The game doesnt use your GPU as much as it should. The devs are the only one who can change this (hopefully they will).
The game also isnt taking full advantage of your CPU, because its poorly optimized for certain things (like handling lots of players in an area).
It needs to be fixed/improved. A new CPU will help, but it still not optimal. Buddy of mine runs on a i7 system with SLI, and still only get 35 fps in WvW. 35 is surely playable, but a system like that should get 60+.
Games arent perfect when they are released. This is acceptable by most. What wont be acceptable is if the devs arent looking to vastly improve the games performance, and soon.
The only thing that WvW feels like it lacks, for me (ie: my opinion), is a sense of personalized advancement and reward. Badges are kind of a joke right now, and Id much rather spend them on siege items to help my realm, than for my own person armor/weapon skins.
Id really like to feel like im working towards progressing my character as I play. I dont feel WvW is some quick 30 minute Doom Death Match game, that doesnt need any sort of character progression or rewards. It could be more like what was done in Dark Age of Camelot. These dont have to be game breaking things either, and they can be kept soly on the WvW battlefield (ie: not usable in sPvP or PvE).
First off, the system needs some sort of “WvW rank system”, so that you can earn points of some sort to spend on “advancements” or rewards.
Some examples of types of WvW rewards:
- Custom “Finish them” banners. Similar to banners in Diablo 3. As you play, you can unlock graphical elements to customize your own personal banner. everything from color, to pattern, to emblems on the banner. Some of these customizations should be unlockable via achievements, others via gaining ranks in WvW.
- Purchasable stat boons. These would only take effect in WvW, and you would buy them with ranks you earned in WvW. For instance, there might be a WvW Power boon you could buy, that had 5 ranks.
Rank 1: +10 Power while in WvW, and would cost a minimal amount of WvW Rank points.
Where as Rank 5 might give +100 power while in WvW, but would cost a LOT of rank points to get to rank 5.
- Add an F5 (and maybe even an F6) ability slot. Specific to WvW only. This slot(s) should only be used with WvW specific abilities that you can unlock via the rank system. These abilities would only work in WvW, no where else, and they would be highly specific to WvW gameplay. Both active and passive abilities that would be universal to ALL classes, to help them perform WvW tasks better. Things such as:
—- Heavy Lifter: Carry an additional 5 supply
—- Siege Mechanic: Move 1 siege weapon to a new location. 500 feet range, 15 minute cooldown
—- Caravan Master: Double the speed of any supply caravan that is within 50 feet of you.
—- Stubborn: Your downed timer takes twice as long to count down, giving you more time to rally
—- Just wont die: You cant be “finished”, enemies must deal damage to defeat you while downed. You no longer can use your #4 ability while downed however.
—- Combat Medic: Instantly rally or rez a group member (15 minute cooldown)
—- Siege Tactician: Do an additional 25% damage with siege weapons vs siege and buildings
—- Siege Warfare: Do an additonal 25% damage with siege weapons vs players
—- Defender: Take 20% less damage while inside of a keep
—- Assaulter: Do 20% more damage to players inside of a keep
—- Roamer: Extends any movement boons duration by an additional 25%
These are just some examples of WvW specific abilities. Clearly, i lack the developers experience to know the balanced numbers and mechanics, so dont get all enraged
yelling “OMG 25% are you out of your mind?!?!?” Its just an example.
And there you have it, my ideas of incentives, advancements, and character progression that could be done in WvW. The devs dont have to implement these specific examples, or even this system. I just feel they need to add something, becasue right now, its a pretty plain system that has no real element of progression.
(edited by Gadzooks.4687)
Played Daoc for 3 years. I can see where you are coming from with these, but I dont exactly agree with them 100%.
Lack of Community building – Daoc suffered from this early on too. After the game was out for a bit, and most people had hit max level, guilds began to organize a lot more, alliances between guilds formed, etc etc. I think GW2 just needs some time, or rather, players in the game need time, for this aspect to evolve.
Too Hard to Kill People – I think this is a mixed bag. Ive sat there for 15 minutes spamming my aoe and ranged attacks at keep defenders (or attackers) with very few of them ever dying. Ive fired siege weapons and people, seeing large numbers pop up, and then “Evade, evade, evade” as they avoid death (some of them). Ive felt the frustration of feeling like no matter how much my group attacks, no one is really thinning the enemy numbers. But this is just siege defense/offense. Out in the open world, when people clash head to head, deaths are quick. Very quick. Even 1 v 1 fights can be over in under 10 seconds. So perhaps tweaks do need to be made, primarily when it comes to siege defense/offense. I dont think there is an issue though when you dont have keep walls to hide behind.
No reason to WvW – I agree with you a bit more on this than your other issues you have. One thing Daoc had was realm rank, and rewards you could purchase that granted you permanent character bonuses. Things like bonuses to stats, new skills and abilities, etc etc. The gave people something to strive for, and further character development. GW2 seems to lack ANYTHING like this.
