t get it, they think it is wrong. This forces ANet to create big and easy events and, therefore, make the game weaker. I miss the Marionette that we failed almost every time on the first days when it came out but players would still gather on the next spawn to try it again. I miss those players!!!

About skill and talent balancing. Please, please, please separate the game into PvP and PvE skills and traits. This is my 5th MMO with PvE and PvP and all of them, but one, failed to properly balance their skills. Guess which one didn’t? Guild Wars 1! When you separated the skills into PvE and PvP you made both modes better! I also played World of Warcraft for a long time and their PvP sucked big time. That’s probably because that game’s PvE was always bigger. But there is no denying it, PvP and PvE mechanics are different. Please, I beg you, balance your skills separately concerning each mode. Don’t try to find a one size fits all. I didn’t hate the balance on this latest patch, but I can’t say it was a good balance either. Alacrity was fine on PvE, maybe it wasn’t fine for PvP… See?

I agree that they might think 5 seconds is too little, that if we haven’t killed it earlier then we don’t deserve the loot and that they are better off fixing more pressing bugs. However, to me it is almost like an OCD thing to leave stuff broken in production (I work with product development, so…).

Yes, I don’t even know about support website.

Riku, I said I filed a ticket on my original post and I’ve mentioned in the ticket that I would post a video in the forums.

Lahmia and Vayne pretty much said it all, and the topic could end there. I would also like to add:
- The internet gives voice to too many people
- Too much time in people’s hands
- Yes, spoiled kids exist. And the complain about anything, everything is bullying, “you are perfect son” generation is now

Hello guys,

We were doing the Tarir Battle event on Monday and we came across what could be a bug or unwanted behavior. Lots of people on that map noticed that the battle timer expired early, when the game’s UI was still showing some seconds left for us to kill the last Octovine. That was a decisive 5 seconds, we could have completed the event if it wasn’t early.

I was able to capture the fight and put it into a video. This is a short video showing the last seconds of the battle. Please notice the timer to the right and the Octovine’s HP at the top.
https://youtu.be/B28MFEFyYYs (you may have to enable 1440 quality to see the timer properly)

I’ve also filed a bug report after the event was over.

I sort of agree with the OP. I would rather do more things (like a larger collection achievement) to get my legendary than farm for gold/items. There is no glory nor honor in farming, but there is in doing and completing game content.

Lanfear, we can’t have complex fights without a healer and a “tank”-like mechanic. I do agree with ANet that pure healers are boring, though, so I am with them on the decision to create Druids and Ventaris.

I miss Ritualist’s Splinter Weapon skill…

Now, seriously, do you guys prefer ANet to add more Elite Specializations for all the classes or do you prefer them to add a new class? Me, I prefer another Elite Spec, I think it would add more to the game.

How would the Marionette fight become a fractal? We required about 25 players per lane, 5 lanes and fractals are 5 players.

The Marionette is a boss fight, it doesn’t belong to a raid either.

I just wanted Marionette back. Maybe a new map with a world boss that isn’t Marionette but has the same mechanics with some updated tech?

Unfortunately, it seems some game developers are running away from the Mac, it looks as if “game days on Macs are over”. Unfortunately Metal isn’t helping since even Epic Games themselves are having major issues porting their engine to this API. Apparently it is full of bugs and problems that prevent AAA games to use it. On the other hand, Apple has absolutely no interest in updating its OpenGL API. Not only it is old but it is also seriously underperforming.

