Guild Wars 2

Well, I’ll speak for myself, but..

They can make PowerBlock a gimmick, or could’ve left it where it had potential with a few tweaks, whatever. I don’t care too much.

But the polish of this game is already disreputable, but from a standpoint of the mesmer profession, it’s in tatters. That’s the true problem. People are just more frustrated because the bugs that are irritating have remained and will continue to remain, while the one they actually kinda liked was fixed in a couple days.

SrebX.6498:

I honestly don’t understand what th rage is all about …

To sum it up: Here we have a profession that is riddled to the hilt with bugs, and a playerbase that has been very thorough in breaking out what those bugs were via posts on this forum. Big patch comes where these bugs were expected to be fixed.

All bugs were just adjusted to be bugged in another manner, and one new bug surfaces that’s actually sort of awesome and has potential to make said profession quite fun and useful, despite the flaky nature of its QA.

Yet out of all these longstanding and agitating bugs, the one that gets fixed with a quickness is, of course, the one that did not make this profession frustrating to play.

Someone responded elsewhere with more or less the same by saying that you could even see this tag in the video that Anet released on wardrobes.

That kinda sucks. Not a huge thing to fuss about, but it would be cool if it would just assume the original appearance (ascended armor) when sent to a non-Norn.

But yeah, then there’s some logistics issues on that idea I’m sure.

Pretty basic question, sorry if it’s been asked.

I have an ascended piece of armor on a light armor norn. I transmute norn T2 on it.

After the feature patch, I decide that I want to play elementalist in Fractals, so I want to swap this ascended armor piece to my charr ele.

Can he use it? I assume the Norn tier appearance will not send over, I don’t care about that. I just want to be able to use it without removing the appearance for my norn character.

Will this be possible or will it be stuck on the norn until I remove the transmutation?

To speak to what I’d like to see on a personal level:

Branch out existing professions into more varied roles, but that do not imbalance your ability to to do existing content.

Example: Three forms of the guardian profession that you can trait into that do a bit more specialization than what currently exists.

A damage oriented version that specializes in more offensive yet “holy-ish” abilities. Wielding spirit weapons or something that really class you up. I’ll call this guy a dervish.

A boon/support oriented version of the guardian that hearkens back to the paragon a bit. As he does his boons, it’s very visible. Wings that appear during casts, symbols on the ground that go into aoe support. Obviously, I’ll call him the paragon.

Last, a control oriented version of the guardian. He can do more with walls, bubbles, chains, and knockback effects. I’ll call this guy blue lantern. Because I’m not a serious person as much as I should be.

It invests into existing capabilities in game, but sacrifices more into becoming that role. If you invest more into becoming damage (putting you squisher than a zerk guardian), it might cause people to feel more inclined to bring control or support members to allow them to play this more damage oriented style.

The reason I didn’t suggest this first is that I understand GW2 was intended to be simpler to balance skillwise. This would not help that, but I feel the investment in making it happen would be worth it.

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

But as for which one of the three that I think ArenaNet should prioritize on is " Role Diversification " , hands down. This is was THE defining characteristic of Guild Wars and I would love to see it make a comeback.

I sure hope you’re right.

Shongaqu.5279:

similar to how they did the new path in TA, but without the tiny drop rate of the new weapons? actually the new weapons could be ascended with their fancy effects and we could use classic tokens to unlock them.

As long as by doing the content, preferably more than one thing to do, maybe four or five, gives you some of what is required to eventually reach the goal. Fractals do this in their own way in some respects (mats for ascended) or tokens, which are straight forward and easily managed.

I should also clarify that this is under the assumption that at least some changes to the mechanics of the gameplay change (pretty please because I’m vouching for something of lesser importance to me).

They can experiment a bit on how to make people feel like each run of these new content contributions is eventually going to help them establish a character to feel proud of.

ArenaNet’s artists are just unquestionably ahead of others in their craft. This game could really afford a large extension of what is possible on a character level, that’s playing to one of the company’s greatest strengths (imho).

My post will be specifically geared toward “What will keep people playing, or coming back”. I have many friends that stopped playing months ago, and it’s become crucial to my enjoying the game, since this is social.

I want more diversification of skills, but I actually feel that something else will achieve what I stated more.

I support the following:
Other games have often garnered attention toward their game by using vertical progression, but I feel Guild Wars 1 proved that horizontal progression does the same trick. People don’t need to feel “better than others” to feel like they’ve achieved a lot.

