Guild Wars 2

Fermi.2409:

Behellagh.1468:

Don’t confuse the CPU and GPU components with something you could find in a PC.

Actually, the new consoles are more or less off-the-shelf parts in a somewhat customized configuration . The PS4 and XB1 are both using 8core tablet CPUs of differing (fairly low) clockrates. The PS4 is using a 7850-level GPU (close to 7870, iirc, in physical setup/specs but a low clockrate once again holds it back), while the XB1 is a decent bit behind at 7790 or 7770 level, I forget which. It’s really just the RAM setups that are different from normal PCs, slightly, but that’s not going to allow huge amounts of power to be suddenly be pulled from rather weak parts.

Behellagh.1468:

They aren’t running a full operating system. There is no need to allow random hardware being attached. The whole device driver and HAL portions of an OS simply isn’t needed. The XBox One OS isn’t going to be installed anywhere else and Microsoft has said that other than borrowing the Tile UI it has no shared code between Windows, Tablet or Phone OSes.

Even so, they’re running ‘full’ OSes now, even if they may not quite up to snuff with Windows or Linux. This is actually a bit of a resource drain; iirc, each console has a core or two dedicated purely to OS matters.

Really, the new consoles aren’t anything like what the older ones were. As it is, you can match their power (or at least the Xbox One’s, the PS4 is a little harder) with an equal budget, and they’re already behind when it comes to running newer games. The XB1 can’t even run Titanfall@60 FPS constant for god’s sake at 792P.

As someone who worked in custom hardware solutions, I’m not talking PCs here, a Windows/Linux PC has a very specific set of hardware capabilities that aren’t found in either the XBox One or PS4, so to me they aren’t “PCs”. They are like a PC but that could be said about the previous generation.

Just because the current consoles use x64 cores and a GPU based on ones found in existing PCs doesn’t make it a PC. It simply makes sense to use commodity class of cores and GPUs when designing their “system on a chip”. Sony learned this lesson the hard way with the PS3. Calling them a PC is like saying that since a lot of the technology in the Oculus Rift is found in smartphones that the Rift is a smartphone.

Also it’s not technically a “full” OS. It has no driver model for one. It’s customized to run only at that set of specific hardware. Android is more of a “full” OS than either OS on the current consoles.

Yes there are leashes on critters and once stretched so far they will suddenly break attack and heal fully. So unless it’s a wandering critter like Wolfmaster in the Wayfarer Foothills, traditional kiting is of limited effectiveness. But you can get them to chase you in a limited area. I too have a thief and in some Vet/Champ situations I resort to a pistol/pistol setup to attack while staying out of attack range, mostly. Most critters really dislike caltrops and will gladly focus on you, and with their decreased mobility you can run rings around them.

I admit it did take a bit of time to get use to the leash but I understand why, pulling critters into what’s normally considered to be a “safe” area is a form of griefing. Also everyone knows where to find a major critter instead of playing hide and seek.

But you could pass the pick though your bank to another character. True they spoiled us once they introduced the skins from achievement rewards. But skins are different than items. They, ANet, have been more than accomidating changing the Gem Store gathering tools from soul to account bound. Is passing it though your bank between characters so inconvenience? How often during a play session do you change characters?

A number of things you are suggesting are buy once, never again. That really doesn’t help ANet in the long run. Gem store skins needing transmutation crystals to shift them to new armor is exactly the kind of consumable that ANet rely on. Obviously, if the various sales so far this month has indicated, that boosters really aren’t that highly in demand even on sale. No it’s account unlocks like bank and bag slots, BLC keys still and truly impressive skins.

Look up all the major boss fights, check the maps and voila, essential waypoints.

Obviously Transmutation Crystals are also on the most popular list. We still have a few high demand items yet to go on sale. Bank and bag slots, the other weapon skins from earlier LS content.

Makes me wonder if the people running the sale has some global meter showing how many gems and gold is on active player accounts and wait for numbers to recharge before the next high demand item goes on sale. If you try to drain all the gold and gems from player accounts so they would spend cash to by gems, obviously not everyone will comply and player dissatisfaction will climb.

Only reason I can think of as to why they haven’t tried to have multiple popular items back to back to back so the exchange breaks 10g per 100.

I’m for an item to turn soul bound items into account bound. Only works on soul bound items.

The OP may think it’s pointless but the exchange rate spiked which means people are rushing to exchange gold for gems which means people want them.

Allaraina.8614:

Yes please….. I’d like it for screenshotting! <3

So we don’t have to stand butt to butt look at someone else up close.

