Guild Wars 2

So after letting the download run overnight and starting up, on roughly the same settings I’m now getting around 35-40 FPS in Rata Sum (25-30 when near the bank/TP) so a large improvement has been made, which I guess we can conclude had something to do with a background program/process I had running before the wipe. Thanks for all the help, I don’t think it’s going to get much better than this until I switch to an intel processor so I guess I’m satisfied with this for now.

Well after being unable to find a solution I decided to reinstall Windows from scratch and see if I had something hiding in the background causing issues. Unfortunately I was not able to reinstall Windows 7 (long story for why, but in the end I just couldn’t get it without spending a couple days and I want to be ready for HoT) so I took the only option I had for a clean install:

Upgrade to windows 10 and then use its “reset to factory”-esque option that basically clean-slates the drive.

As I’m reinstalling some of my programs (Path of Exile, Skype, Chrome, etc.) I was noticing some severe freezing on my computer. Confused, I checked the performance tab of Windows 10’s Task Manager and notice something while installing GW2:

http://i.imgur.com/v60NbL0.jpg

The disk usage kept spiking up to 100% (with the read/write dropping to 0) for a period of time, during which my entire computer would freeze up (sans the mouse being able to move) and the download speed would drop to terrible speeds as seen in the screenshot (I normally download GW2 at around 12MB/s)

This leads me to believe that something might be up/wrong with my SSD, though since I’m now in Windows 10 I can’t be certain if it’s a problem with the SSD itself or Windows 10’s interaction with the SSD (840 EVO 128GB if it matters).

I’m going to let this now intensely-long download go overnight and then test GW2 out and see if any difference has been made and will reply here with the results.

Just did a re-seat of it and nothing has changed as far as I can tell

After checking everything you mentioned, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary.

-GW2 using average CPU of ~45.00 while everything else is using <1.50
-GW2 Commit/Working Set for memory is around 2,100,000 while everything else is around 150,000 or less (skype sometimes hits 200,000 but that’s it)

The only thing that seemed wrong is when comparing to friend with a similar rig, I found this for read of disk:

http://i.imgur.com/b17YqTE.png

My friend is sitting around 40,000 B/sec while I’m at almost 300,000 B/sec so something seems VERY off with that. I don’t know if that is telling of an issue or not.

CPU sitting at ~39°C in almost every location I tried out (WvW, PvP match, sitting in town, etc.). GPU around ~60-65°C (According to CoreTemp and HWInfo)

What I have running in background: Skype and Razer Synapse. I have other stuff like “Java update available” but those are just notifications so I doubt they’re affecting things. I’m beginning to consider a fresh install to maybe fix anything I might have goofed up.

Any other info or tests you might need me to run I’d be happy to. I’ve obviously done something wrong to cause this as I’ve had some fps issues in other games and I don’t think my setup is weak enough to warrant it (my friend is running the exact same 9750 but with an i7 processor and he sits at 60+ fps everywhere but in large zergs) so if it’s something I’ve done wrong I’d be happy to find out and fix it.

Alright this is what CPU-Z and GPU-Z look like while sitting the that same spot (with around the 15 fps on those same settings). Only thing running in background is 2 tabs of chrome (this page and imgur)

http://i.imgur.com/bnxZyE5.png

So one thing that’s been ruining my overall enjoyment of GW2 lately is my horrendous frame rate. I’ve tried many different “tips & tricks” to increasing frame rate in this game but it just refuses to give me any kind of decent results.

What I mean is these are my specs:

AMD 8350 8-core @ 4.5GHz
AMD Radeon 9750
8GB DDR3 RAM 1600MHz
Samsung 850 EVO SSD

And I see at most 25 FPS when in a very lowly populated, small zone such as Rata Sum (and only when inside and looking away form the center of the city)

For example I stood still just now and let Rata Sum load as much as possible and then snapped this:

http://i.imgur.com/8Tlkya2.png

I’ve tried turning everything down and no matter what settings I play with the FPS more or less stays the same (for example turning everything to absolute max might give me 11 fps, then if I go in and turn everything (besides render sampling because subsample makes the game look unplayable) down to minimum I get up to maybe 15 fps from the 11.

I love this game more than I’ve loved any other game I’ve played over the years but this horrendous frame rate is really making me reconsider getting Heart of Thorns.

If anyone has any info or ideas on how I could improve this please don’t hesitate to mention them as I’m getting quite desperate.

I know all the cultural dances are based on different real dances. Are the ones in the book based on any? I love the inventory shuffle and I’d love to find out it’s based on a real dance.

