Guild Wars 2

Yeah, I sent an e-mail to Sapphire asking about an RMA, the card is only a little over a year old and it (supposedly) has a two year warranty, so hopefully it’ll work out. I’m leery of Sapphire after this. I was always kinda iffy about them, but I got the card with a nice sale so I decided to give them a shot despite the card having a fair number of reviews warning about it dying in this manner. (artifacting with green lines/corrupted textures everywhere)

I’m guessing there was some underlying issue and since Guild Wars 2 is fairly intensive graphically it just was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Curious if I can run Wildstar better with this 4850 compared to the 7870, as I was having issues running it well before.

On the plus side, I guess the 7870 was too screwed up, and my 4850 is actually running GW2 better than the 7870.

But yeah, went to start a game of Orcs Must Die Unchained, entire screen turned into the joyous brown/white screen of “Teehee, your card is dying,” relaunched my PC and it would just get caught in an endless loop of “Starting Windows… Crash, starting Windows…. crash, Run startup repair? Starting Windows…. crash…”

Been playing since my last post, no issues, running at pretty much the same settings (Only turned post processing from high to low), temp hasn’t gone above 65C. That or I just need to upgrade my CPU and it’s bottlenecking my computer far more than I realized on top of the 7870 crapping out… I know it’s old, but everything seems to have run fine at medium-high settings up until now.

Ah well, I’ve been debating just doing a fresh build other than my HDD and CD/DVD drive for a while now, this might just be the final impetus to get me to do so. Probably going to try to move away from AMD as they’re slowly falling out in comparison to Intel/Nvidia…

The downside being that fun thing: Money that I don’t have to spend on this.

Izaya.2906:

I highly advise you to run Valley benchmark at the very least just to be sure.

Nvidia and AMD both have implemented throttling mechanisms for even power viruses like Furmark to avoid hardware damage if they aren’t as up to specd (I had my gtx 460 rma’ed because a capacitor blew up on stock settings running Furmark lol) or crashes.

It’d be strange for something like Guild Wars 2 to overheat your GPU and not Furmark so I recommend running Furmark too aside from “every other game”.

Sorry, meant to include that in my above reply: The Valley benchmark ran perfectly fine. (I left it on stock settings, as I’m not running GW2 at max) GPU quickly rose up to 68C and then stayed there for most of the benchmark. (High settings, no AA, 1920×1080)

BTW as a temporary fix, you could also try turning V-Sync on. I have a 280x and having V-Sync on gives me 59-62c while turning it off gives 70c so I go with V-Sync on(I don’t have problems with V-Sync off except those associated with higher FPS than screen refresh but it saves on power consumption and less heat/noise from GPU).

A more drastic measure would be to limit FPS to 30 on your settings.

I’ve tried both of the above (V-sync on and limiting my FPS to 30)

sobe.4157:

Which 7870 do you have? Blower style cooler? If not, what cooler does it have on it? Overclocked? Have you verified your cpu temps? What is your ambient temp? What are your hardware temps at idle and at load? Have you kept a temp log when playing GW2?

Despite the aiming at GW2 for a heating problem, I’d like to see this issue fixed for you. Try to answer the above to the best of your ability.

Sapphire 7870

Has a blower style cooler. (As you can see with the link)

I’m actually underclocking it now in an attempt to resolve this (1025 MHz rather than the stock 1050) while setting fan speed to 100%.

CPU temps have all looked good, highest I’ve seen them go was ~56C.

I keep my house at around 75F. (~24C)

Idling, my CPU is sitting at 31C, while my GPU is currently at 40C. (Though it has been slowly dropping, normally it stays around 37C)

I haven’t kept a log, but during normal play (When there’s no overheating happening) the GPU is staying around 55-57C, then, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, it spikes upwards in both load (Up to 100%) and in temp until it explodes. Highest I’ve caught it was 72C before my computer crashed.

EDIT: And to add, it’s crashing entirely with no error, simply a “Whelp, I’m out!” and cut to black.

Apologies if I’m getting snippy, I appreciate the help, but this issue is part of the reason I quit before, so I’m getting incredibly frustrated.