I am typing this on Safari on my Mac. So I am on the same boat with you guys that want a decent working OS X client. As someone else said earlier, Aspyr or Feral aren’t ideal for this because they can’t keep up with the required client updates. And ANet requires immediate changes (they force you to update the client in 1 hour, everyone should have seen the message already). Not to mention that Aspyr has been dropping the ball lately and they blame Apple complete neglect with graphics APIs on their platform, same as Epic. The other Mac darling (Blizzard) is ALSO leaving the platform. Blizzard was the one example for all game developers on how to create decent games on Macs. So they are no more, Overwatch is Windows only and Blizzard officially stated Apple’s neglect with OpenGL and Metal serious bug/problems (same as Epic and Aspyr). So… we’re doomed unless:
- Vulkan really comes out
- Apple implements Vulkan on OS X
- ANet updates their engine to support a true modern and platform free API (remember DX11 and DX12 are locked at Windows 7 and Windows 10 versions! Vulkan can run even on Windows XP)

We don’t need the same event back, then. Just more blooms and/or a way to purchase the skins.

So, any news on this topic? I am also interested on those skins and I couldn’t participate in the event when it happened.

That is a very interesting build there, Slautar. Question, do you think that going Cavalier on gear and Berzerker on trinkets is better than the opposite (Berzerker on gear and Cavalier on trinkets)?

Have you guys tried the new Commander or Marauder gear? Why can’t ANet create a gear with Power, Precision, Toughness and Ferocity?

I don’t know why I am back at replying in the official forums, but I would like to give ANet’s some feedback.

700 is a lot of gems indeed, but I know where that comes from. ANet won’t be selling more than one copper fed tool anymore after this, so they need to cover the costs. It sounds very very bad, it is very very expensive, but I don’t see greed only behind this.

That said, I also have my complaints on ANet’s recent greed. Think about gem<->gold transactions. Gems are integer (meaning you can’t buy 1.4 gems), but gold is not. In the past, I was able to trade 104 gems and get my gold’s worth of it. Now, I need to sell as many gems as necessary for 1 indivisible gold. Not just that, but the rounding scheme is wrong too. Try buying 10 gold and 100 gold and you will see that 100 gold is cheaper per gem. This is SO WRONG, ANet.

Finally my feedback. The shared storage is a great idea. It should be a meta-bag on the inventory’s UI (to the left) that you can’t replace with other bags, but you can re-arrange its position (like some players are asking, put it in the middle, at the end, and so on). And why only 5 slots?

I believe this is a simple request to return the game to a previous state. I do not know if you guys changed it for a good reason or if you changed it by chance.

In previous versions of the game, the character selection music would continue on to the loading screen. Today, the loading screen is completely silent. I usually park my toons at Lion’s Arch, so my first loading of the day takes some time (no SSD here). In the past, I used to enjoy the amazing GW2 musical score while loading Lion’s Arch, today I only hear the first seconds of it while choosing a character (who takes more than seconds to select a character? unless you go afk).

So, could you guys please allow the character selection music to continue on to the loading screen? And, as a bonus, could you guys please randomize the character selection music between the new one and the “vanilla”? The original GW2 was awesome too. Thanks.

I, for one, absolutely hate with a passion time gates. But… I must admit that some are necessary. You want to craft your legendary and so what? It’s not that this game has some sort of progression. I truly truly want that Raids is this. A progression. Organized groups taking like a week to kill a boss. And then new wings are released and then new raids instances, etc. I would love GW2 to become that game.

But as far as legendaries are concerned… I truly believe that even if you have already farmed all the materials and then in a click just craft the weapon, your personal reward for that item isn’t “legendary”. Legendaries should really be about having the item at the end and saying “FINALLY”, even if it is by overcoming an artificial obstacle like time games.

Posted to the correct thread. Sorry…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/GW2-Tickets-for-Review-3-days-older-2/page/12#post5799400

Sorry guys, allow me to disagree with you. I never thought the expansion would make GW2 this good. I was already enjoying the changes while they posted them, but the final game is much better than I anticipated.

I still believe that theory is correct. The reason you haters find each other in the forums is because players who enjoy the game spend most of their time playing it, instead of posting about it.

ananda.5946:

We installed bootcamp and bought windows for 1299 kronor per copy. That’s about 185 us dollars each to play this 50€ game. Also, windows is horrible. None of our peripherals work very well (goodbye, magic trackpad). What a terrible os windows is! Just under the surface is all the windows 95 looking interface and nothing ‘just works’ like it does in os x. I really, really hate windows and having had to pay so much for the pleasure of using it is galling.

