Guild Wars 2

Yeah, I’ve really only been logging in to “get” the living story updates, but I haven’t played in a couple months it seems. I periodically check this thread to see if anything has been acknowledged by the Anet team, and then just wander away again, sad.

I stand by my statements a few weeks ago; nothing about this is going to change, with the possible exception that they might add traits to the gem store, so you could pay cash to trait a new character that doesn’t have skill points or gold.

But, they’ve put the game on rails, they’ve told the player how they want them to play, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign that they’ll return to the “play how you want” ideology.

Wandered away a month or so ago, just came back to unlock the story chapter and see if they’d even bothered to reply to the thread.

All I’m asking, after months of trying to get a response is this: Are there changes on the development schedule, or are you just waiting for the storm to die down?

I have to tell ya, I miss Guild Wars, but I’m an altoholic, and I cannot, simply cannot face doing this absurd song and dance to trait another character. And i realize that my little gem card a month is a pittance in the grand scheme, but I cannot be the only old-timer who has stopped playing and stopped buying gem cards.

I just want to know if there’s any chance at all that you’re going to do something so that customers who bought character slots aren’t faced with these Sisyphean tasks over and over and over again.

Because it’s just breaking my heart that I can’t experience this gorgeous game the way I want to experience it, but instead must follow someone else’s plan for my play time. And I’d just as soon not play your way, but would like to go back to the game’s ideal state of being able to play my way.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Anet are staging a parody of Waiting for Godot, with the playerbase performing the role of Vladimir and Estragon, Gaile acting as the boy, and the elusive and mysterious Anet handling the Godot part. But instead of ‘tomorrow’, the new buzz word is now ‘soon’.

Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
Estragon: (despairingly). Ah!

[…]

Boy: (in a rush). Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow.

Estragon: Well, shall we go?
Vladimir: Yes, let’s go. (They do not move.)

—

I am most definitely enjoying the show, especially the tradicomical parts.
Also, here are two of my fav quotes which strongly remind one of loyal-vet part of the playerbase:

Estragon: (aphoristic for once). We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Pozzo: The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.

I love you SO MUCH right now. So much. My adoration for you knows no bounds.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.

So please keep your thoughts coming on the new system. Feel free to make suggestions but please, keeping them constructive would be very much appreciated.

Not for nothing, Gaile, but that’s the same 4 point song we’ve seen in so many threads. This is how it’s beginning to sound:

1.) Won’t someone think of the new players? Those poor drooling ijuts, we have to help them!
2.) We did it for you! Simplicity brings peace to the soul.
3.) Everyone but you LOVES this idea. We have data to prove it.
4.) We’re listening.

1.) New players didn’t have gold to buy gems. If selling gems to buy gold was a problem, you would not have changed the entire system to cut off a revenue stream because of morons spending gem cards accidentally.

2.) You did not do it for us. You did it deliberately to force users to have an odd number of gems to promote gem purchases via cash cards. We’re not idiots, here. I mean, except for the new players, obviously. They, apparently cannot be trusted to breathe on their own, the poor dears.

3.) Hundreds of replies prove your point to be completely and utterly and irredeemably incorrect. Obviously a ton of people bought tiny amounts of 1 or 2 gems at a time. Not 400.

4.) They are listening? Like they listened to the Traits thread? If so, this topic is dead in the water.

Gaile, you have an enormous amount of cred with the community. You do a hard and thankless job, and I do not envy it. But when you come out and say things like that, things which are demonstrably untrue, it makes it hard to believe that there are any advocates for the players. I realize your hands are tied, and that even if you disagree with the corporate line, you have to repeat it…but the message has lost its luster.

Much like the game, I must say.

I’ve almost completely checked out of gw2 after starting a new character with the NPE. It killed the love I’ve had for this game. The traits thing…just…no. And 6 months of thread, with the only comment of substance from the anet team being “wow, this is too long to read, could you summarize it?”…and then never ever coming back, it tells me that the traits thing is permanent, and that we’ve all just completely wasted our time by trying to get them to listen.

So yeah, I’m kinda sad about the direction they decided to take GW2, and I’m sure I’ll pop back in randomly for things like halloween or what have you; but I’ve gone from an every day player to a once a week or so player, and I’ll probably fade out for a while entirely.

I’m so disappointed that a game that once promised that we could play and explore the way we wanted to has become a game on rails where you have to play the way they want you to play if you ever want to see the full potential of your character.

I’m sure the white knights will be in any second now to say that the company won’t miss me and my regular gem card purchases, which ya know…true enough. But I’m still sad, watching something I loved become something I can’t be bothered with.

Gaile Gray.6029:

This thread is very large and has a lot of great feedback and input within it. But because it’s so long, some participants may have missed a very informative post by Game Design Lead Jon Peters.

And I would point out that the post is from a month ago.

Plenty of us read it, and responded to it, and got no feedback, no response, no indication that anyone was reading anything we said, no updates, no decisions about forward direction…pretty much…nada.