Or were they all just made up for the book?

I just checked with Process Lasso again after trying a few other simple things out and noticed its saying GW2 uses up 90% of my CPU while idle in town.

Guess that’ll probably be the problem then. I’ll look into some sufficient CPU upgrades that hopefully wont cost upwards of $500

NeedCoffee.1402:

I know everyone gives me a hard time for saying this, but have you tried gamebooster?

I have been using it since 2010, and I love it.

what ave you tried form von dach’s list of tweaks?
process lasso? (very important)
smart v2?
tcp optimizer?
the reg edit tweak? (I have a better one if your interested)
Timer resolution?
core parking disabled?

I hadn’t tried process lasso (trying it out now)
UPDATE: Tried process lasso and the timer resolution and neither made any difference, other than my winamp and skype lag a little now if I try opening them with GW2 up.

yeah I’d be happy for your reg edit tweak, no harm in trying I suppose, though I doubt it’ll be able to double my dps.

NeedCoffee.1402:

you can try the tweaks listed here:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=327922

I’ve used most of them with good results.

I tried some of them and haven’t seen any update ,and a lot of them I’ve already tried. I may just follow the advice and get an i5 of some sort and maybe a better cooling system to OC everything up a bit and get more out of my system that way, and hopefully that’ll bump me up at least past 45 fps

I’ve been mostly playing this game on medium/low custom settings to obtain 60fps and its absolutely beautiful to feel the game that smooth, however I cranked up to max settings and its now too gorgeous to pass up. The issue: I only pull in around 20-30 fps standing still in Rata Sum.

Specs:

CPU: i3 Ivy @ 3.30GHz
RAM: 8GB 1666 RAM
GPU: HD 7950 3GB
HDD: 120GB Samsung 840 EVO

^ if you need anything more let me know.

I’ve made sure my drivers are updates, latest windows updates, etc. All the normally recommended checks and I can’t break 30fps unless I’m hidden in a tunnel with very little on screen.

If its a hardware issue bottlnecking me (thinking it might be my processor, but I doubt going for an i5/i7 would help as I dont think GW2 can utilize multicores, can it?) I can get an upgrade, I just don’t know where to look to fix this issue.

Is there a cap on upgrading them? if they can go past +10 (infinitely) then basically never use them until you have something like +20 or +30 per infusion, otherwise you’ll have to do it all over again later x.x

I understand how the 2x +1 = 1x +2 and so on upgrading works, but I’m wondering something:

If I make a +7 infusion, and want to use it, so I put it in my ring, if I later want a +8, do I have to make 2 MORE +7s and overwrite the +7 I’ve already put into my ring, or can I somehow upgrade the +7 in it with one more +7 outside the ring?

8.5/10
A neat name that I could easily see being a regular Asuran name. plus the Tw sound directly into the double r adds a foreign language feel to it. Very nice.

Posting mine again because it got skipped :<

Asuran Warrior – Shaard
He feels very much at home in Rata Sum but prefers to stay locked away in his lab testing out different theories that come to him at random times. Although he’s not at the top of his college, his physical capabilites and trusy greatsword allow him to deal with problems a lot more easily than many of his fellow Asurans. Keeping to himself when out Rata Sum he only engages in battle when necessary, preferring to stay back and observe; a faint oddity throughout the many locations of Tyria.

7/10
Ramiel seems a little less Asuran to me personally, but it definitely fits and I like your description of him to go along with it.

Asuran Warrior – Shaard
He feels very much at home in Rata Sum but prefers to stay locked away in his lab testing out different theories that come to him at random times. Although he’s not at the top of his college, his physical capabilites and trusy greatsword allow him to deal with problems a lot more easily than many of his fellow Asurans. Keeping to himself when out Rata Sum he only engages in battle when necessary, preferring to stay back and observe; a faint oddity throughout the many locations of Tyria.

Just noticed this appeared earlier today. It float around right behind my left hand. No changing of armor/etc. fixes it.

It’s even in the Character select, screen and is my only Asuran character that has the glitch.

Anybody have a clue? O.o

Another view: http://i.imgur.com/bBURorQ.png

From what I’ve tested, it scales according to 0.05 health per second per point of healing power

Basically at level 80 with the necessary 15 points (150 Healing Power) it heals me for 396 every 3 seconds.

At 30 points (300 healing power) it heals me for 420 every 3 seconds. So VERY small difference.

What does this mean? If you were looking to stack healing power to work with this new scaling, don’t. Get your 15 (maybe 20 for the master trait) points and then move along.

