Guild Wars 2

Well one of those two patches I linked to is core parking while the other assigns threads one per module before doubling them up.

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

So i have better FPS than you….
FX 6300 4,5Ghz all maxed out 50-55%.
minimum 19 avarage 25 max 35.

Pictures or it didn’t happen.

Screenshot of game settings at the MF in Lion’s Arch please.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Behellagh.1468:

snip…
John Smith described this a while back.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/705345

So if I am reading John S’s post correctly:

• Then the Gem Exchange is a Closed system and the amount of Gold and Gems in the system is finite?
• So it is more like a bubble level, we don’t actually add more of one or the other we just tip the level slightly to one side and move the price bubble accordingly?

Yes … I think. The gold and gems that come out of the exchange is finite, only increased if exchanged for it’s opposite at the exchange. The vast majority of the gold at the exchange is now gold that has been provided by the players when they bought gems.

The exchange rate is based on the notion that the amount of gold in the exchange is equal in value to the amount of gems in the exchange, so their ratio sets the base rate. The only twist is the gold to gem rate is 1/0.85 of this base rate while the gem to gold rate is 0.85, giving you the gap between the two rates. The assumption is that 15% taken from either exchange is a gold sink. nom nom nom

So yes to your next question, the exchange can run out of gems. But as that gets closer the rate shoots up hopefully making buying gems with cash to convert into gold irresistible to more and more players which will drive the price down while at the same time make exchanging gold for gems a pipe dream for most players which also stops it from rising.

There are a couple of AMD FX patches for Windows 7. They are suppose to improve performance issues slightly.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646060
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2645594

The game only has around 3 cores worth of work to process, so all the extra cores in an FX-8350 is great for things also running but it doesn’t help the game.

AMD FX cores are inherently slower compared to Intel cores in terms of performance. The design was meant to compete only when both an FX-8xxx and Intel i7 are running 8 threads at 100%. When that’s not true, when Intel is only running one thread per core, it significantly outperforms a single FX- core (30-40%)

GW2 has some significant problems in extremely complex environments, like Lion’s Arch, and when there are other players around, the more players, the lower the performance and it drops off quickly.

I’m sure if you go into the open world, say the Wayfarer Foothills, go up on the wall of Twinsper Haven and look out over the icy plains toward where the maw event runs, your frame rate will be impressive at your max settings. It’s just during maw it will plummet when you are there. The CPU simply gets bogged down and without it feeding the video card, frame rate suffers.

1st – Module is AMD’s term for their dual integer/single FP core unit found in their Bulldozer CPU Architecture.

2nd – It was AMD’s goal to make a module performance equal to an Intel i3/i7 hyperthreaded core when both are running two threads.

3rd – When an AMD module and Intel i3/i7 hyperthreaded core are running only one thread, Intel smokes AMD.

Why? It’s simply really. Hyperthreading on an Intel i3/i7 core is simply a way to squeeze a bit more efficiency out of the underlying hardware. When you run one thread (ignoring any kind of turbo mode that ups the clock frequency) it can do 100 instructions in time X. However when running two threads, due to improved efficiency it can do 120 instructions in time X, but on average only 60 instructions per thread.

AMD decided to approach the problem by using two integer cores to accomplish the same task. That is when two threads are running it can do 60 instructions in time X per thread. So what happens when it has only one thread? It can do 60 instructions in time X per thread (actually it’s more like 75 because the two cores aren’t sharing certain common resources in the module but you get the point). EDIT: That’s what that extremetech article is showing, not the turbo but the improved performance when one thread per module doesn’t have to share common resources within the module. That’s one of the Window 7’s FX patches, assigning one threads to each module first and then start doubling them up, the same way i3/i7 cores get assigned one thread per core before being doubled up due to hyperthreading.

AMD’s module uses two slow cores in an attempt to get similar performance to an Intel’s hyperthreading when running two threads but when running a single thread it uses one slow core where Intel can devote the nearly the full performance power of it’s core to that single thread.