There have been 10 pages of comments since Jon’s post. Many of those pages were direct responses. After no response, everyone went back to complaining about the traits some more. Because, as you may have heard, many people find them less than pleasurable. Some might even say unpleasant, inconvenient, mind bogglingly ill conceived, and quite possibly some large social experiment where our attempts to trait out a character are used in metrics to design better mousetraps.

At this point, I think everyone wants to know just a few simple answers.

1) Are you considering making traits account unlocked: Yes/No
2) Is the current trait-unlock modality going to stay, even if tasks change? Yes/No
3) Will you lower the costs of buying traits? Yes/No
4) Will you tell us if changes are coming or not? Yes/No

Just tell us what the thinking is. If no changes are coming to the way traits unlock, or the costs, then just tell us that. All any of us want is for you guys to tell us whether or not this system is going to change, and if so; how and when.

There are hundreds and hundreds of posts from users. There are thousands of views. Recycling everyone back to a month old post from a dev isn’t going to solve anything.

Having someone give us definitive answers as to the path forward…that would solve something.

Yeah, I’m kinda wondering if there’s a specific race and class and story line they’d all like us to play, so they could just stop bothering with all the other bits. (She says, mostly sarcastically.)

I love quicktime harch….more naked men! I want battle bikinis on the minions! Make it so, developer number 1.

http://youtu.be/z6eTTaY1a6M?t=20s

I have been leveling a ranger, and I’ve been able to make my own armor as I level up, except that now, cloth drops are so rare, I’m probably stuck and will have to buy armor, because buying leather armor is cheaper than buying the cloth part of the components I need to make it, and I’ll outlevel the cotton zones much sooner than I’ll ever have enough cotton to make the lvl 50-55 insignias.

This ranger is the one I started with the NPE, and I swear, if I didn’t have 80s already who had filled the bank with stuff, there’s no way this character would be outfitted. She makes no money from story quests and gets armor drops she can’t wear, she makes no money from salvaging anything because leather is worthless, I don’t think she’s earned enough to even buy a low level yellow weapon.

My 80 cloth wearer is a necro, so her drops are leather too. (Necro, bugged? I’m shocked…shocked.)

The thermal paste is less than 48 hours old. The system does not show any sort of heat spike with any other application, including number intensive crunching. It happens on multiple computers.

It happens when the new Coherent-UI starts spinning up processes. On my system, each individual case of of CUI causes a temp rise. CUI shouldn’t be spinning up multiple processes, first off. Secondly, child processes should terminate if the trading post isn’t being used. What appears to be happening is that CUI is loading up an entire browser’s worth of cpu process with each thread, and is not releasing it.

On some systems, perhaps not yours, and certainly not in every case, but in some systems, the current patch is causing cpus to overwork.

Oh my gosh, no. Nobody who isn’t overclocking, and familiar with what specs they’re looking for, should run Prime95. Prime is contraindicated with many cpus, and in all cpus that are not running aftermarket coolers.

Prime95 stresses a computer far more than the majority of software based stress-suites, because the operating system usually shuts down the floating-point unit when unused by other programs, whereas Prime95 is well-optimized to continuously and effectively thread the FPU, causing it to be deeply pipelined, thereby generating significantly more heat because of elevated power consumption under the massive workload conditions.

Nobody, who doesn’t know exactly what they’re doing, should run prime against their system as a stress test. That’s a fast way to melt down a consumer grade box.

(That said; of course I ran it when I was building the box…but it is not a tool for the regular user.) Edit to add: I’m not using stock heat sinks or thermal paste.

The current build of the client is really taxing user’s CPUs. While tracing the stuttering/fps issue on my system, we discovered that launching the game would push my cpu temps up by 40 degrees celcius in a couple of seconds. (It was pushing my cpu to a temp of 102, which is “kill your chip” temps, and my fps problems were caused by my system throttling itself to stop from burning the chip out.)

Granted, I live on the prairie, and should clean out my system more often, but really…how many regular users even know how to disassemble their case, pull the heatsink, check the paste, clean it out and put it all back together? After doing all that, my system default cpu temp is 30-35c with 3 browsers, a couple of utilities and adobe cloud running.

If I turn everything off, and launch GW2, as soon as the coherent processes start spinning up, my CPU jumps to 75c. That’s pushing right up against the heat limit of non-overclocked cpus.

I’ve tested this now on 3 different computers, each with their own account, and on each system, there is a massive surge in cpu temp, directly before the FPS drop.

There are no heat issues running any other game or app that I’ve tried. Support has a log with all of the games installed on my system. I’ve launched them all, and none of them gloms on to the cpu and doesn’t let go like the latest gw2 patch.

Because development boxes live in controlled environments, and are generally beefy and well cooled, this sort of thing could slip past easily. I recommend that someone on the dev team follow tech support’s directions; download speccy and watch what happens to your cpu load when you launch the game.

If tech support hadn’t recommended downloading speccy, and I hadn’t seen that my chip was spiking into temps 20c degrees hotter than the recommended range, I would have ended up burning out components, and never been able to figure out why.

I’m afraid I’m starting to repeat myself on different threads and that anet is going to get really annoyed soon, but…the latest patch is really kitten cpus. Mine spikes about 40 degrees celcius when I load the game. Part of that is that it’s spinning up multiple instances of the coherent-ui processes, and those are cpu hogs, and the game itself is more cpu than gpu intensive.