That said, your character is almost always the display of your achievements, and diversity also promotes this.

I suggest that in order to get more people involved and interested in LS content, PvP, dungeons, etc. You provide visible rewards that provide the opportunity to be unique from (not better) than the person next to you. You have excellent artists at this company, task them more with developing unique assets that characters can literally equip and showcase.

If another LS dungeon like Molten, or Aetherblade, were to release but with the potential of having whole armor sets and weapons received for doing it more than once, I think it would incentivize people to do it more. If they have complaints, they’re probably complaining while still doing the content. With MMO gamers, that’s a win whether the harsh criticism feels like it or not.

One “it could drop” backpiece per dungeon won’t do it though. People want to define their overall style in different ways. One rocket pack is rarely gonna do that barring an engineer here or there, lol.

You don’t have to stop creating gem store armor and weapons, but slowly working our way toward an overall character we aspire to own, by participating in actual content, ropes people in.

In summary, give us very character defining looks and choices with new content. I emphasize new content, but with more replayability. Remove RNG as much as you can, and balance the grind needed to what keeps people playing but also from growing too bored to bother anymore.

Thank you for a very informative post Lanfear. Haven’t had the time to keep up on all of those discussions so it’s much appreciated.

And just to reiterate, if this is not intended to be a resolution toward the need for large group content much like raids etc., and it’s just another side development (and this can be proven with an Anet statement or a source to one), then I for one will gladly forget this issue and go about enjoying the new content.

I don’t know if ArenaNet intends for this to be sort of an answer to the many requests by players to have content equivalent to either raiding as you find in other MMO’s, or elite missions like Urgoz’ Warren that you might find in GW1. But I suspect this is the case, so I’m providing feedback to that end since I am one that wants content like this.

Tequatl’s overhaul is not unwanted on my behalf. I find this interesting and worthwhile to do. However, guilds like mine are groups of friends. Friends that want to get on VOIP, hang out, and endeavor to achieve a thing that is a challenge with coordination.

Tequatl is placed in the open world wherein you can get something similar to that raid or elite mission feel, but the challenges that come with performing this challenge in an open world do compromise the enjoyability in ways that instanced content do not.

In instanced content, you can work with your team to refine your strategy, eventually get it down to an art, take on roles, and take a bit of pride in that. But with this, you are somewhat at the mercy of passersby and their understanding. More to the point, you’re at the mercy of their willingness to learn or cooperate.

So to sum it up, in the event that this was the answer to this request from the playerbase, it does not satisfy and I implore you to reconsider what appears to be a unwillingness to instance more difficult large group content. On the same token, without the issue of the game’s need for content like this, Tequatl is very interesting and I am still enjoying this change.

Thank you.

I’ve posted what I feel is a good case for ArenaNet changing the appearance of the two dialogues to be less similar. If it’s even considered to that end, that’s good enough for me. That’s it.

I want to recap a few things before being done with this thread for you Logi:

There was no compensation plea. That’s a straw man that you erected.

As stated before, I had my mind on getting a drink, and a full fractal had been done. So there are situations where people will not read and instead act off of cues.

“After watching it a few times you were hesitating and moving around your mouse @ the box hovering over No” This internet sleuthing stuff irritates me more than anything else. I’m just going to have to trust that such a ridiculous interpretation, based on the conditions of the video, isn’t the default interpretation for less rude people than yourself.

I’ve said all that I care to, and made the suggestion I wanted to. I’m done here.

Alright, had the time to review the video a few times and noticed something (after all this effort of making this report)

That dialogue after the maw looks like what you would get if someone asked to leave. Not sure if that function typically requires the initiator to reconfirm their choice though.
Dialogues that wipe progress and dialogues that further progress do need to look less similar though.

I was fortunate enough to have been running OBS while recording this fractal 20 run. I’ll run through some facts about the run:

We rotated it out to start at swamp like most groups are doing these days.

It went swamp – cliffside – flame shaman – maw

No wipes and the run went incredibly smooth

Swamp was four manned, fifth showed up at start of cliffside

The video:
http://youtu.be/8R0I0wDxeTg

Edit: As in the post below, I’ve realized only now after looking at the video a few times that poorly timed exit to Lab was initiated. So rather than this being a bug report, I’m leaving it for Anet to review and potentially consider using red text in the warning or something eye catching.