=NUMBER 4 – Lack of Rewards or Feelings of Accomplishment=

One of the most important things for a video game is rewarding the player: Making them feel like all the time they’ve spent is well worth it. Guild Wars 2 has many instances that leave me feeling unrewarded.

Firstly, the skill system, while well designed and fairly well balanced, is extremely far from rewarding or enjoyable. From level 2/3 you already have all the main skills you will use for the next 98% of the game. While this works out for convenience, later on you feel like your character isn’t really improving skill-wise, and leaves the game feeling EXTREMELY gear dependent; a lot like Diablo 3, except Diablo 3 was less-so because you still earned new skills and augments for them.

The most you get is a few passives and maybe a few actives for utility spells along with a very slow progression for stat bonuses (trait trees) and some seldom-exciting passives. That’s all good in terms of character capabilities, but I don’t feel like I’ve suddenly become stronger, I just feel “Woooo I deal 5% more damage in 10 levels…”

I greatly understand the “When they said no grind, they meant in leveling” aspect, but when I want to buy something from the Trading Post, and it costs 10 gold, I know the grind is on because its very difficult to make money in this game.

While everyone was praising the game for having a very balanced money distribution I felt the opposite. I like the idea of having the intelligence and sense to buy low-> sell high or farm up some high-valued items to make money. That’s how an economy works; people who put in extra work get more money, sure, but those who think outside the box/take advantage of information are more rewarded than those that don’t. However if you look at the Trading Post, almost everything besides rare exotics are selling for about 5 copper above vendor price. This makes using the economy of the game almost not worth it. Almost everything sells for more to the vendors than to other people. This probably comes from things like the fact that there’s over 4 million copper in the trading post.

The economy while the trading post was down was amazing: Everyone was trading on what they thought their item was worth. People were working on an honor system (which I’ll admit wasn’t the best, but it did bring out the good in the community) and there was simply ‘general’ pricing on items. You could but something from someone for 10s and then sell it for 30s later on to someone who really needed it. It was an economy to love. But now when you get something it’s pretty much a “eh just sell it to the karma vendor, it’s nobody is going to buy it/it’ll never sell”

I suppose I can’t talk about rewards without quickly touching on dungeons/boss rewards. I feel it’s ridiculous that you can kill a single zombie (of which there are obviously thousands) and get a yellow level 80 items, then kill the final boss (who is the focus of the ENTIRE game) and get two lower level blue items. I have never received a single yellow or better item from any dungeon run or zone boss. This makes a huge portion of the game a complete waste of time after doing it for the sake of experiencing it.

>tl;dr A lot of the rewarding parts of MMOs are not rewarding and take away the enjoyment one should receive from putting in time and effort into a game

These are simply some of the few feelings I have about the game. I would absolutely love to hear the views and opinions of others, and if I have missed anything/am wrong about anything, I would be more than happy to be proven as such.

Thank you for your time and please keep any discussion civil!

=NUMBER 2 – Lore and Story=

I absolutely loved the lore of this game. Before release I read through a huge portion of the wiki and learned a lot about all the races, gods, history, etc. I fell in love with the Asura and that’s what I played. The first 30-40 levels of storyline was some of the most enjoyable story I’ve played through in a very long time. I loved the way the Asuran race, with its technology, moral practices, and general cultural paradigms operated and affected the story and how my character interacted with everything. Once I hit level ~40 and the story moved away from Rata Sum I felt a little less interested, but the characters will still engaging and enjoyable. As the story progressed I felt less and less intertwined, and more like I was watching a movie or reading a book than participating and shaping events.

The largest issue was how ‘that one guy’ very much stole the show from the player. I felt like a small little side note in the storyline. While this worked in the sense of “you won’t always be the center of attention” I felt very little like a great hero and a lot like a lacky. This may be okay with many and I’m not saying ANET was wrong to do this, but it very much hurt the later parts of the story for me.

As a final note about the story: The ending of the game was probably one of the worst ending to a game I have ever experienced. Even when I felt like a lacky the story was still very interesting as a story and as part of a game. The ending REALLY felt like they said “Oh kitten the game comes out tomorrow and we haven’t finished! Quick throw something simple and easy together!” I won’t let the end take away from my enjoyment of the rest of the story (especially the very early parts) but it still hurt me to experience it.

>tl;dr first 50% of the story was absolutely amazing, second half felt very disconnected but still good, ending was just insulting

=NUMBER 3 – Bugs and Testing=

Having as much experience as I do with games, I understand that no game can come out bug-free. Its pretty much impossible (at least in any sense of practicality) so I’m not going to get on the fact that “Eww there’s bugs in the game!”