Download something like speccy and check your cpu temps. If the game pushes you outside the range that’s good for your chip; first try blowing out your heat sink and see if that helps.

GW2 is much more cpu intensive than it is gpu intensive. If you’re suffering performance hits in populated areas, your cpu is probably throttling back to stop overheating.

Download a program like speccy from piriform (it’s what gw2 tech support had me download). Run it, then launch gw2 and go somewhere where you see performance problems, then tab out and see what your temps look like.

If your temps are outside the range for your chipset…well, there’s your problem.

There is something in the last patch, most likely the Coherent ui processes, that is spiking temps because it’s so very cpu intensive. Example; my cpu temp shoots up 40 degrees celcius when I load the current version of gw2. There is no other game or app on my system that does that.

Download speccy or something similar and check your cpu temps. This current patch raises my cpu temp by 40 degrees celcius. I had to blow out my heat sink and reseat it to get the game to stop throttling, because the latest patch pushed my system up to 102C, which is 20+ degrees hotter than is safe for the chip.

In Old and Middle English voiceless fricatives /f/, /?/ mutated to voiced fricatives before a voiced ending.[references 5] In some words this voicing survives in the modern English plural. In the case of /f/ changing to /v/, the mutation is indicated in the orthography as well; also, a silent e is added in this case if the singular does not already end with -e:
bath baths /b??ðz/, /bæðz/
mouth[1] mouths /ma?ðz/
calf calves /k??vz/, /kævz/
leaf[2] leaves /li?vz/
knife[1] knives /na?vz/
life lives /la?vz/

In addition, there is one word where /s/ is voiced in the plural:[references 5]
house[1] houses /ha?z?z/

Many nouns ending in /f/ or /?/ (including all words where /f/ is represented orthographically by gh or ph) nevertheless retain the voiceless consonant:
moth moths (voiced /m?ðz/ is rare but does occur in New England and Canada)[citation needed]
proof proofs

Some can do either:
dwarf[3] dwarfs/dwarves
hoof hoofs/hooves
elf elfs/elves
roof roofs (commonly voiced as /ru?vz/ to rhyme with hooves, but rooves is a rare archaic spelling)
staff[4] staffs/staves
turf turfs/turves (latter rare)

Notes:

In a Canadian accent, the mutation to a voiced consonant produces a change in the sound of the preceding diphthong (/a?/ or /a?/).
The Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team is a special case; see Teams and their members below.
For dwarf, the common form of the plural was dwarfs —as, for example, in Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs— until J. R. R. Tolkien popularized dwarves; he intended the changed spelling to differentiate the "dwarf" fantasy race in his novels from the cuter and simpler beings common in fairy tales, but his usage has since spread. Multiple astronomical dwarf stars and multiple nonmythological short human beings, however, remain dwarfs.
For staff (/stæf/ or /st??f/) in the sense of "a body of employees", the plural is always staff; otherwise, both staffs and staves (/ste?vz/) are acceptable, except in compounds, such as flagstaffs. Staves is rare in North America except in the sense of "magic rod", or the musical notation tool; stave of a barrel or cask is a back-formation from staves, which is its plural. (See the Plural to singular by back-formation section below.)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Or Wikipedia. I dunno, one of the two. I get them confused.

Hey gang,

North American here, but have been having the same FPS and lag issues and have been working through it with tech support.

We solved it today, when we figured out that my cpu was overheating. Part of the problem was my end, in that my heat sink was dusty, but part of the problem is that the new patch causes my cpu to rise 40 degrees celcius in temp when launched.

I have a post in the non-european fps thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-Issue-with-the-latest-patch-merged/page/4#post4450212. If you are having FPS problems, you may want to grab Speccy and check your cpu temps.

Ok, so…tech support, bless their overworked hearts, after a series of things, got me to download Speccy from Piriform. While it was running, I launched GW2, and my core CPU temp shot up to 102c. As anyone who knows hardware knows, this temp is well outside the normal range, and well into the Kill Your Hardware range.

So, I disassembled my box, took the heat sink off, blew it out, checked the thermal compound, reseated the cpu and the heatsink, put the system back together, turned it on.

Normal operating temps are around 30-35c, which is where they belong for this cpu. (Intel i5 3570k, 3.4g, Ivy Bridge 22nm).

1.) Open GW2 Launcher – raises the temp to 50c.

2.) Click Play, which causes the game to begin load, and spins up two instances of Coherent UI. Temp goes to 65c instantly, well before any graphics have loaded.

3. Temp stabilizes at around 70, even in full wvw zerg.

Thus, my framerate issues were caused by my CPU overheating, and throttling the system. And while some of my problems were caused by dust in my heat sink; the bigger issue here is that the Coherent code they’re using for the Gem Store is a CPU hog, on top of an already cpu intensive game.

This version of the game could kill people’s CPUs. Anyone who is having these framerate issues should download Speccy and look at your CPU temps. If your temps are outside of the range for your CPU, first try blowing out your system, and see if that helps, but if it doesn’t, you may want to sideline this game until they patch again.