EDIT2: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand my GPU died. Having to use my old 4850, which has now outlived my 6870 and my 7870.

How sad.

sobe.4157:

Overheating is NOT a common issue… It is an issue yes, but an issue of improper cooling on YOUR end. Can’t believe this thread is coming up again, lol.

If you are SURE it’s your gpu overheating and not cpu or both cpu and gpu, then look at aftermarket cooling options. Simple as that.

Previous poster mentioned verifying fans are spinning along with no dust clogging things up, do that of course, but if it’s always been a problem, get a better cooler.

Uh, look up Guild Wars 2 overheating. You’ll get more than a few hits.

I play a lot of games, and none have this issue but GW2.

EDIT: Looking through some old threads in an attempt to find an answer, looks like you are very, very determined to say it’s not the game. I doubt I’ll change your mind, but I found it amusing to see you reply in threads from months ago.

Izaya.2906:

Has it always been that way when you got the gpu? Try running valley benchmark and/or furmark(valley on max settings is enough to put the same/more load as gw2 on max settings though).

Have you physically checked if the fans are working properly and/or dirty and clean/replace them?

It can be just dirty fans/heatsink or needing to replace the TIM on your gpu.

The GPU has run every other game I’ve played capping out at ~68C maximum. Run Guild Wars 2 and it overheats depending on the situation. Something is causing it to sit on 100% load until it blows up my PC.

But yes, I’ve opened the side of my case and watched all of my fans while leaving the game running, from what I can see (And based on both AMD Overdrive and Everest) everything is running fine.

See title. I know this is a somewhat common problem, but I was curious if people had any fixes in particular. With this game (And only this game) my GPU overheats like crazy, oftentimes leading to complete computer crashes because of it. I have to manually go into my CCC and enable manual fan control and keep it at 100% to keep it within reasonable limits. (And that still doesn’t work all the time) I’ve set character limit to lowest any time I’m going to a big event, and in general I keep it on low. Still keeps happening. Very, very frustrating. Just happened again with Tequatl (The first time I’ve finally done it, too, crash within 15 seconds of seeing the boss/zerg)

PC specs:

Phenom II x 4 @ 3.1 Ghz
HD 7870 2GB
8 GB DDR3 RAM

Pretty much the title. I don’t personally play an Asura, I play a Norn, my friend plays an Asura. We both noticed that there seems to be a significant difference in comparison to before. (Though it’s been a long time since we played)

Just curious if we’re crazy or not, couldn’t find anything by searching about it.

After loving world 1 and the preview to world 2, I absolutely hated world 2-2 so far. I’m actually currently still in it at the moment, been in it for nearly 3 hours now, neither myself nor the friend I’m playing with are having any fun with it. I’m all for challenging content, but this is not challenging. This is incredibly annoying, on so many levels, most of which have been covered already. Instant kill mechanics are -not- fun in any way shape or form. The darts are incredibly annoying. The bottomless fish pits/warpy fish in the first place are annoying. The assassins smacking you into either of the aforementioned? Annoying.

I’m left frustrated, and have next to no desire to play the next zone after we finally complete this (If we do, my friend is on his last few lives…). I’m pretty disgusted after I came back to play the game solely for this content. As I said to my friend, “Doesn’t having instant kill mechanics add SUCH exciting and challenging gameplay?!”

Tierce.5370:

Zoralink.9836:

I also would find it ridiculous that the game would be rendered unplayable by something such as that, after a game update.

Yeah, I wasn’t too happy about it either, since only GW2 was freaking out and everything else on my computer was fine. (For what it’s worth, my previous BIOS dated from 2010. The 2013 version came as an executable file from my computer’s manufacturer.)

I’d noticed my game performance degrading for a while now though, but it only came to a head with the Tequatl update. I was getting framerates like 6-8 in LA, 4 at Lyssa, and 18 in Hoelbrak with nobody around prior to a BIOS update. Good luck. :/

I’ll try to get a hold of a blank DVD to try to update my BIOS, but I really doubt that’s the issue…

We’ll see though… At this rate I won’t get it working by the time the Adventure Box disappears again, and that’s a huge part of why I really want to get the game working again.

trblmkr.4027:

check the polling rate of your mouse; for some reason GW2 can’t handle a high polling rate in some cases. I was having drops in fps from 100+ down to single digits on totally empty maps. reduced the polling rate on my mouse to 125 and lag has completely disappeared.