The Bulldozer architecture started it’s life when the i7-920 first came out. That was the performance target to beat. Problem is Intel didn’t stand still and with the -2xxx, -3xxx and now -4xxx they have stayed ahead of AMD in overall performance. The FX-8350 can keep up with an i7-2600K in some fully threaded benchmarks but as soon as you aren’t using 8 threads it falls behind. Ivy Bridge and Haswell improved over Sandy Bridge at the same clock speed so AMD is even further behind now (but only 18 months or so). Bulldozer needs a feature size reduction. It’s still built using 32nm while Intel is at 22nm (translates to faster clock at lower power).

You are running everything at max, in a city with a rebadged HD 7970 being driven by an FX-8350, pulling over 30 fps and you complain.

Some people simply can’t be happy.

Two things are slightly wrong in the OPs analysis. Both dealing with the exchange.

Gold and Gems from the exchange. The exchange was seeded at launch with a bit of gold and a gigaton of gems. The exchange doesn’t create or destroy either of them, it “exchanges” them based on a rate determined by the ratio of the two items in the exchange. At launch the ratio was around 25s per 100 gems. As players buy gems with gold the amount of gold in the exchange goes up, the amount of gems go down so now each gem is worth more. If you buy gold with gems the opposite happens.

Yes the Gem Shop is the Gem sink, that’s where gems get removed from the game but the exchange simply holds them and any gold used to buy them.

John Smith described this a while back.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/705345

Why the heck would players hoard their champ bags? Christmas? Karma I understand since guilds and what not wait until they fired up a big bonus and then open them but bags?

And that’s probably the same thought process that went through ANet’s mind.

Good to know.

15 charr

It’s rarely been a steady rise rather it’s usually a series of step. No sometimes those steps are every two weeks and sometimes it’s steady for several months.

Now because you spend 2g every time rather than find what 28 gems actually cost you simply aren’t noticing the actual rise. If you had you would see it move from 1g92s20c to 1g98s80c

In most MMOs the various zones are level segregated in both directions. Low levels don’t venture into high level zones due to insta-death and high levels don’t venture into low level areas because any critter there is worthless to them.

In GW2 low level characters still don’t venture into high level areas but high levels can play in any zone that’s their level or below and those areas still earn them rewards.

Because of truncating 28 gems for 2 gold means the exchange rate is approximately between 6.8g and 7.1g per 100 gems. That falls withing the range for the last two weeks.

If you look at the chart at GW2Spidy you see that the rate fluctuates continuously but tends to rise to a new equilibrium depending if the Gem Shop has something good or not.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

It’s not doing it with most people otherwise the boards would be exploding.

Someone needs to photoshop a kittenroach stat.

“It’s adorable and repulsive at the same time.”

“game to the correct conclusion”? Freudian slip? :p

Blude.6812:

There are a few threads about this and most agree—-they should be account bound. However, NCsoft likely controls this with an iron fist and a Anet has no say in the matter.

So quad core K10 (vs Bulldozer) based (essentially Athlon II X4 with a built in GPU) running at 2.2GHz.

Basically not a lot short of overclocking the CPU.

Could you post a screenshot of the graphic settings in game? Maybe there’s something there. Also don’t try to CrossfireX (don’t know if you can), just use the HD 7770.

Well they got rid of the “I’m not alone. The rest of my party is just culled.” T-shirt idea. That was the real money maker.

I’ll guess they had problems with their storage arrays. Enough drives going offline in a RAID cluster and it’s better to shut down, swap and rebuild the array without a constant stream of pokes from users.

If they detected something as bad as a breach they would have simply pulled the plug (you can’t hack what’s not online) so it was more likely something teetering like an array failing that they could give us a heads up about it a few hours before they shut it down.

But they still released RNG dyes.

Vick.6805:

John Smith.4610:

The gold to gem rate on the exchange is not a measure of inflation. If you consider how the exchange works and interacts with players you’ll realize that it’s a great measure of only one thing…

Greed.

I would say being cheap.

lordkrall.7241:

Behellagh.1468:

Only the first part. I never heard ANet advertise the exchange as a feature for casual players.

Nor have I ever claimed such a thing.

Oops. Misread it. Sorry.

It’s worth upgrading an HD 5850 because it’s old. But as for WvW, it’s the CPU gumming up the works, not the graphics card.

lordkrall.7241:

Behellagh.1468:

You may have considered it a major selling point, I considered it a footnote. And at no time did they ever say that it would be an “affordable” way to do so.