For the record, no CPU should be running hotter than 80-85c. Anything over 90 and you are looking at damaging the chip. Just the two weeks of trying to figure out this problem have probably cost me a new chip, because chip failure after running at those temps is almost a guarantee.

(Edit to add: I always play in full screen mode.)

I submitted a ticket a couple days ago, and so far I’ve downloaded and run two utilities, moved my game folder, repaired the game folder, deleted and downloaded the entire 19 gig dat file, run the game under admin mode, run the game under resetpreference mode…and it’s still a slide show if I go anywhere where there are character models. If I look at a map, my frame rate is 70, if I’m in a mostly empty zone, but with npcs and particle effects, my frame rate is about 30, if I go into wvw, my frame rate drops to 5-10.

Needless to say, I’ve gotten sniped a few times testing that. Enjoy the bags, you sneaky slideshow enemies, I’ll get you…and your little dog too. You know, as soon as I can play the game…

In all seriousness, nothing on my end changed after the patch. I have beautiful framerates in every other game. But GW2 is unplayable in any area where there are other characters.

Gaile, I adore you, and I know the work you do is hard and thankless, but I have to say that “effective medium for communication” is a problematic statement when we have a 51-52 page thread about traits and we haven’t gotten any feedback on it except when someone dropped in to say “wow, this thread is long. Could you summarize it?” and then…nothing.

This aspect of the game is considered game breaking by some percentage of the player base, and even just saying “Nope, not changing it. Sorry you hate it.” would be a more effective communication than just letting the thread fester, ya know?

Agreed, Pookie. I think all of this patch was designed for the free weekend we’re seeing right now.

D’oh, Grimm. I was looking at the total age, not character age. I tried to delete this thread with an explanation that I was an idiot, but I think it just deleted the first post.

In any case, the error was on the user part, and not the game.

I’ll give it another go later then, I’m willing to admit that it could be user error. Thanks for letting me know that it wasn’t problematic for you, that helps.

laokoko.7403:

I “personally” don’t have a problem completing the quest.

I just use the rifle hit the monster a few times and when it is low in health I can capture it.

I’m confused on how to fight in the pit though, since I captured a few minotaur, talk to the arena guy on 2nd floor, but nothing happened.

You were just able to do it just now? Does your character have rifle as an available weapon skill? (I’ve submitted a bug report in game, as did the other person, but any info I can add to it is great.)

Pit: I couldn’t get that part to work either, but I assumed it was because I hadn’t captured anything.

I’m just wondering when (or if) we’re ever going to hear word from Anet about traits? Even just a “Well, that’s a lot of words you guys wrote. But, nothing is changing, this is how we want you to play the game.” at this point would let us know where we stand.

I’m sorry if this is off topic, but a couple of people have mentioned either “spawning an instance” or changing instances at will.

I feel like a doof for asking, because I’ve been playing for some time, but how does one do those things?

No, the skill doesn’t even show, it’s just a lock icon. I’ve tested it on a couple of different critters, even teaming up with another person who plinked away slowly at them so we could see if there was ever a magic point at which the Net unlocked, but it did not.

That person was also a non-rifle using class, and they reported the same thing; that was no way to “capture” the animals.

I’m just annoyed that my hero is this great dragon slaying, Protector of the Land, but those snooty royals still don’t want to let me in to their precious little pavilion.

In Plains of Ashford, there’s a heart where the player is told to use Paenula’s rifle to capture creatures, then fight them in the pit. You talk to the NPC, and are automatically equipped with her rifle.

The action keys for Paenula’s rifle have the Net, which you need to capture the critters, under the 5 key. However, the 5 spot is locked, with the message “You cannot use skills while transformed.” (I’m lvl 50, so it’s not a level gate. )

If you don’t capture any creatures, you can’t fight in the pit. Thus, unless I’m missing something, this heart can’t be completed.

Oh man, I thought I just didn’t know how to ranger. Glad to know the skill sucks more than I do. (To be fair, I may not be good…) I expected it to be a lot like the thief heartseeker(?), whatever that skill is that thieves have that hops them over their target and then stabby stabby stabby.

So, I’ve only done Teq twice, and both times I’ve run around doing those hylek machine thingies, and clearing mobs and stuff, but because I did it on a character with limited range ability, I don’t think I hit the actual dragon very often because I was hopping over waves and rezzing folks…anyway, long story short, even though I was there for the entire event, and did a bunch of stuff, I think I still only got bronze. I didn’t realize that it was only hitting the dragon that counted for this event.

Not necessarily. I have a character started after the April trait disaster, but before the September patch of doom. I’m not absolutely sure, because the FPS is so bad right now I can’t log in without frustration, but I seem to recall that she was already up to the Orr part of her personal story, which is past the lvl 70 gate currently put in. IIRC, the traits were added to the PS in the Sept patch, before that, they were geography traits…but again, I may be wrong on that part.

Hey, at least they stopped despawning in high populated server zones, so…we got that going for us.