How would you go about checking that/changing that? Never had to mess with it before, and my mouse hasn’t changed since last I played GW2, but I’m willing to try anything at this point.

Tierce.5370:

Have you tried updating your BIOS driver? I had similar FPS drops; updated my graphics drivers but that did nothing. Upgraded BIOS yesterday, and so far everything seems back to normal . . .

{insert obligatory warning about BIOS update risks here}

There’s only been one BIOS update from the one I currently have installed, and it’s from 2010… Considering I didn’t even play the game until years later, I would hope that wouldn’t affect it! (I also don’t have a disc handy to install the BIOS update, so I can’t check that at the moment.)

I also would find it ridiculous that the game would be rendered unplayable by something such as that, after a game update.

Still no luck…

yungwizud.1827:

it seems the choppy has been patched out for me. everythings back to the way it was

Got my hopes up. Tried again today, still the same problems…

Lionarth.1367:

If youve been gone a while the patch before the SAB also turned off culling so you might need to adjust your player limits to get better fps as more players show up now. Its under the graphics settings as player limit and quality.

This is happening even in areas with little to no players; I’ve also tried setting everything to low. It makes no difference. Something is borked.

So… nothing I take it.

This is disappointing.

I was attempting to come back to this game after taking a break for a few months, was extremely excited when I heard the Adventure Box was back and with new content, updated it, logged in and…. 10 FPS in Lion’s Arch. That’s odd, right? Normally I would get around 40. Start running around and holy hell, warping left and right. Apparently this is a common issue since this patch… Has there been any solutions found or are we just out of luck until Anet decides to address it? (Hopefully soon, because I don’t want to miss the Adventure Box… kitten these temporary dungeons/events.)

Specs, for those curious:
Phenom II x 4 @3.1 GHz
Radeon 7870 2 GB
8 gigs of RAM

EDIT: Meant to say: The GPU load goes up to 99-100%, but the temperatures are fine. My CPU is also getting hammered while Guild Wars 2 is open.

Any news on this topic? I’m really hoping they cut down the stupid amounts of health on some things…

I recorded it this time, and good god it’s so awful.

I noticed it infrequently throughout, but it was more common during the final missions.

For the norn hairstyle in the picture featured, the hair appears glossy. It seems to be across all my characters (Who I made look identical.). I’m not sure if it applies to human males with the same hair style. I only noticed it after upgrading my graphics card and turning shaders on high, previously on medium where this effect doesn’t happen.

http://i.imgur.com/GWhwCA7.jpg

One thing that has really bothered me now that I’m nearing the end of my story, is that very occasionally during a cutscene the male norn voice will completely change. It completely changes from the deep booming voice of the male norn to a… just normal baritone male voice. It’s fairly jarring when it happens, at times switching between both in one cutscene. Since every single character I have is a male norn, it’s probably going to continue to bother me a fair amount!

Is this just me or what?

EDIT: Example : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTzwvNfgtLw&feature=youtu.be

tom.7468:

The fractal bosses is indeed a step in right direction jade maw is brilliant.

But lets say the shatterer , this is a big and epic boss so it should be hard to kill right? wrong.
All you have to do is go within range(1000~ units) and press 1 and you will autoattack until it die.

Fractal bosses are better, but still pretty “Smash it until it dies” to me. Maybe it’ll be better once they revise stuff in the future.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Some info:
I did CoF path 1… I believe… and the boss with all of the crystals to regenerate its health seemed impossible. We spent the first 5 minutes running around destroying the crystals while one man pummeled the boss. I’m not saying that we were doing it right or anything but that seemed like the tactic that we were lead to do but the crystals popped up incredibly fast and the boss never lost health. In the end we all just focused the boss down for 15 minutes and it finally died. Maybe we were missing something but if that is the case then there needs to be some way of letting us know that. Otherwise that boss was ridiculous and overly simplistic and also misleading. Just my two cents. I don’t have much experience so I’ll leave this as a note to the developers and a discussion topic (possibly on my stupidity) for the community.