Hello Ananda. I do not like Windows either and I only use it for games that don’t run on Mac (GW2 being, unfortunately, one of them). So I use bootcamp on my Mac and I gotta say Windows works perfectly. All my devices, including my trackpad, work just like in OS X. I am not joking. Did you install Apple’s bootcamp drivers? Check Apple’s official download page. http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

Even the sound controls and on screen audio volume indicator work like in OS X. And if you are using Windows 10, even auto-brightness works. This should, at least, make your stay on Windows more pleasant. One more thing, install the Bootcamp drivers I linked above first AND THEN install your GPU vendor’s proprietary drivers for optimal performance.

So I played with the 64-bit client yesterday with absolutely no issue. I did notice some FPS improvement. Maybe not as much as some players previously reported, but definitely an improvement. My friends playing with the 64-bit client noticed a performance improvement as well.

I also checked the game’s statistics and I noticed it using more than 4GB of RAM. I’m wondering if I had been playing with the 32-bit client, it would have crashed at some point. My computer has 32GB of RAM and I want it to use as much as it can!

I’m on an iMac late-2012, Windows 10 bootcamp. I would play on OS X but the Mac client is just horrible, sorry.

Just so you guys know, crashing isn’t exclusive to the Mac client. It has been very hard to play the expansion. Yesterday when they released the patch, my client crashed and I was forced to update, what made me lose the Tarir event at Auric Basin with my guild. I was playing on Windows 10.

So far we have 2 problems, the client itself is problematic and the Mac wrapper is bad.

I am also a Mac user who would love to play the game on OS X, but ANet is using DX9 and there is no change in the foreseeable future, so there is no hope for us. We can only hope Anet to take the opportunity on the next expansion (yes, that far) to completely remake their graphics engine to support more modern graphics API, such as DX12 or Vulkan, which can be easily translated to Metal.

As far as Aspyr is concerned, forget about it. ANet needs to release game patches very quickly, that is not how Aspyr works.

The mission to fortify the pact’s position is broken too. That would be right the first instance when entering Verdant Brink. This is the choice that wasn’t available in the beta.

It is funny how people think the game’s look would change by JUST moving to DX11. DirectX is a set of tools and they allow developers to create something with that tool. So developers could create new effects if using DX11, but the effects won’t create themselves.

And, as others have said, going to DX11 just for the looks is not cool. If ANet were to improve their engine, then let DX12 be it or, better yet, Vulkan. Vulkan is cross platform and not controlled by Microsoft. That means any Windows version (not just Win10), Macs and possibly Linux could run the game with very very little modifications.

I am having no issues running the game on my Mac (Book Pro – latest El Capitan). But I did notice that the launcher window takes some time to load. Have you tried waiting for it? And I mean it can actually take some time to appear.

Perhaps this feature will be needed in the future. It is us, the community, who will demand it once raids are out. Let the big and hardcore guilds fail raids because they don’t know who to heal and then we might see something like that implemented in the future.

Serraphin, I don’t think you’ve played a Druid in the beta weekend.

AlphaK.9486:

As an optional setting, perhaps they could add a hp threshold that shows an allied player/entity’s hp bar on the field only when their health falls below that threshold like say 90% or so.

Bonus Developer Points: Allow the player to be able to tweak that threshold anywhere from 0% to 100%, then everyone can pick when they want hp bars to show up.

I love that idea, although I don’t think it would ever get implemented. I gave you a +1.

Terra, sorry but your argument doesn’t make much sense. If ANet doesn’t like us looking at the UI constantly (and neither do I, one of the reasons why I love this game), that is why they should enable health bars on top of players heads, like they do for enemies.

The druid is all about correct placement. Indeed, if we can’t tell which of our allies need healing, that makes it too cumbersome to play.