Seriously though, I started a necro at launch, and I really wanted to love the minions, but it’s just about impossible to do. They are, bless their hearts, universally idiotic. They get stuck on architecture. Heck, they get stuck on pebbles, dust motes, and thoughts of the color blue.

They wander off and start fights, and then bring the mobs back to you as they die. They’ve been beaten with the nerf bat so badly it’s almost impossible to raise them from the dead anymore, they’re just too depressed to do anything but stand there and mope.

If minions got any more sad, we would need eyeliner, black nail polish, and a Cure album as components to raise them.

But don’t feel too alone, Minion Master of the Doomed; they nerfed the bejebuz out of our other only useful elite skill too. Yay!

Oh man, I hadn’t even thought about people who were like lvl 70, but had already finished the story quest before the patch. How would they go about getting those traits unlocked? The PS can’t be replayed, right?

Oh please, please, please, get rid of the constant swirling! I feel like I’m a goldfish in the mystic potty.

Hey gang, may I suggest that being mean to one another isn’t going to solve problems.

As to lag spikes, I’m practically on top of the network backbone switch for the southwest, it is less than .25 mile away. I have a 75/50gb connection. I’m plugged directly into the router. I have blazing speed. I can traceroute to the server farm where ncsoft hosts in milliseconds. However, at the point where telia is handing off the stream to ncsoft, there is massive packet loss.

Example:
6 15ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% TenGigE0-6-0-0.GW4.DFW13.ALTER.NET [152.63.101.5]
0/ 25 = 0% |
7 12ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% teliasonera-gw.customer.alter.net [63.65.123.46]
2/ 25 = 8% |
8 51ms 2/ 25 = 8% 0/ 25 = 0% ash-bb4-link.telia.net [213.155.135.2]
4/ 25 = 16% |
9 150ms 7/ 25 = 28% 1/ 25 = 4% ffm-bb2-link.telia.net [80.91.246.63]
0/ 25 = 0% |
10 155ms 8/ 25 = 32% 2/ 25 = 8% ffm-b11-link.telia.net [62.115.138.9]
0/ 25 = 0% |
11 147ms 21/ 25 = 84% 15/ 25 = 60% ncsoft-ic-306349-ffm-b11.c.telia.net [62.115.43.74]
0/ 25 = 0% |
12 —- 25/ 25 =100% 19/ 25 = 76% 206-127-157-86.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.86]
0/ 25 = 0% |
13 142ms 6/ 25 = 24% 0/ 25 = 0% 206-127-158-1.ncsoft.com [206.127.158.1]

Lots and lots and lots of people are reporting latency at that point. That is not an ISP issue, there’s nothing comcast or verizon or god himself can do to fix something that’s an internal network routing issue, which this appears to be.

That not everyone is seeing it, for example, sirsquishy who isn’t seeing a problem, it’s because you’re routing in through a different connection. It’s not like there’s just one big ol cable and all the data comes in there.

It is absolutely possible for people to see different latency depending on how their routed to the loadshare.

Also, a 12% drop in the early stage of the route isn’t going to have a noticeable effect on latency or fps. Seriously, that’s a hiccup. However, 60-80% packet drop at the ncsoft server will absolutely ruin the game for anyone coming in through that packet center.

I’ve just submitted ticket: Request #916395 “FPS rates since patching”, that included the full readout from the -diag switch. I’ve also got results from other DNS and routers if you need them, but they all show the same failure point, where the datastream transfers from ncsoft @ telia . net to ncsoft . com.

The slowdown is happening here:

11 ncsoft-ic-306349-ffm-b11.c.telia.net [62.115.43.74]
12 206-127-157-86.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.86] [60% packet loss]
13 206-127-158-1.ncsoft.com [206.127.158.1] [76% packet loss]

I just ran the game with the -diag switch. Part of that diagnostics connects to and later trace routes to ncsoft servers. I tried this with both native DNS and switching to google DNS.

In both cases, the massive packet loss happens at ncsoft, see hops 11 and 12:
2 11ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% |
3 10ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% G0-3-3-2.DLLSTX-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net [130.81.190.244]
0/ 25 = 0% |
4 18ms 1/ 25 = 4% 1/ 25 = 4% ae3-0.DFW9-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.199.58]
0/ 25 = 0% |
5 21ms 2/ 25 = 8% 2/ 25 = 8% 0.ae3.XL3.DFW7.ALTER.NET [152.63.3.229]
0/ 25 = 0% |
6 13ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% TenGigE0-4-0-0.GW4.DFW13.ALTER.NET [152.63.97.177]
0/ 25 = 0% |
7 10ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% teliasonera-gw.customer.alter.net [63.65.123.46]
3/ 25 = 12% |
8 48ms 3/ 25 = 12% 0/ 25 = 0% ash-bb4-link.telia.net [213.155.135.2]
4/ 25 = 16% |
9 142ms 7/ 25 = 28% 0/ 25 = 0% ffm-bb2-link.telia.net [80.91.246.63]
0/ 25 = 0% |
10 147ms 8/ 25 = 32% 1/ 25 = 4% ffm-b11-link.telia.net [62.115.138.5]
0/ 25 = 0% |
11 140ms 23/ 25 = 92% 16/ 25 = 64% ncsoft-ic-306349-ffm-b11.c.telia.net [62.115.43.74]
0/ 25 = 0% |
12 —- 25/ 25 =100% 18/ 25 = 72% 206-127-157-86.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.86]
0/ 25 = 0% |
13 139ms 7/ 25 = 28% 0/ 25 = 0% 206-127-158-1.ncsoft.com [206.127.158.1]