However I do feel that the bets testing was very well done. From my experience the games that release the most bug-free and well-polished are ones that have closed beta lasting about 1-2 week long (sometimes more). These let players reach slightly higher level stuff (or as far as the company wants them to see before release) and let people reach the point where they’re not just playing storyline; they’re jumping around corners of the map, trying to do 100% of everything you can do and running into the tiny hidden bugs.

I was very upset (not because I couldn’t play for long) that ANET decided to have 3x 3 day closed betas and a similarly long open beta as spread out as they were. I felt very worried that the huge lack of playtime would allow a lot of issues (both bugs and game mechanic/community interaction problems) to slip past due to lack of testing.

It turns out it did happen. Lots of bugged events (I was in a couple zones where around 85% of all events were bugged) along with all the simple exploits (someone forgot to add a couple zeros amirite? =P) were in a large abundance and I felt less anger and “gah ANET is incompetent” outrage and more upset that they chose the path they did. I’m not saying I’m right about this, but I feel they could have done a little more testing.

>tl;dr although no game can be perfect and bugs are guaranteed to be present, I feel ANET really needed more testing time to iron out bugs/exploits/discrepancies, etc.

NOTE: There is a tl;dr after each of the points I make marked with “—->” if you don’t feel like reading a huge paragraph, but do note that you may not fully understand my viewpoints. I am also at reddit formatting so If this looks very mushed together I apologize deeply.

SPOILER NOTE: I won’t mention any specifics of the story. Many aspects of the game (locations and mechanics, etc.) may be mentioned, and certain parts of the story will also be addressed (beginning of game, when location shifts to somewhere else, “end of the story”, etc.) but no specifics will be given.

This is the first time I’ve ever written more than a paragraph about a game, but I feel GW2 deserves a bit of extrapolation in my thoughts than that.

I have been playing MMOs for a little over a decade now. I have gone from Runescape to Adventurequest to BOTS! to Maplestory and beyond. I enjoy all qualities of every game I play (both MMO and single-player) from Scenery to Story to Art to Music to Gameplay to Community Interaction and beyond.

I criticize games very often, but I try to be very fair about it. I do not whine for changes, but I like to very firmly stand behind my opinions and suggestions for changes. If something is proven otherwise to me, or I find a way to deal with something I don’t enjoy, then I will usually accept that I have found a solution and drop my arguments (mostly).

Guild Wars 2 had me very hyped up from the moment I saw trailer for it. I kept hearing “Reinvent the MMO” and such talk and was skeptical, but eventually started to believe it. What I was expecting was a reinvention of what an MMO is, but it appears the main focus was more towards changing how people go through an MMO (which is alright as well)

There are a few things that, after a couple hundred hours of gameplay, are the main problems I have with GW2, and the main reasons I have decided to take a break from playing to pursue other games (Borderlands 2 and more).

=NUMBER 1 – The Grinding Situation=

I personally love grinding on mobs. I played Maplestory for years and I actually had TONS of fun killing mobs over and over because you can mess around with how you kill them. For example in GW2 you can try using different weapons, dodging, adding little extra challenges to yourself (AKA MAKING YOUR OWN FUN) like don’t take more than one hit fighting this enemy. It’s very relataeble to a childhood where there wasn’t a ton of fun things to do, so you had to invent your own fun with what you had, and that’s a wonderful thing with games.

However when ANET tried to “reinvent the MMO” I feel even more restricted than before. In normal MMOs you have to do something many times over for the BEST possible outcome (AKA grinding mobs or events). And if you didn’t like it then you could go do something else in the game for slightly worse outcome for the sake of your enjoyment.

With GW2 I feel like I’m not allowed to do what I like doing. If I find an event where “oh god dude that was SOOOOO much fun! that was amazing!!!” I want to keep doing it because hey: Its Fun!!! Unfortunately I can’t do it because I don’t get the “slightly worse outcome” that I would in other MMOs, I get very harshly negative outcomes from repeating something I found fun. It feels like a very: “I’m having so much fun!!” “Okay well you’re not allowed to enjoy this anymore for right now, go somewhere else.” and I feel like a teacher is calling me inside from playing on the playground because I only can have fun doing one thing for so long.

>tl;dr I feel like my option are:

Regular MMO:

Can I farm one thing that I enjoy doing? – OF COURSE!

Can I run around and do different things because I get bored of repetition? – OF COURSE!

GW2:

Can I run around and do different things because I get bored of repetition? – OF COURSE!

Can I farm one thing that I enjoy doing? – Sorry that type of enjoyment isn’t allowed