The very fact that you can defeat a boss by smashing their teeth in mindlessly in such a way is exactly what I’m talking about.

:l

ColinJohanson.2394:

One of our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

And that’s where myself and a lot of people draw issue. As I said in the original post, a majority of bosses are simply high health and AoE spam. It’s not fun, interesting, or even mildly exciting. It’s tedious and frustrating. It’s not that they need to MORE fun to fight than they are now, it’s that they need to be fun at all to fight.

That said, I’m glad it’s at least being considered. Some of the fractal bosses are a step in the right direction, but to make Guild Wars PvE fun, taking advantage of the live action combat needs to be done. As is, very little is taken advantage of beyond “Hit dodge to avoid the big AoE or die”. Even just cutting some health pools in the meantime wouldn’t be an unwelcome change.

…Or in the future. 6 minute fights get old after a while, even with decent mechanics.

Avigrus.2871:

Raid bosses in Everquest 2 were awesome, like Malkonis D’Morte. Took us weeks to figure that guy out and was so satisfying once we finished it off.

Loads of HPs = boring.

Chain CC and knockdown = annoying as hell.

Challenges/Patterns/Puzzles/Strategy = awesome.

Pretty much.

Alipius.4783:

I really loved Mario with terrible bosses that throw things you need to avoid…
But it’s somehow light for Gw2.

…What?

Zatria.5783:

To me, all bosses equate to tank and spank. All of them that I have fought so far.

My feelings exactly.

Zeldain.5710:

To OP: Because the combat system has no basis for organization or roles. It’s designed to be a zerg that can be taken on by anyone passing by.

Meaning no special abilities, no punishing mechanics… just zerg for all the DPS classes (read: all the classes.)

Just bad combat design, that’s why bosses are lame.

I guess that’s where I draw issue with it. I really wish they DID have roles to some extent in this game.

Ursan.7846:

Most bosses in normal dungeons reset their hp fully if all party members wipe and they de-aggro.

In Fractals, there are no WPs. You can’t use the tactic you describe.

That’s pretty hard to pull off in dungeons, unless everyone screws up a mechanic. Even one person can survive a decent amount of time alone, let alone several, while people run back to finish a boss. I’ve been with several groups that, frankly, deserved to wipe and lose all their progress, but just continued to zerg the boss with respawns. It’s silly.

And regardless, this is beyond the scope of the point. It’s merely an additional irritation on top of bosses being tedious.

Ursan.7846:

Is spending more time doing said boss not a downside? Or are you gonna choose to ignore that?

Also “making up” the repair bills with the boss drops STILL MEANS you get less money. This is a fact. Like, a fact. It is a monetary loss, no matter how you like to look at it.

Yes, you can possibly beat a boss without understanding its mechanics. But most likely, it will take a significantly longer time and have higher repair bills. That is a punishment. Please explain why this is an “arbitrary” punishment and not a good one. And what the difference, in your view, of an “punishment” and an “annoyance” is. I asked that in my previous post but apparently you chose not to answer.

A punishment would be a full on reset when everyone died, and removing the ability to run back to a boss. An annoyance is having to run back to the boss. It doesn’t really force you to learn the mechanics and is unrelated to the boss in particular, hence, arbitrary. Having a full on reset if your team screws up forces you to learn what to do or risk having it all go horribly wrong once again.

Are you serious? Or are you blatantly not understanding/ignoring the majority of my posts for some reason? Does the fact that I use the word “jump” instead of “dodge” negate my point? Or do you choose to take one WORD out of context and attack it while ignoring the rest of my post?

BTW, if you misunderstood my analogy, I was stating that many other video games have similar “punishment” to GW2. I stated this analogy because I’m curious what kind of “punishment” you proposed. Another question in my post which you chosen not to answer…

EDIT: Forgive me if I sound frustrated and angry. I am. I’m trying to have a serious discussion and trying to make a point, but you seem intent on ignoring my points and attacking strawmen arguments. If you don’t want to have a serious discussion, that’s perfectly fine, and we can go our separate merry ways.