There’s a thermoplastic brand called Worbla and another called Wonderflex if you are looking to build armor.

No, it’s amazing what you can do with custom silicon.

They aren’t running a full operating system. There is no need to allow random hardware being attached. The whole device driver and HAL portions of an OS simply isn’t needed. The XBox One OS isn’t going to be installed anywhere else and Microsoft has said that other than borrowing the Tile UI it has no shared code between Windows, Tablet or Phone OSes. The original XBox was closer to a PC than the XBone is.

Don’t confuse the CPU and GPU components with something you could find in a PC. That silicon is unique and there isn’t anything that resembles a northbridge/southbridge pair or unified hub controller.

Try Google or a cosplay site. I assume you are talking about heavier than cloth armor.

I never take overclocking into account. Store bought systems don’t have the right hardware or bios to allow OCing in the first place. If you can afford a boutique system then they will OC it for you, assuming you buy the right MB and CPU.

The FX-6300 is a fine budget CPU if you are playing games that are quickly GPU bound. This game isn’t one of them. If you can accept that fact and live with it fine. Doesn’t matter if your other games run great, it’s not a good choice for this game.

So it’s an education thing. As long as it’s an informed decision, it’s up to them to go AMD. But what we are saying is in this game, Intel is the better performer for the price. Unless you are going with integrated graphics of an AMD APU Vs Intel’s HD Graphics 4×00, which in that case and that case alone, AMD wins.

As long as NCSOFT gets a cut of the sales from Kongzhong, they don’t care.

It’s like in an interview with the late author Richard Matheson when asked if he cared that nobody had yet done a true to the novel movie version of “I Am Legend”. His reply was “not as long as they keep writing checks”.

And there is a nice little slide show that you can sort of read with google translate discussing the novel concept in China about buying the game. They imply that this is a first for an MMO in China.

http://gw2.uuu9.com/zt/gw2md/

Pretty sure that was John Smith who simply replied “No”.

1st, the OP didn’t say that in his original post, just that he missed it. My little two person drama was in reply to you Palador, not the OP.

And of course they’re manipulating us. Studies have shown that one way to get people off the fence and buy something is to have it for a limited time. Because as long as it’s around people will always say, well I can always get it later.

And if it’s an item that’s always around, you periodically put it on sale. Sure that trains the consumer to buy only when it’s on sale but as long as the sale price is profitable (not a thing here, I know) it works.

JC Penny shot themselves in the foot when for a time they simply reduced the price of all items to their sale price and eliminated sales. People stopped buying. They wanted the illusion of saving money. They didn’t care that name brand items were now the same price as the discontinued store brand, they wanted to buy the discounted store brand.

I don’t blame ANet for using well understood market psychology to drive Gem Store sales.

Buy orders don’t have the same overhead as sell orders.

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

I was just comparing games that use less than 4 threads…
Yeah if game use 4 or more thread then FX is better. Also it can overclock – thats good.

I hope that developers will support DX12 even if it is only for win 9 or win 8.1. WHY?

Because if you buy new i5 will much more expensive then buying new OS with low level API support! IF you just check that video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3-hH_iGbIk

Dont take this video as a MAntle video – just comapring current DX vs LOW level. Note that conzoles has even lower level API (closer to the metal).

Conzole has 8 jaguar cores – single core performance in CB is around 0.4-0.45.

Thats it… we can only hope that developers will support DX12.

At $100+ a pop for a new OS with a totally revamped UI is something people tend to shy away from. The only reason 8.1’s market share is growing is because 8 was terrible and new rigs tend to ship with 8.1.

And again, lets change subjects, this time to consoles. We aren’t talking consoles. They will always have a game development advantage over PCs because their hardware is fixed and predictable. You don’t need the layers of abstraction to talk to unknown hardware if you know exactly what you have at all times. It allows you to get away with less CPU horsepower. And that’s at the software level. At the hardware level you could remove the need for a generic expansion bus and create a more efficient bus with less overhead and higher bandwidth between the CPU and GPU.

PCs still hearken back to the days of “Big Iron”, general purpose computers. They are the panel van to the console’s F1 race car. One’s a work horse while the other is a thoroughbred.

Here’s a question or two for you.

Did ANet upgrade the game engine in GW from Dx8 to Dx9 during it’s lifetime? No.

Did they improve the poly count of models or rolled out higher resolution textures? No.