Maybe it’s bone headed not to notice. But either way, it could save others some trouble.

I’ve been troubleshooting the ever living crud out of this problem, which I’ve noticed to be especially common on the model of laptop that I use, Asus G73 models.

They typically have Radeon cards, and i5 or i7’s.

ANYWAY!

I tried the following things to no avail: Update drivers, rollback drivers, reformat, flash the vbios, beta drivers, chipset updates, blowing out the machine, etc.

Now, I have finally done something that may be the fix. I reset the EC (embedded controller). How did I do it? I shut the machine down, unplugged it, removed the battery, and held the power button for 30 seconds.

Now, when I started the computer again and launched GW2, I got a patch. This is the only thing other than the EC reset that is a viable candidate for having fixed it. Let me know if you guys have any luck.

As for me, I’m back to very nice FPS with medium graphics.

Pretty widespread problem. Would you mind posting some specs? Not because I think I can help (got the same issue) but just to help figure out what machines are having this problem.

Yes, that specific model is what I am on as well. It’s not you.

Szamsziel.5627:

It happened for me as well. But after download most recent drivers fps returned to normal. Probably ANet added some settings which were not covered in earlier drivers to remove culling in PvE

I’ve tried all drivers from 2010 to the current beta drivers. No dice.

I went from 30~35 fps on medium settings to 10 fps in the May patch, on the lowest settings. I wanna feel for you right now man but it’s not happening.

Aha, I gotcha. I’m a tab targeting/left targeting player in PvP lol, so didn’t make that connection right off. There would be some efficiency loss there though.

Haven’t people been requesting this for a long time? It was pretty obnoxious when trying to maintain one target and right clicking to lose it or switching to a friendly.

Left click still works to do this same thing, like a standard game.

Personally, I’d like a toggle option for the functionality, but the frustration has been made known far and wide since launch that a large segment of the population did not like it.

DJRiful.3749:

I wasn’t talking to you. I was replying to OP.

Yours in other hand, there is not much you can do with low FPS you will experience shutter latency frametime. Every monitor is standard 60hz and you need 60FPS (59.9 FPS) constant for a SMOOTH experience. If you go above or below that number. You will experience frame shuttering latencies over 30ms.

Samsung… laptop in my guess without graphic core module (GPU / dedicated GPU chip). HD4000 is not a GPU but iGPU which is integrated into Intel CPU. They are the lowest graphic performer. Hence the price what you pay for, don’t expect a $800 laptop can run games at max framerates.

That’s kind of missing the point. This specific issue for people like us did not start until recently (in my case, exactly the May optimization patch.) It’s easy to point at the machine and say “That’s your problem.”

Yeah, except it has a long history of running the game great, and still plays other games beautifully. You seem knowledgeable and I appreciate your input, but you’re underestimating the people you’re talking to at the same time.

Can you post some specs? Also what problems are you having? Is it taxing your machine more, bandwidth problems, fps?

Edit: Also, are other games and programs running similar to how they used to?

PadmaN.7820:

Log from my G73JH:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmOuv6Homx6cdHNqTWRfMGxFa241MU1ZUEo3Y0NSYnc#gid=0
Notes: 920XM instead of 740QM
GPU overclocked to 800/1100
Settings on Medium, AA off, Shadows off, Reflections off
Where: LA in front of Bank/small stairs area. Running from commendations vendor to Bank guy and to the Wynn[Merchant]
At the bottom of GPU usage column there’s an AVG value.
Min FPS: 39 Max: 60, measured with Bandicam

Man, I’ve decked out so many desktops with custom hardware, I wish I had the guts to do that sort of thing with a laptop. You have an SSD on top of the fancy CPU don’t you?

Going to also add that today’s patch had no effect on my personal experience.
99% GPU, 10~11%CPU. 9~11 fps in LA, 6 entering Arah alone. I am noticing that the Hall of Monuments gets me 26fps. Strange.

Have a look at this

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Installer-not-working/first#post804181

Also, I have Avast and I noticed it can be a real sucker to deal when you’re trying to make sure it’s out of the way.

You might want to also try uninstalling Avast, trying to install GW2, and if it does or doesn’t work, put Avast back on once you’ve tested that.

Soupa.9842:

Yup GPU 99%, CPU 29%, Arenanet get it together bro. Turned EVERYTHING off and put EVERYTHING on lowest 25 FPS where as before if I put everything to lowest I would get 40 or 50 FPS, we’re just gonna have to wait and see.