Actually I did misunderstand it. Calm down there chum. I was wondering why you were bringing jumping moments of dungeons into the equation.

But I’m curious, what do you think constitutes as good “punishment?” GW2’s punishment is pretty similar to other games. If you miss a jump, you die. You have to spend more tokens/money for more lives. You have to repeat the portion where you died on, thus lengthening the time it’s taking you to clear the level.

Not really, and that’s a large part of what I draw issue with. Bosses are long and tedious, and even if you manage to screw up, you can still run right back to the boss.

Ursan.7846:

/monetary bullcrap.

I think the point has flown way over your head. The fact that you can essentially beat a boss without truly comprehending the mechanics, with no downside other than a bit of monetary loss, which is typically made up for by defeating said boss, is silly.

I have no idea what you’re spouting with jumps and whatnot, no one has mentioned them. For someone claiming to remain on topic and not wanting to make pointless statement, you’re remarkably effective at making them.

Yes, I realize what an hyperbole is. They’re stupid and pointless to state if you’re trying to have a serious discussion. If you don’t like people calling out your exaggerations, don’t make them in the first place.

I don’t expect people to be so kitten serious about it either, and to be able to recognize a bit of satire. I expect people to be able to view life through a bit of a glass, rather than glaring angrily out their window.

Ursan.7846:

Significantly longer clear times and larger repair bills not punishment enough for you?

Not really, no. An arbitrary punishment unrelated to any particular failure of the fight isn’t really a punishment, it’s just an annoyance. There’s little incentive to worry too much about learning a fight, as money isn’t that big of a deal to lose a bit of, particularly when you’ll make it back after the boss dies.

Sorry, you’re saying two things here.

You say most bosses have a single mechanic. That is true. I personally don’t mind it, because even if you know the mechanic just timing my dodges is exhilarating, and something I still can’t do 100% of the time. But that’s just my personal opinion. There is a few bosses who have more than one mechanic (Rumblus, Alpha, Lupi, Colossal Fractal Boss, Grawl Fractal Boss comes to mind) but they are few.

Rumblus: Rock Drop, shout
Alpha: Ice AoE, Fire AoE, Cages
Lupi: 3 stages.
Colossal Fractal: 3 Stages
Grawl: Agony arrow, shield bubble, elementals, can’t stand still

You then say bosses can be killed by AFKing for 5 minutes. This is completely and utterly false, and the biggest problem I have with one of your posts. This is true only for a small number of bosses, and it’s mainly because of an exploit of some sort.

http://static2.fjcdn.com/comments/and+you+re+captain+Literal+_7166fe9bf9462aab608d6cb316789a9a.jpg

I think you need to learn what hyperbole and exaggeration is.

Ursan.7846:

You say this, and I’m wondering if we play the same game.

I’m gonna list some dungeons, and bosses contained in them where I’d love to see you go AFK for 5 minutes and expect to survive. (Ignoring any exploits which allows you to afk and kill the boss, because they do exist but it’s not due to the boss mechanics.)

I’m gonna stop cuz I’m sure you get my point. And we’re missing some obvious ones like Alpha and Lupi.

On some of these bosses, I’m sure you can “Zerg” it by just wping back if you get downed. That’ll lead to a hugely inefficient time doing these bosses as opposed to, you know, learning the boss mechanics and learning how to survive.

Unfortunately, not all bosses are perfect and challenging. There are some bosses that are complete snoozefests. However, when you say stuff like “I can kill HALF the bosses in this game by AFKing for 5 minutes,” I seriously wonder if we play the same game.

The fact that there’s ANY where it’s possible to do so is telling. I’m exaggerating, to some extent, but at the very least while leveling (I admit, I haven’t gotten heavily into explorable mode, but so far what I’ve experienced in fractals and story mode hasn’t exactly made me inclined to bother with my time in explorable), dungeons are incredibly dull and uninspired. Bosses are dull, fights devolve into ‘dodge red circles’ while spamming your most damaging attacks.

Even the fact that you can ‘zerg’, regardless of how inefficient (Not the point), is incredibly moronic. If you can die, run back to a boss, and still attack them, the fight is broken, plain and simple. There’s little to no punishment for failure in this game. It’s silly, and makes fights feel incredibly… insipid.

