Guild Wars 2

Ooooh, Smeagol lied.

One last time before Thanksgiving. Really.

I’m sure I did, actually.

There’s also a rather interesting discussion about setting the default save location for screenies:

http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/mac/Screenshots/first#post324346

Did I mention we do dungeon runs?

I still think that’s worth considering.

That, and the ability to cast AoE spells and skills on a target rather than a patch of ground.

I think the idea that different skills are tied to different weapons is the tops. What I’d love just as much would be to have swappable presets for the utility skills, as well. In other words, something similar to the numbered action bars in other games. That way, we could have different combinations of skills ready for different situations, rather than having to change individual skills.

Is that doable?

Thanks, but I’m actually here promoting the guild I started myself on Eredon Terrace. But I got a bump from Beacham and thought I’d return the love! Good luck with your recruiting drive.

Thanks for the love!

I love the name, so here’s a bump!

Wow, this forum moves faster than the TGV.

Ok, one last time. Maybe.

And another one…

Looks like it’s time for a /bump.

Are you tired of going it alone, asking complete strangers those questions you urgently need answered and hearing only crickets, or standing in front of champion monsters wishing someone were available to tackle them with you?

We all know that a guild can help with these problems. But we also know that joining a guild can make you feel like the new guy in a frat house, or—possibly worse—like you’ve moved back in with your parents.

If you worry that a guild might make demands on what you do, when, how often, at what time, and with whom, The White Lodge [TWL] might just be right for you. We’re a relatively new and very beginner-friendly guild on Eredon Terrace, with knowledgeable members who aren’t stingy with those answers and who won’t hesitate to zip halfway across Tyria to assist a fellow guildie when they need to take down a giant.

Play when you want, how you want—in a word, be yourself. All we ask is that you be nice, tolerant, and that you represent! Did I mention there’s no level requirement? We don’t do an FBI-strength background check of your gaming inclinations, nor do we put you into some sort of “probation period” limbo for weeks after you join. Advancement is smooth and frequent for active members. And although we welcome players of all levels, we do of course have many higher level guildies who are into WvW and dungeons, as well. Come, join, and play—it’s that simple.

We have a guild stash, guild emblem, and a guild armorer & weapons contract for the fashion conscious. Most improvement categories are maxed out, which means that a huge range of boosts and buffs and banners are available to our members.

UPDATE: Thanks to the kind efforts made by one of our enterprising members, we now have a Ventrilo server for those interested in using VoIP. However, we want to point out that use of this technology is entirely optional! Unless all members of a given party wish to participate in voice chat, the text-based party chat will remain the default mode of communication, in order to ensure that no one ever feels “left out.” But it’s good to have options, right?

ANOTHER UPDATE: The White Lodge now has a guild web site, as well. It’s still in development, but shaping up nicely. You can access it by clicking here.

So, give a holler to any of our members you encounter, or specifically contact me (Bistouri.6038) or any of our friendly officers and members. Here’s a sample:

Rain.9817
Will.9586
tismir.7405
Chasiuiro.2356
Pharm.7968

You can also send an in-game mail to “All Cats Are Grey” to coordinate an invite.

Join us—and help make the White Lodge the guild you’ll love to be in!

There’s a thread on this already, with an ANET reply to boot:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Two-low-priority-Quality-of-life-issues/first#post508463

Indeed, I did not specify whether I wanted to know which is better in PvE or PvP respectively. Perhaps I should have, but regardless, all of your responses were informative and helpful; thanks to all who took the time to reply.

I went with the hounds this time around, as I am currently doing mostly PvE, and I have no regrets. Along with my phantasms and clones, I can have a small army on the ground within seconds. Very nice for tackling those pesky veterans.

It’s 30 SP for each of these, so I don’t want to make a choice I might regret. Any thoughts? Mass Invisibility is a no-brainer in terms of its potential utility, but how does Balthazars Hounds compare?

Thanks in advance for any input!

Nope. Happens to me too, though not every time. But when it does, it’s super-annoying.

For the benefit of any ANET person or other tech-savvy individual who reads this and wants to help, it’s always good to include your system specs. I simply put them in my sig, so I don’t have to type them each time I post. :-)

Reconnected my authenticator, and seems fixed to me. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Insidious.6301:

1.) When you first log into the game and spawn, it takes a few seconds for fps to stabilize. Pretty sure this is due to your processor (speedstep) and graphics card ramping up.