But Beh you say, they were busy working on GW2 and it does have all those things. But here’s the thing, MMOs are content driven and an updated game engine isn’t content. Sure players will praise improved framerates, for all of two minutes and then go back complaining that new content isn’t coming out fast enough. So that’s where the bulk of the staff is, in content creation. 3D artists, event designers, sound people. Not a crack team of 3D engine designers starting with a clean sheet of paper. No you have a couple of programmers tasked with maintaining and tweaking a complex piece of code that they were likely not part of during it’s creation. That is never a fun job. Their one mandate is not to break it. It’s tough to refactor code in that kind of environment. An often use comparison is doing aircraft maintenance while in flight.

So I’m not holding my breath for a miracle in terms of the game’s renderer. Dx11, Dx12, Mantle, 64-bit, core scalable performance … might as well wait for the elusive rumored water carburetor.

Still say it’s there to limit database congestion caused by overhead of sell orders.

Palador.2170:

Behellagh.1468:

To be blunt, how about you looking every day? Or check here every day.

Push the button, maybe you’ll get a treat.

It’s a variant on the Skinner Box, a method used to create compulsive behavior. So, congrats to the OP for not being as easily trained as some of us.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my cat’s informing me that it’s time for me to get up from the desk and feed her.

But if you are so hot for some discontinued item and you know it might be back for only a day during this month long sale, why wouldn’t you check every day? Or at least check that forum post?

“Oh I miss Count Chocula cereal”

“Dude it was in the market a month leading up to Halloween”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SOMETHING!!”

“Dude, it’s in the market every year same time every year, open your eyes”

“Oh … Now I miss Frankenberry”

facepalm

Rich nodes? I believe that timer is based on you, unless the whole zone reboots due to a patch.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gathering#Respawn_rate

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

It is up to you… but i have both.
The point is that DX9 is bottleneck for every new CPU. And yes FX at 5.0-5.1Ghz will beat i7 3.9Ghz. I guest that if if you hawe haswell at 4.5Ghz you need FX at least at 5.5 Ghz or higher

http://gamegpu.ru/rpg/rollevye/wasteland-2-test-gpu.html
interesting right? I am not saying that FX is better buy than i5, i wanted to buy broadwell for this game, but i wont because like i said DX9 is to big bottleneck here.

And again you toss out a comparison to a totally different game. We are talking this game that uses 2 to 3 cores on most systems.

But while each core of an FX-6300 is inferior to an Intel one, it follows that two cores of an FX-6300, even on different modules, are still inferior to two Intel ones. And in all likelihood you would need a game to occupy more than three cores worth of work before the FX-6300 pulls away from an i3-4130.

Yes, Dx9 is a bottleneck. So is the multithreaded model prevalent in the 00s which simply spins the renderer into it’s own thread. But if you haven’t done multithreaded design before you tend to stick with well documented methods of the time.

And just to put this to bed once and for all, if (and it’s a big if) the devs choose to upgrade to a newer Dx version it would be Dx11 (along with a new multithreaded design for maximum gain) so it would allow the most players to get the benefit. Not Dx11.1 which is only in Win 8.x or Dx11.2 which is only in Win 8.1. Microsoft is choosing to tie newer Dx versions to newer OSes. Good for them, not so great for a game company who wants their title playable on the most systems possible, without the need of an OS upgrade.

Steam Survey Windows OS numbers.
Win XP – 6.6% – Dx9
Win Vista – 4.2% – Dx10
Win 7 – 65.9% – Dx11
Win 8 – 10.5% – Dx11.1
Win 8.1 – 12.8% – Dx11.2

As for Mantle, realistically not going to happen without the Dx11 recode. And even then why would a game company intentionally tick off the larger playerbase that doesn’t use ATI? Again looking at the Steam Survey, nVidia: 52.38% AMD: 31.03% Intel: 16.23%. Only answer I have is payola. AMD pays off the major game engine manufacturers to include Mantle support so the major titles made with those engines can include it. Our game isn’t in that group.

Thread closure and deletion in 3 … 2 … 1 …

morrolan.9608:

Kumu Honua.2751:

Unique is a standard item type in MMO’s.

We’ve been through this before, no its not a standard term.

Well it is in the MMOs I’ve played. All from different studios. Also visually in the item information it’s located where limitations are listed such as soulbound and account bound. That should be a clue.

Move; Dodge; Don’t stand in the red circle.

Also one other thing which helps with dodge. Don’t queue up attacks. There are times I haven’t been able to dodge because the dodge key won’t get processed until the queued attacks are processed and by then, the AoE damage you are trying to dodge has already hit.

