Guild Wars 2

Haven’t played GW2 in a while, and going to make a new character on a different server. My group of friends left the one we are on to join a guild that they’ve been a part of for many years. Guild recently joined GW2, so that is why we weren’t with them at the start. So, I’ll be joining them. Plus, I had a warrior and I got kind of bored.

So, with that…I’m thinking either Mesmer or Engineer? I played a Mesmer in GW1 and it was a lot of fun. And Engineer seems like a lot of fun as well.

I like the complex classes. I do lean toward Engineer more out of those two though, because these days I prefer more PvE than PvP (but I like world vs world)…but I tend to explore and stay in the world and see the lore and stuff. And Engineer seems pretty unique. I played another MMO called Asheron’s Call 2 (that was like a decade ago)…that had my favorite class of any MMO. It could build turrets and stuff, and was a lot of fun. Had explosives, but I liked setting up a temporary base with turrets.

But I’ll take other suggestions as well.

Thanks for any help

I linked the wrong screenshot to NeoEnigma’s settings. Guess I shouldn’t post half-asleep. :P And since I can’t edit…here is the correct link

http://i.imgur.com/NTH74.jpg

And I see there is new saturation/vibrance settings Caedmon posted. I’ll try those, as well.

Some quick, badly made screenshots…I took more, but its already midnight and I’m dead tired. But should give you an idea of various settings. I’ve used a bunch, but this is between: Caedmon, Kadulu and NeoEnigma over on Guru3d

Caedmon is definitely the most colorful of the bunch: http://i.imgur.com/kjJFk.jpg

Kadulu takes a more light approach and keeping in the same tone of GW2, but still improving (in my opinion) the look of it: http://i.imgur.com/718Zo.jpg

NeoEnigma is (in my eyes) a mix of Caedmon’s and Kadulu, but perhaps, one could argue, a more realistic looking game (but same could be said for Kadulu): http://i.imgur.com/718Zo.jpg

Out of those three, I like Kadulu and NeoEnigma the best. But I personally like the tad bit added color that NeoEnigma has. Both settings are really different, and neither is better than the other…it just depends on your view point.

After looking at various areas, Caedmon made it WAY too colorful. I even reduced the saturation and that other setting he suggested. On top of that, areas are far too dark. I like the darkness of NeoEnigma better (one reason I chose it), since it darkens it, but not too much. But I’m sure some may like Caedmon’s approach. Which is fine, it does look like he spent a lot of time on it.

I don’t want to degrade anyone’s settings…I do like what Caedmon was going for. Just not my style after trying out some other ones. But figured I would throw out my opinion and some bad screenshots, of the three settings I heavily tested.

I won’t take credit for this, as these settings are from NeoEnigma over on the Guru3d forums.

Lots of various settings and tweaks (general games, not just GW2): http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=368880

But try these settings…perfect imo: http://whoisjimothy.com/public/sweetfx/borderlands2.txt

I tested each city linked in Lion’s Arch (plus starting areas)…so, I’ll admit…there may come an area that looks horrible. But should be a good enough test.

Not overly colorful, but still adds a bit of color to the game. Not overly dark…but does darken the game a bit. My personal favorite that I’ve used. Think he had Borderlands 2 in mind, but it works great for GW2. Both end in 2 :P

Probably have to lower sharpening, this is what I use on a 1920×1080 monitor. His settings were made for a huge monitor (probably a TV screen he is using)…so using his sharpening settings as is, would probably be far too much for most people.

/—————————————————————————————-.
/ SMAA Anti-aliasing settings /
’—————————————————————————————-/

#define SMAA_THRESHOLD 0.08 // [0.05 to 0.20] Edge detection threshold
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS 32 // [0 to 98] Determines the radius SMAA will search for aliased edges
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG 16 // [0 to 16] Determines the radius SMAA will search for diagonal aliased edges
#define SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING 25 // [0 to 100] Determines the percent of antialiasing to apply to corners.

// — Advanced SMAA settings --
#define COLOR_EDGE_DETECTION 1 // [0 or 1] 1 Enables color edge detection (slower but slightly more acurate) – 0 uses luma edge detection (faster)
#define SMAA_DIRECTX9_LINEAR_BLEND 0 // [0 or 1] Using DX9 HARDWARE? (software version doesn’t matter) if so this needs to be 1 – If not, leave it at 0.

/—————————————————————————————-.
/ LumaSharpen settings /
’—————————————————————————————-/
// — Sharpening --
#define sharp_strength 1.2 // [0.10 to 3.00] Strength of the sharpening
#define sharp_clamp 0.04 // [0.000 to 1.000] Limits maximum amount of sharpening a pixel recieves – Default is 0.035

// — Advanced sharpening settings --
#define pattern 2 // [1|2|3|4] Choose a sample pattern. 1 = Fast, 2 = Normal, 3 = Wider, 4 = Pyramid shaped.
#define offset_bias 1.0 // [0.0 to 6.0] Offset bias adjusts the radius of the sampling pattern.
// I designed the pattern for offset_bias 1.0, but feel free to experiment.

// — Debug sharpening settings --
#define show_sharpen 0 // [0 or 1] Visualize the strength of the sharpen (multiplied by 4 to see it better)

Caedmon: Setting bloomthreshold to 30.00 was a big improvement for me. Thanks for those suggestions. It looks a lot better than the settings I was using before I used your config. It enhances the colors that are already in the game.

Every monitor is different though. So results vary. My monitor (just default settings), is high-res…but tends to be a bit on the brighter side of things. Not overly bright mind you, its just how the monitor is. Can’t really describe it heh, but I’m sure you know what I mean. So raising the threshold for bloom helped a lot. As for saturation (I set it to .5), I actually may set back to what you were using. But I’ll test it out more.

Korrigan.4837:

Caedmon.6798:

Korrigan.4837:

Caedmon.6798:

So you can honestly say that screenshot 1 looks better then screenshot 2 ?
You do not notice the blurry grey layer on screenshot 1 ?

Yes I can. I like screenshot 1 way more than the 2. The 2 has over-saturated colors, the sky just looks like something you’d see in an episode of “My Little Pony”, not in an heroic fantasy MMORPG.

You obviously have a thing for blurry grey layers,well all fine by me! I do know what looks good though,blurry grey layers aren’t one of them.

No, my friend, you have an OPINION. And specially when it comes to something as subjective as graphic art, it remains an opinion, nothing more. You know nothing more than I do concerning what looks good. We just have a different take on it, but you definitely don’t know better than me.

So no, sorry to burst your bubble, but you do NOT “know what looks good” for anyone else but yourself. And definitely not for me.

Like your earlier comment about art gallery.

You aren’t one of those that goes to an art gallery, and then looks at a piece of artwork and says “wow that looks fail, I can do way better”

Anyway, Caedmon. Your settings look mostly good on my monitor, but lights are way too bright. Was in Lion’s Arch and it was really apparent there. According to Timebomb (who I was using his settings before), it is due to Bloom. So I’ll see if getting rid of Bloom, and adjusting some of the lighting to match his settings, that I was using. Kind of see how a hybrid of yours two’s looks.

I’m using Timebomb’s settings, and it looks amazing. Nice job on them. At least it looks really good to me.

Really makes the game look a lot better to me, and an FPS boost as well.