I have pointed out that those with the mindset to buy gold to buy a precursor or legendary that now it’s 70% cheaper than a year ago. Right now it’s around 4g per $1. And the now nerfed champ farmers are complaining they need gold to boost up their crafting skills to so they can craft their ascended weapons. Well there you go, 4g per $1, what are you waiting for.

I understand, you what to play a game for “free”. Just like TV and movies are “free” and music is “free”. Just buy some gems you cheapskates or ignore the cash shop because the days of “cheap” gems for gold is long gone and isn’t coming back.

Hm?
Was this meant for me, because what I said was more or less exactly the same as you, but with fewer words

Only the first part. I never heard ANet advertise the exchange as a feature for casual players.

sorudo.9054:

let me make this really simple, if the exchange was never made to be casual friendly then the game should never be advertised as such.
also, if the exchange was never meant to be the primary way of getting gems then they should never have added it in the first place.

so the choice is really simple, ether cap the gold->gem price to 1G=100GEM or remove the whole system.
the game is advertised as casual friendly, make it as such.
if Anet doesn’t want to lose money, don’t add an exchange system, it’s your own kitten fault.

So your solution is to remove a system that other players can use and benefit from, remove the legit way to convert cash to gold, all because you can’t use it.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to realize that a game whose monthly source of income is a cash shop isn’t going to provide a way for most players to avoid paying cash to use it. I don’t remember ArenaNet ever promoting the exchange as anything other than what’s on the tin, an official way to buy gold with cash and gems with gold. They never said it would be a good deal.

The various sites are showing us snapshots with loads of time between samples. It’s like going into a grocery store and counting the number of Froot Loops they have on the shelf two consecutive days and then use that to guess the actual amount sold. We have no idea how many items are posted and sold between those samples.

When you see an item with a high price and low number for sale consider the possibility that they reason you don’t see either the price drop or numbers increase is that when somebody posts an item for less that it’s snapped up right away so when the market stats is sampled again we still see the same X items we saw the last time it was sampled.

This is what JS means when he says “velocity of the market”. We aren’t seeing the actual volume of transactions, the rapid turnover of items between these snapshots.

Next time you are looking at the buy screen on the TP scroll the price list down and see how the prices shoot up toward the end. Now imagine what happens if there is a rush on the market and everyone it buying up supply, what happens? We start seeing those out of wack prices as the low sell price. They could have been there for months left be someone who doesn’t play anymore.

Just as bot prevention is also pure speculation. Would it be better with a message “Database Timeout” or some Apache web server error?

lordkrall.7241:

Essence Snow.3194:

Unfortunately this has a negative side effect………detouring new players. There is one thing that any mmo needs and that is a constant influx of new players. Anything that detracts from such (imo) is not a good thing.

That would however only be the case if gold to gems was a major selling point for the game.
I wouldn’t say that is the case however, it is just a side-note and most people probably don’t even know about it before they buy the game.

You may have considered it a major selling point, I considered it a footnote. And at no time did they ever say that it would be an “affordable” way to do so.

I have pointed out that those with the mindset to buy gold to buy a precursor or legendary that now it’s 70% cheaper than a year ago. Right now it’s around 4g per $1. And the now nerfed champ farmers are complaining they need gold to boost up their crafting skills to so they can craft their ascended weapons. Well there you go, 4g per $1, what are you waiting for.

I understand, you what to play a game for “free”. Just like TV and movies are “free” and music is “free”. Just buy some gems you cheapskates or ignore the cash shop because the days of “cheap” gems for gold is long gone and isn’t coming back.

Since you can’t transfer gems between players there is no way to buy gems outside of ANet’s control. The Gems at Amazon are Gem Cards put out by ANet, same as what you can find in stores.

No if everyone stopped buying the prices will remain the same as long as nobody is also buying gold with gems. The price will stabilize once the two sides of the exchange balance one another in terms of gems.

Considering the class of motherboard, an i5-3xxx should be good enough and the $100 you saved should be used for a better video card. Doesn’t need to be expensive but the GT 520 is more of a home theater card than one for gaming.

Grueger.4967:

If the servers are down for maintenance it kinda would have been nice to have been notified ahead of time. I’ve been working all week and was going to sit down today to do some serious GW2 gaming.