While the FX-6300 is a fine CPU for gaming it simply doesn’t do as well with this one.

One other advantage the i3-4130 has is you can later upgrade to significantly faster CPUs. AMD has halted development on the AM3+ platform. Intel has Broadwell coming in 4Q.

And I refuse to talk about overclocking voodoo Bee. OCing requires better underlying infrastructure (higher price/quality MB, PSU, cooling) as well as luck in the silicon lottery. You can always overclock one system to be faster than another that isn’t overclocked.

Edit: I’m guessing these guys are also Intel fanboys.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_5.html#sect0

Obviously it was an AMD card or why would he go to the video driver section of the AMD site?

But true, I’m not familiar with the name of that manufacturer so it didn’t register that he meant HD 4350.

One of the primary purposes of the TP is to syphon 15% of in game currency away. The carrot is it’s a safe trading environment.

Now if ANet created a two player trade screen that acts as a third party, holding both item and money until both players click OK AND still take 15% away, then I’m all for it.

Problem is most who want private trade want to avoid the sink as well as any transaction record that ANet may keep. They want strictly “off book” trades. And that I can’t support.

sigh

When will this teen “fashion” trend end? I thought post-Twilight movies but it hasn’t passed yet.

That CPU doesn’t have a GPU in it so I assume that you have an AMD video card so Desktop Graphics.

I have a thief named Max Parker. She’s female. Named after these two. Don’t get so hung up on names, Guy could be a nickname.

Updated TP UI with better screen to screen flow.

A flush TP cache button somewhere in the options so StinVec doesn’t have to keep posting instructions on how to do it. How about flushing it upon exit?

To be blunt, how about you looking every day? Or check here every day.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/March-Sale-item-record/first

They made it clear that the item changes every day and that they aren’t telling what’s coming up when if ever. It’s on us. It’s on you to be aware.

Pie Flavor.1647:

Obtena.7952:

Neural.1824:

Obtena.7952:

DiamondMeteor.8345:

Haha.. wow. This really is impressive. I wonder if this kitten will get media attention at one point, monetizing in video games is going borderline criminal.

It’s criminal? Care to explain? It’s paying for access to entertainment. Is it criminal when you go see a movie or a concert?

He said BORDERLINE. This is different from actually being Criminal.

It’s not borderline either … is it borderline criminal to pay to see a movie or concert? Qualifying a ridiculous statement like that doesn’t make it a less ridiculous statement.

paying for a movie would be equivalent to paying the $30 to buy a GW2 accounts.

Then paying extra just to have audio on the movie, paying extra to be able to swap seats in the middle of the movie without anyone able to complain about it, paying extra to have a higher resolution of the movie that other people cannot enjoy would be the equivalent to paying for VIP in this case.

So you are comparing it to airlines. I understand your point now.

The first uses a 1st gen Phenom quad, which wasn’t all that great. It’s coupled with a HD 6450 which you might optimistically call a gaming card, if you were out of your mind. Also being an HP it has a tiny barely powerful enough power supply which limits any okay video card upgrade.

2nd system simply doesn’t have enough info to go on.

First rule of TP club is never ever reveal your profitable niche, unless it’s been destroyed already.

Oh goodie, just what the TP needs … derivatives. Do you want buying on margin or short selling next?

I believe the cost is this high because the idea that you should choose wisely when you name your character in the first place.

Otokomae.9356:

You guys are leaving out Nexon, who have been in charge of the Gem Shop since late 2012: http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

When Nexon were given a share of the control over ArenaNet from NCSoft, the first thing they did was create the “Monetization Manager” position, and installed the person who had been in charge of the Cash Shop in Maplestory. She is now running the Gem Shop, and Nexon (makers or Maplestory) do share in the proceeds.

The position was filled several months before Nexon bought outstanding shares of the stock. NCSOFT saw none of that money. All of this was before the game went live and after ANet announced they were going with a cash shop as their business model.

But no, lets not bother to spend 5 minutes to research the accuracy of that article, let’s just post it again.

You all know where we are again.

Venomge.7142:

Please add Roxx’s quiver again, at the end of the month like “best skin items” or “best selling items” category or something and list the items that were on sale during this month.

So you missed it again?

Eventually it all goes to NCSOFT. But even NCSOFT lists income and profit for each of their wholly owned subsidiaries, which ArenaNet is one of. Just in the end, all income on paper is NCSOFT’s, but it does stop and get counted along the way by ArenaNet, NCEurope and NC Interactive.

No.