There’s also a section in the gw2 diag called: “Checking server connectivity”, which yielded this: (on both DNS options I tried)

Diag.ArenaNetworks.com
64.25.39.21:80 – connect succeeded
64.25.39.21:6112 – connect succeeded
206.127.158.31:80 – connect failed
206.127.158.31:6112 – connect failed

Hopefully this will help figure out where the load balancing is falling down.

US, TX, on top of a huge pipe, with a 75/50 gig connection.
Before patch, regularly had 60+fps.

Since patch, when I first log in, it might be as high as 30, but quickly drops to 15 or less as soon as the world starts populating with architecture and people.

When I do autodetect on the graphic settings, it sets everything to the highest the game offers. I have a fast, good, current rig. However, if I leave it on the autodetect settings, FPS drops to single digit.

If I run things on ‘best performance", where everything that makes the game look good is turned off, I still can’t get above 18 fps in a dead zone.

I just tried to play wvw, at the lowest graphic setting, and it was a blobby slideshow of horrible.

So far, I’ve tried deleting the .dat file from the roaming app data, I’ve tried various switches, i.e., repair, fps, etc.

I’ve checked to make sure that my card drivers are the most current.

Every other game on my system runs beautifully, but since the Sept patch, the FPS problems have been getting so bad that today, I gave up trying to play after 10 minutes.

I posted this on the NPE thread…since that thread actually seems to get some attention from the Reds, but his has been my experience trying to level an alt under the NPE and current trait setup:

I started a new character at the NPE launch. I’ve gotten her to 49, playing has been slow, and I’ve started not logging in every day anymore.

I got caught by the lvl 29 bug, which sucked. Clearing all of Snowden map only gained me a quarter of a level.

Because I was trying to experience it like a new player, I’ve been trying to avoid spending gold/skill point scrolls that a new player wouldn’t have.

I’ve been clearing maps, trying to get traits, and hoping to be in the map if someone starts the group events I need to get the traits I actually want. So far, no luck. I’ve unlocked a couple, but both of the adept traits I want are at the end of large Champ group events that never seem to happen.

At level 49, I’ve got 30% map completion, have cleared 6 maps plus cities, have done all of the story quest I’m allowed to do…and I still don’t have the traits I want. Could I buy them? Certainly. But it is not something a new player could do. Even if the cash isn’t a barrier at that level, the skill point cost certainly is. New characters are still trying to buy elite skills that cost 30 skill points.

On the plus side, crafting my own armor has kept up with my level, a thing which I never had happen before. I always outleveled my crafting skill so fast that most of my skills stop at around 200. But this time, I’m crafting level appropriate gear. I don’t know if that’s because crafting has been amped up, or because leveling is going so slowly. But it’s a good thing, because two of my 4 PS chapters have dropped gear I can’t wear/equip/wield. So, yeah…no loot from mobs, no coin rewards for quests, and loot I can’t salvage, wear or sell. Yay.

I must say, I’ve been tempted to just hop into eotm and get to 80 and get it over with so I can farm levels for skill points to buy traits, so I can play around with the character, but I’m trying to do it like a new player…who I don’t think would have any idea about the karma train on the edge.

And frankly just the fact that “get it over with” has become part of my mindset about the game is probably why I’m not logging in as much. It just feels frustrating to have all these locked traits, and all these impossible tasks required to get them.

I’m loving the character, I just wish I’d started her before April, because I really, really, really hate the trait system, and I am not sure how much longer I can keep forcing myself to jump through hoops to unlock core components of the character.

I started a new character at the NPE launch. I’ve gotten her to 49, playing has been slow, and I’ve started not logging in every day anymore.

I got caught by the lvl 29 bug, which sucked. Clearing all of Snowden map only gained me a quarter of a level.

Because I was trying to experience it like a new player, I’ve been trying to avoid spending gold that a new player wouldn’t have. Now that PS mobs drop no loot, and on at least two occasions my PS awarded items my character couldn’t wear/wield and couldn’t sell or salvage.

I’ve been clearing maps, trying to get traits, and hoping to be in the map if someone starts the group events I need to get my traits. So far, no luck. I’ve unlocked a couple, but both of the adept traits I want are at the end of large Champ group events that never seem to happen.

At level 49, I’ve got 30% map completion, have cleared 6 maps plus cities, have done all of the story quest I’m allowed to do…and I still don’t have the traits I want. Could I buy them? Certainly. But it is the case that because of how traits are often at the end of long group events, or impossible jumping puzzles or what have you, that I will have to buy all the traits I want, and that is not something a new player could do. Even if the cash isn’t a barrier at that level, the skill point cost certainly is. New characters are still trying to buy elite skills that cost 30 skill points.