They did, six hours ago. In game it’s reported the message there included the word “unexpected”.

The servers are currently down for maintenance.
We will keep you updated on its progress. Thank you for your patience.
about an hour ago

We will bring the servers down for maintenance in 10 minutes.
Estimated downtime will be 2 hours. Thank you for your patience.
0550GMT
about 2 hours ago

We will bring the servers down for maintenance in 60 minutes.
Estimated downtime will be 2 hours. Thank you for your patience.
0500GMT
about 2 hours ago

We will bring the servers down for maintenance in 5 hours.
Estimated downtime will be 120 minutes. Thank you for your patience.
0100GMT
about 6 hours ago

Should be back up around 3am EST, midnight PST.

It’s not a problem if they announced the servers were going down six hours before they took them down.

It was a large red message at the top of the page when you first logged on to the forum tonight or refreshed a forum page. It’s listed in the announcements on the right hand side of the main forum page.

Honestly, big huge message in red at the top of the forum when you log on saying servers down for maintenance. The most recent four announcements on the right side of the forum’s main page talking about the servers going down and are now down.

Are you surprised that the lane ends on the highway after the three miles of “Lane ends merge right” signs and flashing arrows?

It’s not love or hate it’s a matter of splitting similar amounts of work into multiple threads. If you have that then six or eight cores is a help. Right now they’ve only divided the workload so you need around three cores at most.

In that scenario the fewer faster Intel cores will win out over the more numerous but slower AMD cores in the FX.

OP wants it under $800. Pretty sure if a sub $800 laptop had an SSD then the rest of the hardware would be substandard for game play.

Again, different setups in every review. Different graphic cards, different settings, different resolutions, etc. You can only judge relative strength within a review.

Techspot – FX-6300 beats i3-3220 by only 5.5% while the i5-3470 beats the FX-6300 by 12%. All CPUs are at stock speed. HD 7970 at 1920×1200 at “very high quality”.

PCGamesHardware – FX-6300 beats the i3-3220 by 4.7% but the i5-3470 beats the FX-6300 by 41.6%. All CPUs are at stock speed. HD 7970 at 1280×720, no AA/AF at “max details”.

As for the two Russian reviews, neither had the i3-3220 or the i5-3470, used a GTX 690 which is a dual GPU card and tested at 1920×1080.

What I draw as a conclusion from the Techspot and the German review is that FarCry 3 becomes more GPU dependent at higher resolutions and AA settings and that’s about it.

But you aren’t going to listen are you?

Sindex.9520:

I think Arena-Net would take on further positive business opportunities, if they created a user based workshop for cosmetic items. It would also save them a certain amount of time and resources. I mean the possibility would be endless, and they would be working with the community on a more personal level.

I also agree the RNG habitual use is the only thing holding back GW2 experience at times. If there was a straight buy option in the gem store I would gladly buy it. Like the ability to buy black lion tickets for decent amount of gems. Instead of trotting through the trading post hoping they have what you want. However everything else has been fine so far in the in game store, with a few exception that are brought up now and again.

Well that’s a lovely thought and all but here’s the thing. Average weapon skin with tickets is 5. 10 scrapes per ticket. 1 in 4 chance (some says it’s lower) for a scrap. That’s 200 keys. At 25 keys per 2100 gems and 80 gems per dollar/euro that would be $210 or 210 Euro or over 16 thousand gems. Think they would ever post an item for that much ever? During this key sale it would have been only $168. And that’s average RNG and we all know it’s a fickle beast.

That’s why new skins are on “sale” for one ticket each. This way it’s at least vaguely affordable at $40. And right now the most expensive single thing at the Gem Shop is the deluxe upgrade at $25/2000 gems.

Shutdown and restart.

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427-5.html

2 benchmark same game … tomshardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/piledriver-k10-cpu-overclocking,3584-12.html

… that why i do not trust….

Gee let see. First none of the CPUs between the two reviews are the same. The second link features the FX-6350, FX-4350, Athlon X4 750 (FM2 without a GPU), Phenom II X4 965 and the Athlon II 640. The first link test none of those.