Not to sound like the fanboy in the room, but they did say this one of many patches that were geared toward optimization. When they experiment, some will get dusted by it.

I’ve been troubleshooting the ever living crap out of this problem and you might learn a lot from the topic I have on Reddit. I keep updating it too since this seems to be fairly pervasive and it could either eventually culminate in ArenaNet finding one super useful piece of info and being able to tackle it, or some savvy user will find the fix and I can try to report as best I can.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1f3y46/guild_wars_2_being_too_gpu_heavy_now_wut/

I also took HwINFO and logged about 1 minute of chilling out in Lion’s Arch. Anyone with some guru-esque knowledge is welcome to review and tell me what they think.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apb3NSHZcmeldEU1aEhMc3JRZEd5Vm85dWNVM3FBcnc&usp=sharing

I don’t doubt that this is an elementary thing for some people, but not so much for others. I see people referring to jittery graphics performance as “lag” often so I’m just putting it out there in the event that it helps someone to be more clear. It’s not meant to condescend man.

Are you sure that the download did not get truncated by your computer going to sleep or a disconnection?

I’m seeing few responses so I’m just throwing whatever I’ve got at you despite if I’m the right guy for this job. o.O

Edit: This is assuming you’re talking about the install process previous to patch.

Seconding soupa’s statement. All lowest settings possible, using Anet’s recommended specs and settings for the GPU.

Also, GPU running at 99%, CPU at a whopping.. 11%?

Are you installing from CD or a download?

This is a shot in the dark, but is Mumble running while you try, or Antivirus of some kind? Sometimes it causes problems.

Last, is Adobe Flash installed? I’m not guru, but I think I read somewhere that Adobe Flash was part of the launcher.

Add me to the list as well. Let’s start a habit in this thread of posting some specs though. At this rate, I think it would be tough for Anet not to realize there’s a big problem.

I’m on
Win7 64bit
Asus G73JH
ATI Radeon HD 5870
vbios is flashed and updated to most recent
i7 CPU Q740@1.73 GHz
ATI drivers and CCC most recent

Here is my game running as of end of April on the same machine with Fraps
http://youtu.be/2UhQPDGYLmo

Now it’s too low to video capture so I’ll submit an image I took with a comparison to how Rift and GW2 run on my current setup

http://i.imgur.com/Oxir0U9.png

I know that two games are not the same, but come on. Dat disparity

When you guys say “lag”, consider this:

Does the game feel like a slideshow but is responding to your inputs quickly?
Does the game feel smooth but is responding to your inputs slowly?

There is a fairly large difference between the two. If it’s the first issue, that is not tied to lag. That is tied to your computer and how it is handling the game. That is called FPS and I’m posting here because I’m noticing a marked increase in this problem since the last patch.

If it’s the second point, it could be your internet service provider, and you have a high chance of hearing the same from Anet.

Man, if you want help, hit Start then type dxdiag.
In that window, save the information to a text file and post some of your specs for your machine.

Most importantly, information about your graphics card, your processor, computer model, and operating system.

Veiled ultimatums aren’t going to help a lot.
Also, support is going to be hit or miss.

Now, is your computer stuttering a lot, or are your skills taking a long time to happen after you press the button to initiate them?

There are a lot of machines that are suffering from poor fps that is likely tied to CPU and GPU “optimization” changes recently. If you’re part of that pool, I’d gladly welcome you to the group. But be as clear as you can be about your problem.

When you quoted me, it would have been a good idea to copy paste it. Had you done this, you might have had a chance to notice that I said

“In my experience, I rarely got above 40 fps during usual gameplay, but I seldom dropped below 20 fps”

http://youtu.be/2UhQPDGYLmo?t=4m3s

Here’s how the game behaved for me at the end of April on the same machine, with Fraps recording it too, I might add. That same area of the game now runs at 9 fps.

So I’ve already contacted support about this too, so no need to discuss if “this is the place for it.” If there’s a chance at getting help on it anywhere, then it’s a place for it.
Here is a link to the product specs of my machine.

http://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/G73Jh/

it has an i7 and ATI Radeon HD 5870

My “symptoms”

I have played GW2 since the very first beta stages. On this machine, I’ve understood that this machine should typically run the game at very high settings with excellent frame rate as long as it is kept cool. And its cooling is high quality, so that’s not an issue.