2.) While already in game, just changing scenes or portaling into a new waypoint. You’ve got a whole new set of textures that have to be dumped, processed, and loaded, so that always causes a bit of stutter for a couple of seconds.

This matches my experience exactly, and the same behavior occurs on loading/entering new environments in other games, as well (such as Deus Ex : Human Revolution). So, give it a few moments, and things will likely smooth out.

When we originally tinkered with this, I noticed choppiness as well (see my earlier post above). I did see it a little bit after ANet activated the setting, but it seems to have smoothed out as I kept playing, and fps are consistently in the high 30s to mid 40s (at 1900×1080 with all settings except shadows on highest value). The only time I still see choppy frame rates is while viewing vistas, oddly enough.

Definitely something to do with the authenticator. I temporarily disconnected mine and so far, no more lost connections.

I hope they’ll fix this soon, however. I like the extra peace of mind that comes with authentication, especially with all the bots I see that have meaningful names probably chosen by whomever owned these characters originally…

BradHallisey.1078:

Just a heads up that the MTD3D flag is on by default now. Mid to higher end machines should see a decent performance boost from it, lower end machines probably won’t see much of a change at all.

Is that what it is? I certainly noticed that the game looks better after the patch. Nice!

Amen to that! The lack of cursor focus in these cases is driving me nuts.

Can’t you tell, green plum… these two are VERY excited! ;-)

CTRL-SHIFT-H will hide the GUI.

Yeah, I’ve seen this too, in the same kind of locations. Not exactly a game breaker but it’s not very pretty.

Of course a native client is always preferable. Now, the debate as to whether using/buying a cider version furthers or hurts future development of native Mac titles is a whole other topic, and one that borders on a holy war or at least a clash of opposing philosophies. But to categorically reject cider ports seems a bit narrow-minded to me; first of all, most of them are quite playable (as is the GW2 one, imo), and secondly, the hard truth is that they do allow us to experience games that would otherwise never have made it to the Mac (as in the case of the excellent Witcher, for example). As game sales go, we are still a small market share, and given Apple’s increasing focus on mobile devices, that is unlikely to change. Blizzard is one of the few remarkable exceptions in their broad support of the platform, and has been so since day one. But for many companies, particularly the smaller ones, it comes down to the numbers and whether putting the resources into a native version equals profits. To say we’d rather have nothing than a ‘mere’ cider version would, more often than not, leave us with the former. I for one would rather regret that, especially in this case.

Thanks for the comment, Insidious—makes me feel a lot better about my constant urge to push it to 2560×1440 even though 1900×1080 clearly offers better (by 10 at a minimum) fps! That said, I still find GW2 remarkably playable at 2560, at least in PvE, especially considering that ported titles like Deus Ex sputter along miserably at far less than medium resolutions.

Btw, do you have any thoughts on heat and fan issues? Playing at a lowered resolution yields higher fps, but my fans kick in just as quickly…

27" iMac, 2.8 GHZ Core i7, 12 GB 1067 DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB, running Mountain Lion, at 2560 × 1440 with most graphics settings maxed out, except for shadows, shaders and LOD.

I tried this, and while my FR remained the same, overall performance actually got worse—character moving jerkily through scenes etc. So I’m guessing the potential performance boost may be limited to specific systems, perhaps MBP only.

Nah. Keeps happening to me, too. I just was never particularly bothered by it.

Ok, I switched to 1920×1080, and even set the shaders to high (had them at medium before—s.a.—actually) and now I consistently see frame rates from the high thirties to high forties. Still looks smashing, but also still runs fairly hot.

27" iMac, 2.8 GHZ Core i7, 12 GB 1067 DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB, running Mountain Lion, at 2560 × 1440 with almost all graphics settings (including FSAA) maxed out, except for shadows.

Frame rates are lower than the OP’s (26-36 depending on scene complexity), but gameplay and performance are very smooth, no visual or input lag, no screen tearing, no stutters—very playable, and very pretty. However, I do notice that GW2 makes my Mac run quite hot, with fans kicking in after a relatively short while. Here’s hoping that may change if (when? please?) we get a native client.

The annoying part is that when you move the images to a different folder, subsequent screen shot file names will start at 0001 again, forcing you to rename these images when you move them to that folder, where others labeled with those numbers already exist. It’s a bit inconvenient.

I think confusing people is what mesmers are all about…

Yeah, that’s happened to me too a couple of times. Usually it stops after a brief period, but once I had to log out and back in. It’s not a frequent problem, but it’d be nice if it’s one of the things that’ll get fixed in the next Mac client update/release.