I think that’s unfair. ANet’s team is small (and that is an excuse, if you ever worked on a small team reaching for excellence) and we can clearly see they were focusing all their resources at the expansion. Maybe new fractals will be added using the expansion’s mechanics (like mastery). But they can’t drop one huge package altogether. New zone, new class, new mechanics, new items and, yes, new raids. Just give them some time.

Just so you know, there aren’t new maps for WvW and just one map for PvP. Like I said, a clear focus on the expansion.

Just Glint? And the Marionette? And SAB? If you didn’t like it, don’t play it. But tell me about waste of resources for a F2P game.

Not sure what is the community’s opinion on this. I’ve ran a little search on the forums and haven’t found anything.

I don’t want to create yet another skin topic, but I would like to ask your opinion on this. What do you guys think about some unusual and a little off the traditional medieval look for gear? I was thinking about something like ANet’s own take on military style for instance, with camo pants or shorts which allowed us to die the different patterns. “ANet’s own take” means they wouldn’t be copying the real life look of the military, but something ANet would design themselves other than the traditional medieval gear look.

Another idea is more or less like a sports uniform. Again, I am not saying they should copy the real life huge numbers on the front and back, but the “sports style” and look. Like something completely GW2-ish that we could use for PvP or WvW if we wanted, that looked like a team, with same color customizations.

Again, these 2 are just ideas. You may have some on your own or you may completely reject that idea altogether.

Windsagio.1340:

Well it’s the dungeon forum. The culture here is very different than the culture outside. People in here are very focused on a very particular kind of experience, and the reinforcement elements are generally in one direction. It’s fairly safe that if you asked the same question in General Gameplay discussion or HOT you’d get a very different net answer.

I understand. I am a raider too coming from 2 previous MMOs. The future of GW2 Raids (provided they succeed) is probably what you said. And more: DBM-like add ons, log parsers, finger pointing/penis size measuring (oh, I am sorry, I meant gear checking) and even a proper aggro control, evolved from that new “taunt” effect (new because it wasn’t here when the game was released). So, in short, the future of GW2 Raids is to become more like other MMOs raids because that is what “raiders” know and are used to.

It seems like I am minority here, but I don’t agree. GuildWars 2 could very well be a different kind of hardcore, that requires more hand-eye coordination than perfect timing of execution.

Other MMOs had very detailed fight logs because you needed to know EXACTLY how long a debuff was applied on your ally before the healers removed it. GuildWars 2 raids could be fun and hardcore in a different way. Not because they are implementing raids now that they need to follow the other MMOs mantras.

We don’t have a traditional tank (just a class that can withstand more damage, but no aggro control). So, I am against any sort of meter and/or detailed timing reports from raids.

Satenia.9025:

Therefore, when I said “explain the mechanics”, I didn’t mean to say that a player should get served everything on the silver platter with the whole raid strategy being laid out. On the contrary, properly balancing your group composition and builds is what I consider a key element of replay value for raids. However, personally I felt that never before seen stuff like direct-damage immunity or the green boon icon could/should have been hinted at better. To me, it was unnecessary downtime.

OK, so we totally agree here. Yes, indeed a proper indication would be necessary. On WoW people would use add ons such as DBM or Vox (thank God we don’t need them on GW2) to tell them when to dispel something or what exact boss mechanic was active at that moment so the players would know how to react. Since we (again, fortunately) don’t need them on GW2, some visual indication of the boss mechanics would be necessary. WildStart did that as well.

About the icons and indications, that is still beta. So this is a good feedback to give to ANet. I don’t know how to give that message away, though. Like: “you are about to face a condition only boss” is way too much. Big red texts with sound on the screen, personally I think is too. One thing I truly love on Guild Wars 2 is that all mechanic indications are visual. Like the boss preparing a huge attack: Teq preparing for a big step on the water to create waves, Lupi raising his hand, etc. That is what Anet should focus as visual indication of bosses mechanics, in my humble opinion.