In my experience, I rarely got above 40 fps during usual gameplay, but I seldom dropped below 20 fps. I’m not a picky player so I never did troubleshoot this, I just played at some of the lowest settings and enjoyed it.

In the past week or two, I recall one of the updates to the game causing this to change. After that point, if I stand in Lion’s Arch I will get 6~11 fps. This is the same if I enter the Arah dungeon all by myself, so I am not sure this is entirely tied to the issue of rendering other players.

If I enter the Eye of the North monument, I will get 20~30 fps.
I am still testing on the lowest settings.

What I have done to try to remedy this

First, this model of laptop has an issue with it’s vbios and even bios that will often cause customers to be stuck with drivers from around 2009 or 2010. Until recently, I did not want to update my ATI drivers at all since it wasn’t entirely needed. However, with the recent problems that I’ve been having, I started getting deeper into the issue by necessity.

First, I reformatted the machine to factory settings. I then installed all windows updates and guild wars 2. So my OS install is exactly 36 hours old.

In order to get the most recent drivers for my graphics card, I took the plunge and flashed my vbios. I followed the video guide from Asus in the following link. Earlier in this machine’s life, I learned that if I wasn’t willing to do this, attempts to update the card would cause a BSOD and would require you to roll back.

Now I have the most recent drivers for my ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the newest Catalyst Control Center. Everything works very well. But when I start GW2, I am still seeing absolutely no improvements in the game other than shorter load screens. A couple of my cores are staying parked, but my research is telling me that this isn’t the issue. At least, not to the degree that I am experiencing it. I do know how to unpark them if I want to, but while I know fairly well what I’m doing, I’m still a cautious guy.

The only thing I have left to try is updating the Bios, but I am reading that this model is easy to brick in this way. If it is not the cause of my issues, I would like to forgo that option.
Here are some further bits of information, let me know if you can help if provided with further details

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130318-1533)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
System Model: G73Jh
BIOS: BIOS Date: 10/30/09 15:13:23 Ver: 08.00.10
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73GHz (8 CPUs), ~1.7GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 6068MB RAM
Page File: 3360MB used, 8774MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode
Card name: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0×68A0)
DAC type: Internal DAC
Display Memory: 3794 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1015 MB
Shared Memory: 2778 MB
Current Mode: 1920 × 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: HP 2311 Series Wide LCD Monitor
Monitor Model: HP 2311
Monitor Id: HWP293A
Native Mode: 1920 × 1080(p) (60.000Hz)
Output Type: HDMI
Driver Name: aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx32,aticfx32,aticfx32,atiumd64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atiumdag,atidxx32,atidxx32,atiumdva,atiumd6a.cap,atitmm64.dll
Driver File Version: 8.17.0010.1191 (English)
Driver Version: 12.104.0.0
DDI Version: 11
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 3/28/2013 20:37:02, 1155264 bytes

I’ve lost two vials, 1.5 gold, and many crafting mats due to FOTM continuing to run long after the other servers shut down yet not persisting into this morning. At the very least, we should have all been disconnected much earlier.

I appreciate ArenaNet’s business model, but this does not absolve them of criticism when it comes to issues like this that you don’t typically see in AAA titles. GW2 is a game that I want to see to succeed. Giving them a pass on very frustrating issues like this does them absolutely no favors. The best approach is to be forward about how this makes you feel as a customer, recommend potential resolutions (heavy invsetment and low investment suggestions are great to give them a better swath of ideas) and not whining.

Last night, I ran Fractals with 4 friends for progression for the first time in a few weeks. We started at level 11 and got to 13. By the time we were done, we noticed that our contact lists and guilds were empty because the servers were down. So we stopped there.

When I got on this morning, I found that most of us lost a good amount of the loot we received during the last hour or more of gameplay, and our progression is stuck at 12, even though we unlocked 13. We basically faced an hour or more of rollback since the dungeon server gave us no indication that there were problems.

It would be really awesome to get our progression back or something, but at the very least, I want Anet to know about this sort of problem coming with server issues like this. I’m pretty disappointed. I was set to make an ascended item with the pinks that dropped, and a few others got nice exotic skins during the run.

Further edit: At the very least, could Anet have a practice of removing people from the game once servers have problems like this so we don’t waste time on progression that won’t be there later on?

That’s some quality stuff, guy that I am randomly bumping out of the selflessness of my heart.