On the plus side, crafting my own armor has kept up with my level, a thing which I never had happen before. I always outleveled my crafting skill so fast that most of my skills stop at around 200. But this time, I’m crafting level appropriate gear. I don’t know if that’s because crafting has been amped up, or because leveling is going so slowly.

I must say, I’ve been tempted to just hop into eotm and get to 80 and get it over with so I can farm skill points to buy traits, so I can play around with the character, but I’m trying to do it like a new player…who I don’t think would have any idea about the karma train on the edge.

And frankly just the fact that “get it over with” has become part of my mindset about the game is probably why I’m not logging in as much. It just feels frustrating to have all these locked traits, and all these impossible tasks required to get them.

I’m loving the character, I just wish I’d started her before April, because I really, really, really hate the trait system, and I am not sure how much longer I can keep forcing myself to jump through hoops to unlock core components of the character.

Time and date of incident (plus time zone) 9/18/14, 19:21 CST

Game World NSP
Map: The Grove, by Home, mostly unpopulated

Brief description of what you’re seeing:
In any zone, on any character, if I am alone, or the map is nearly empty, I can run at the highest graphic settings, and have FPS of 50+. However, if the map is crowded, or there is an event with a lot of particle effects, frame rate can go down to 2-3 FPS.

When there are crowds, I have to turn my settings down to the lowest possible setting, which makes it look like I’m playing with a Matisse filter on. It’s so blurry it’s like a watercolor. Even with that, in a crowd, my FPS doesn’t go above about 18-23 FPS.

I have a 75/50 gb fiber optic internet connection, I’m plugged into the router which is less than 3 feet away. System is top tier and fully optimized. Drivers current. Nothing hardware or software on my end has changed since either 9/9 or 9/16 except for the patches.

One of the things that drew a subset of WoW players to GW2 was the fact that it wasn’t WoW. Blizzard has made some real hamfisted moves, and each time, it drives off a subset of players that start looking for something new.

That said; having come from a large raiding guild in WoW, the most hardcore of players aren’t going to stay playing gw2 for very long, it’s just too easy. To be honest, one of the things I loved about GW2 was that I could wander around, help people, have people help me, do events, not do events, whatever…it’s just a mellow, cool way to spend an hour or two, but I burned out hard raiding in other games, and I wanted a game where I wouldn’t have to study spreadsheets to make sure everything would go to plan.

But leveling a new alt through the current system…is mind-numbingly dull. And the realization that I’ll be leveling over and over as an 80 before I ever have even close to half my traits has made me resistant to playing.

Seriously, I’ve spent more time reading and commenting on the forums than I have playing since I started the new alt. Most of my friends have wandered off to other games; either back to WoW or off to AA or whatever.

I can’t find the post, but IIRC, one of the devs said something about how the testers went through the opening scene, and then refused to touch anything because they “didn’t know what to do”, so they sat quietly with their hands in their laps until someone told them what to do. (Where they could find a western game audience that sat quietly for anything….I don’t even know.)

If those are the gamers that Anet is trying to attract and retain, then it is no wonder GW2 is turning into Baby’s First MMO.

I usually run with graphics at the highest setting possible, and have never had any problems with rendering or framerates until the 9/9 patch. Now, if I’m going into wvw or anywhere else where there are going to be a ton of particle effects, I have to turn my graphics down to “best performance”, which I swear to you is like playing the game with a Mattise filter on. Seriously, it’s sort of trippy, but I miss crisp clear graphics.

But since the patch, my choices are either “zerg with Mattisse” or “stunning graphics in maps so empty that you’re constantly being asked to move to a more populated map.”

Nothing on my end changed, my drivers are all up to date, graphics card diagnostics, processor and ram and net diagnostics show my system running fast, clean and cool. It’s something on the programming side.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am up to date with the conversation. We are discussing your thoughts internally and continuing to work on the story steps. Once I have some more new I will update the thread.

Meanwhile I just want to communicate with certainty that NPE was not implemented in order to increase monetization from the BLT. It was designed for brand new players to the game. And it is for that reason that we are working with you to understand how to better refine the system.

Chris

I will grant that nothing in the NPE seemed to be about the BLT. But is this also a true statement for Traits?

Well, the thing is, once you get to 80, you’re way more likely to start an alt than you are to do most anything else, unless you’re a dedicated dungeon, fractal or wvw runner.

And once you start that alt, you’re faced with a wall of locks that weren’t there before.

At first the player is annoyed. They will go do some of the unlocks, and realize that some of the unlocks are impossible depending on which server you’re on, or what times you play, or if you can rearrange your life to be there when the event happens.

Frustration!

If the player could then throw up their hands, and buy a $20 gem card that would stop him from having to deal with any of that nonsense again…the gem cards would fly off the shelves into eager hands.

It’s actually pretty brilliant from a operant conditioning standpoint. Assuming they unlock the traits in the gem store. If they don’t, then I have no idea what they’re on about with the trait changes. It’s just frustration for the sake of frustration.

Something has been tickling the back of my mind since the April update, which became clear focus after the 9/9 update.