Second, game settings are different between the reviews. First link Ultra Details but no AA. Second link High Details with no AA and Ultra Details with 2xAA.

Lastly first link, GTX 680 and second link HD 7970.

Apple
Orange.

Reminds me whenever the company sits down to revamp the mission statement. When the question is tossed out to the group “what does the customer want?” one of the replies is always “they want us to pay them to use our product and if not they want it for free”.

They don’t adjust with Euro to US Dollars and you expect them to set a price with a currency that fluctuates as much as Bitcoin?

If this Bitpay service is so good then why don’t you use it so you can pay via one of the ways NCSOFT/ArenaNet already supports?

Well I didn’t click through your link. And when doing so it shows the FX-8350 and the i5-3550 in a dead heat on average frame rate.

Aza’s quote from the Planetside 2 crowd says it all when it comes to the battle between Intel iX cores and AMD FX cores and game engines.

sobe.4157:

Behellagh.1468:

You’re comparing Civics to Mustangs sobe. At least XFlyingBeeX is comparing similarly priced CPUs.

That’s the thing, I compared the same price segment for Crysis 3, an FX 8350 going for $200 vs an i5 3550 going for $220, and the i5 had it’s way with the 8350 and 6400. And if quality were concerned I certainly hope neither would be the mustang xD

Not to be a stickler but you said. Bolded the part in question.

sobe.4157:

You choosing an budget AMD cpu like the 6300 will perform much poorer than an i5 even in Crysis 3, so that is your own fault for budgeting yourself so much that you have to complain about a product. FYI, I run a 3770k and don’t lag in GW2, even @ stock clocks… But since it’s MY cpu, I will push it for what I can for 24/7 daily use.

If you had said 8350 I wouldn’t have called it out.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

It’s a large community of people. In any large community there are bad people, but usually I would assume the majority are good. I’ve said it so many times I get sick of pointing out the obvious… if someone is saying something that is abusive, to YOU, report it. That person should be held accountable for bad behaviour. However, that doesn’t mean the 30 people running around doing the same thing are all bad. ANet shouldn’t have to look over every shoulder. There is a good system here to report, and anyone can take a screen sheet of what was said and send it in.

In any case, the issue is nerf of champ boxes, which was done under the radar, which DOES seem to be usual for ANet in instances where they could assume the general player base will be VERY upset about the nerf (karma nerf anyone??). I agree with another poster. I used to believe people really just had the conspiracy theory mindset, but more and more I see that ANet seems to purposefully hold back the worst game changes. I no longer trust them at all.

Considering the also dropped the ball on dye changes with Sylvari I do chalk it up to an oversight. Previous MMOs have had the same problem converting the list of all intentional changes and bug fixes into a readable patch note.

Still it’s been a bit since John Smith said the patch notes will be updated to reflect this. I know it’s in the clear now so it’s kind of late to update it now but at least someone get on it and get it done.

You’re comparing Civics to Mustangs sobe. At least XFlyingBeeX is comparing similarly priced CPUs.

Think of it this way. Those who play the TP are farming the whole game at once. All servers, all zones at the same time. They farm by proxy letting all the other players do the heavy lifting. But it’s the bulk of those same players who are all right with how much they get selling to high bidder or spending buying from low seller. The concentrating of coin to those who actively work the TP isn’t some nefarious plot or secret cabal who set prices. They are willing to take the risk, monetarily so the rest can buy and sell their items quickly. But since they have the entire game including all servers to work with, they can become quite wealthy skimming their half pennies from all transactions.

As for the exchange sorry that some feel left out. But the game runs on a cash shop. Making it easy for a large percentage of the player population to bypass it is suicide for the game, plain and simple.

… sigh …

No it’s not single thread, the game has plenty of threads. It’s just not all are run all the time. To take advantage of multiple cores an app needs to be threaded into somewhat equal parts in terms of computation. Video/file compression, easy. MMO, not as easy. Performance improves going from two to three cores but it pretty much levels out at that point unless you got other stuff running as well.

If you chose an FX-6300 over and i3-3240 just for this game. Well that’s probably close to break even. So comparing a third or fourth generation game engines designed for a game genre where FPS is everything first Vs the 2nd attempt of an engine designed for visual style first, yea, not a fair fight.