And of that list you made, if you can list more than a few bosses that have more than one or two mechanics that are required to be followed (Dodge fire pillar, then hide behind fire pillar) doesn’t count as a complex mechanic, for example, than I will happily eat my words. However, after playing through every fractal, and every dungeon up to the 70 dungeon, I haven’t seen a single interesting boss, I’m less than inclined to find PvE in this game very fun or interesting.

Rustypipes.6238:

How is this any different from other MMOs? You are basically doing the exact same thing, mashing a few keys and moving out of the way of damage.

Except in Guild Wars 2, many of the fights there’s barely even anything to dodge. Even more so in Guild Wars 2 in contrast with other MMOs, with the way aggro and healing (Or lack thereof) works, there’s even less to do. It becomes “Smash buttons until it dies”… if you feel like it. Half the time it feels like (And sometimes you can!) just hit auto attack and go AFK for the next five minutes. Even ‘tough’ boss fights many times become ‘zerg it until it dies’. It’s silly. Fights become an absolute cluster—— with it becoming near impossible to follow what’s going on, resulting in little strategy and just hitting all your damaging abilities.

Other MMOs have structure and form of some kind. Guild Wars might be trying to break the mold, and I understand why it wants to do so, but it’s implementation of it, at least in terms of PvE, backfires and has made PvE combat extremely simplistic.

…“high health” rather than “boss”?

Just something I’ve noticed after doing various dungeons, fractals, and world events.

Any time something is intended as a ‘boss’ fight, rather than making them have interesting mechanics, high damage, or some other such thing, the simplest thing that ArenaNet has done is smash the 0 key on the keyboard until they have obnoxiously high amounts of health. This just makes bosses tedious to fight, rather than fun or interesting. Bosses typically have one or two mechanics to learn, at most, then you know the fight inside and out, yet the fight can continue for up to ten minutes simply because they have so much health. It’s not fun. It’s not challenging. It’s annoying.

Why did they choose this as a design philosophy? It makes the PvE side of the game incredibly frustrating.

http://i.imgur.com/5P7tc.jpg

Looks like they didn’t expect anyone to use the girly man shoes I have on in that picture. Kind of just adds insult to injury though, since I find those shoes make my guy look like an idiot already, let alone when he has only a red void for ankles!

The two items are:
Improved Scout’s boots
Ravaging Swindler Pants

Linguistically Inept.6583:

dislike… you can transmute better looking armour (and imo – theres enough variation of each type to keep everyone happy)

changing into town clothes automatically in town (and more variation/free options) would be nice; but maintain the option to revert back to your armour and weapon; for showing off

That’s not the idea of this thread.

So sounds like there’s nothing that lasts too long out there. Ah well. Thanks for the answers guys.

Just a question: What buffs are there that affect size? Playing an engineer I know there is elixir S, but that lasts for far too short of a time. I’m looking for stuff that lasts for at least a minute or more; I enjoy playing around with size buffs/debuffs when I’m just having fun with the game.

Is there anything out there, or am I just out of luck?

uknortherner.2670:

Why are people always so desperate to throw real money at things that should already be part of the basic UI?

I’m not. But for them to see it as beneficial to add to the game, there needs to be some sort of incentive and investment they’ll see a return on. Unlocking more costume slots would give both players and developers a reason to utilize it.

Onshidesigns.1069:

We would need a way to quickly switch weapon abilities to costume abilities on the HUD.

Also the option to have more then one costume in the costume panel.

Easy thing to add for some gems.

Unlock more available costumes for 400 gems or some such. Everyone wins.

Olba.5376:

And honestly, I doubt anyone wants to see a bunch of characters running around in their underwear. Because that’s what would happen.

Not really. I’d love to see a costume system implemented, in part because I think a lot of the armor is ugly, also in part because I want to make my engineer look like a survivalist with his multi tool pack, some pants, and boots, but no chest piece. Unfortunately I can’t do this without seriously gimping myself.

A system akin to the one in Rift where you have two armor tabs, one that applies the stats, and the other where you choose your costume pieces/if they display would be nice.