It is my contention that Anet has brought economic behaviorists on board, and has attempted to overlay the reward/punishment monetization/skinner-box system of F2P games on top of the existing infrastructure, and these current changes are a precursor to skills and traits being available on the gem store.

Before I get elbows deep, it’s only fair to mention that I studied this type of industrial psychology while pursuing my PhD in bioethics, ergo I may be seeing shadows in the cave, and assigning malice to actions that may just be incompetence. Also fair to point out that I’m on the board of a software publisher, (one that shares no market space with Anet), and we constantly get pitched by monetization “gurus” who talk about their methodologies, so I have more than a passing acquaintance with this type of game theory.

Monetization and Skinner-Boxing of games can range from things like Zynga’s CEO’s theory of “fun-pain”, which we don’t see much of in GW2, to premium currencies, which all MMOs have always had, to pay-to-win like Korean grinders, but the most powerful of all the skinner-box techniques is Reward Removal. (See Puzzle and Dragon as an example of a masterfully designed money extraction skinner box. )

Research has shown that humans like getting rewards, but they hate losing what they already have much more than they value getting the reward. The effect is more powerful the longer the person has had the reward.

Traits are an example of this playing out; Players who have had the game for long enough that they have leveled a character in the original system valued the trait system. Traits were a reward for playing the character. Therefore, when traits were “removed”, i.e., placed behind artificial barriers, players felt “robbed”, “cheated”, and as though “Anet hates it’s players”. (To borrow phrases I’ve seen lobbed about the forums.) Hiding the story quest until lvl 10 is another example, as is removing all the fun stuff to do in the starter zones.

To effectively monetize your playerbase with this technique, you have to tell the player they have earned something, and then later tell them that they did not. The longer you allow the player to have the reward before you take it away, the more powerful the effect becomes.

If, for example, traits went on sale in the gem store today, we all know that people would buy them. Sure, people would complain, and some people would quit the game, but the vast majority of people who are not going to do 65 different things to unlock their traits would just buy them, or ignore traits all the way around except for accidental unlocks.

Therefore, my premise is that the reason 400 response threads about traits have been completely ignored, while pushback on level gating skills resulted in changes, is that traits are going to be a monetized part of the game.

I did the “new” metrica province last night, and it was heartbreaking. No golem chess, no jumping in a golem suit, no staff of evil destruction, just pressing “F” over and over. It was so boring.

I said, after the patch, that I would start a new alt, with all of the level gating and trait handicaps that a new player would have, and I have to tell you, I’m sitting here reading and commenting on the forums instead of playing her.

It’s mind numbingly slow. The zones feel static. Character progression feels bait and switch to me, being “rewarded” with content that all my other characters were able to experience well before the level gate.

In the last couple of days, I’ve cleared Wayfarer, Snowden, Queensdale, and without the quirky things that you could do in those zones, it’s just soulless. I liked feeding the bears. I liked jumping in a golem suit. I liked harvesting cabbage at the farm, and feeding cows and gathering apples. The zones had character, and life, and story.

Now it’s just press F. Or 1. And 1 again. Kill 35 centaurs. Go over there. Kill 35 Ettins. Rinse, repeat.

As a “new” character, traits feel irrelevant, even when you hit 30 and “unlock” them, even if you’ve somehow, by the grace of Dwayna, managed to actually unlock an actual trait, it’s lvl 36 before you could actually slot it. (I had the experience of unlocking one before 30, but I had no idea what I’d unlocked, because I couldn’t open the level locked trait panel to see what it was.)

In map discussions, I’ve heard multiple people say that they’re just ignoring traits. They see all those locks and decide that it’s an optional part of the game, like they are achievements, rather than a core part of the character design. Perhaps they are right? I do not understand what the “vision” for traits is.

TL/DR:

• Content changes in newbie zones makes the zones milquetoasty and bleh.
• What’s with all the bag vendors?
• No nodes? No TP? No salvage kits? Come on, really? Why?
• Level locks are frustrating and seem arbitrary.
• Traits are something people are starting to think are irrelevant/unnecessary/not worth the bother. Is that the desired effect?

Yeah, in the last 3-4 days, I’ve cleared Wayfarer, Snowden, Queensdale and starting on Metrica, and I gotta say, not feeding the baby bears in wayfarer, or doing the golems in Metrica, or any of the other fun silly things that added so much flavor to the game…I’m really disheartened.

For the first time in a long time, I’m not motivated to login. While I’m loving the ranger class, I got caught by the lvl 29 bug, and had to use my only level book to get past it, all of the silly stuff in the zones I’ve cleared so far has been replaced and it’s starting to feel like work. All those hearts and pois and jumping puzzles I have to do (again) before I can even start playing with my character.

It’s starting to feel like work, like I have to play the way Anet wants me to play. The Metrica destruction though, I think that kinda broke my heart.

I’m beginning to toy with the idea that perhaps I should walk away for a while, so my memories of the game are of a wonderfully fun, bright, intelligent, ground breaking game. Because I have to say, right now, I feel that it’s become a metrics driven, dumbed-down grinder, and it’s just heartbreaking.