Well maybe if you are staring out over the snowscape of Wayfarer Foothills. But in boss events and WvW zergs. At 60fps at max settings at 3200×1800?

No.

Someone on the thread on Kotaku, where I first saw the BINGO cards (well IO9, it was crossposted) on this pointed out this FFXIV armor.

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-xlarge/wqwhhriwlxtaw6og9cq9.jpg

Pretty sure it’s “fair” between the sexes.

It count resets on my screen immediately.

Malganis.7468:

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2014/03/12/lets-play-a-game-of-female-armor-bingo-pic/

Deja vu.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lack-of-skimpy-male-clothing/3751754

Not five minutes, try two hours.

Still the only thing it affects are players who don’t actually research demand numbers when choosing items to trade in.

It barely budged the buy and sell prices that have been dropping all month. Sounds like someone who bought so back when they were 55-60g each thinking the price would only go up. Now they are resorting to tactics to get the skin on the top demand list at the TP to advertise it.

Dead whoop.

Katastrofi.5816:

Jane just paid to win.

Only if you define winning as saving time.

Same thing happens when you logout in the Royal Terrace.

But BLTC ARE GEM STORE SAMPLERS!!! They aren’t in game treasure chests. It’s a crate that fell off one of Evon’s transport wagons. They cost at most 125 GEMS!! The gem exchange cost is immaterial. Do you get 125 gems worth of gem store items out of it on average? That’s the question. Not just items you would buy and use but total gem worth of those items?

That fact that they’ve felt forced to tossed tickets and scraps in the chests indicate that to the bulk of players, we don’t care about boosters or bank/merchant/mf in a can. They are trying to sell us a grab bag of items we mostly don’t give a kitten about. Sure one bag has keys to a new car but that’s so rare it’s pointless to expect to get one much less multiples in the few bags we do get.

Ashen.2907:

Behellagh.1468:

The problem with persistent content is while it allows new players to play events that long time players have already experience months or years ago, to those long time players that content in stale.

How is fighting largely the same foes, surrounded by the same scenery, using the same classes, using the same skills, using the same game play as you’ve been doing for months or years less stale to long time players than having exactly those options plus new zones, classes, skills, game play options as well ?

Nice taking out of context there.

Persistent in my mind means same old unchanging zones. Sounds like you are agreeing with me that to old players those areas would be stale to them. Even if you add a bit of new permanent content here and there in the old zones the bulk would still be same old – same old.

This is like arguing what’s better, episodic TV where the episodes are relatively independent of one another and serialized TV where the episodes must be watched in order to understand the over arching story. ANet decided on the 2nd one. You are suppose to get into the story they are telling, not distill is down to just events with newish group X for treasure Y. I know, I know, to a lot of players games are merely mechanical exercises featuring twitch and memory skills. But that’s like reading a novel and spend your time breaking down sentence structure but missing the story being told. ANet is trying to tell a story so players would log in frequently to keep playing.

Let’s say they add Cantha. An entirely new area to level up new characters. New professions, new skills, new looking armors and weapons. What would you think would happen? EVERYONE will go there leaving the existing zones, even the current often populated ones, a ghost town. We will still have dodge as our primary damage prevention mechanism. And now ANet would have to be concern about balancing not 8 but 8 + X professions. As for critters, deep down they will still be reskinned versions of the existing skeleton models and animations.

So lets say ANet has been working on all this as well as the LS. How long do you think it will take until the hardcore players become bored with it? A month, two? Then it’ll be kittening about when the next expansion comes out.

Liewec.2896:

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

thats a dangerous slippery slope you’re standing on.
“why play it when i could just buy everything with real money”

for example want Bifrost? but it’ll take you months upon months to get it!
well not if you let your credit card get it for you, it can be yours within a week or two!

£85 = 8000 gems
8000 gems converts to 496g
Bifrost currently costs 1900g
thats 4 lots for a total of £340
minimum wage is £6.31

so for the meagre price of 53 hours Bifrost could be yours!

while alot of us can afford to splash out on everything we could ever want using real money we prefer to be the ones playing the game, not our credit cards.

plus i’ve had fun making an awesome looking, awesomely powerful keyrunning set for my alts, you get some odd looks running around the tutorial zone wearing lv 80 exotics XD
and you get to see if you can break your records,
plus there is a chance for alot of gold if you get lucky

Easier now than 9 months ago when 8000 gems converted to 180g when Bifrost was 2200g. And where are you getting Bifrost for only 1800g? It’s currently 2700g.