It seems that the only real reason to do WvW, is just for the fun of doing WvW. You get badges… very… very… slowly, and often not at all. So using wvw as a way to grind out gear, is probably the least effective method in the game.
I do think Anet needs to add some sort of character progression/reward system for WvW. Perhaps unlockable new abilities that can only be used in WvW? Or even character bonuses that only apply in WvW. Like being able to buy ranks of Power, Precision, etc with special WvW xp you earn. Very similar to Daoc’s system. Id love to have an F5 and F6 ability for WvW only abilities you could earn as well. Something that wouldnt take away from your current build, but add to it while doing WvW.
There are SOOO many ways they could add incentive and character progression to WvW, its just a matter of if they will or not. People need incentive. Even games like BF3 allow you to earn new things as you play. Even fluff works. Customized “Finish them” banners, for example.
I wouldnt call it buggy occlussion culling. Its working how its supposed to work.
I would just say its poorly optimized at best. If its being used for player models, thats probably a downside, because graphics cards are great at handling the rendering of lots of polygons these days. No real point in using occulusion for character models. Buildings and stuff on other side of big rocks or hills, makes total sense. It might even be better to just auto lower the quality of player models in big groups. Thats how other games have managed to deal with performance issues in the past.
Let the GPU handle more, so that workload can be lesser on the CPU. Its probably something that involves a lot of work however, here is hoping Anet is at least trying, and not just hoping “eventually everyone will have i7s or better and the problem wont be there anymore”.
end note: An option to reduce particle effects could help too. Not just with hardware performance, but with gaming performance as well. 10 people attacking the same target = one big glowing ball of goo. Cant see anything going on really.
(edited by Gadzooks.4687)
occlusion culling, from the little I understand, is mostly to do with 3d objects like buldings, trees, etc, and not rendering the stuff behind them that you cant see.
Im not sure why in WvW battles, this would suddenly cause a huge performance issue, being that many battles take places in large open areas, without much that actually has to be “occluded”.
Unless, the 3d player models take advantage of it as well. Meaning Player A is standing in front of player B, and Umbra determines that large portions of of player B do not need to be rendered. More players = heavier impact on this. In fact, it almost seems like removing this functionality from player models all together may cause a performance increase for many people, or at least remove the workload from the CPU and put it back on the GPU where it should be.
So some more intersting info
Since i noticed my GPU at 0% load in WvW (despite only getting 15 fps), i decided to try something.
I underclocked my card. Lowered it from 775 mhz, down to 500 mhz.
No change in performance.
One might think id get an even lower framerate, but nope, stayed around 15 fps.
This just goes to confirm that my GPU is not being utilized by the game much, if at all, during WvW battles.
Why is this?
A bottleneck would slow down how well my system performed, not cause a total roadblock, keeping ANY data from being sent to the card. (IE: 0% usage)
(edited by Gadzooks.4687)
There is something very odd with this concept:
Anywhere in the PvE world – Decent Framerate, GPU usage shows anywhere from 30% to 80%
Enter a WvWvW zone – Slight lower framerate GPU usage shows less than PvE
Enter a WvWvW battle – Horrid framerate, GPU usage shows 0% usage
So what… at a certain point, the number of players just makes the GPU turn off? Code that says “Keep sending data to the GPU to render until you reach so many players, then, just stop all together” ??? it just makes no sense.
If you turn a 2liter bottle of soda on its side slowly, the soda slowly starts to pour out. The more you tilt it, the more soda comes out, until it reaches a point where only so much soda can come out at once. Even if you turn the soda completely upside down, it doesnt come out any faster, but still maintains the same rate it did at its max on its side (not counting inconsistencies from the air that it trying to enter while the soda leaves). The soda bottlenecks, at the opening of the bottle. Bottleneck doesnt mean stopping all together. Soda still comes out as fast as the opening allows it too, just not fast enough to empty the 2liter all at once.
Anyway… the GPU should STILL be processing data as fast as its capable of, not just all out stopping once its trying to be sent more data than can get to it at one time. Even if there is a bottleneck from the CPU to the GPU, or where ever, the GPU should STILL be getting data to process at LEAST as fast as it was in PvE. The GPU should STILL show more than 0% usage based on the data it should still be getting.
This doesnt sound like a bottle neck. This sounds like a clog.
(edited by Gadzooks.4687)
Dodge… everyone talks about dodging. I dont think people complaining about thief being hard, are noobs who dont dodge the big telegraphed attacks. Oh look, the ettin is raising his giant club and its making a sparkle effect, ill just stand here. I dont think this is happening. Most people, thief or not, see that and move out of the way.
Normal damage is what hurts me on my thief (when im not kiting with ranged). Lotus a group of 3 or 4 enemies, after 3 lotus attacks, im at 30% health. YES they still hit me despite the flipping animation. Sure, maybe a couple attacks get evaded by it, but im still always low health. By the time they are dead, im almost dead as well. Not an issue if there are no other enemies, but if I have to fight another set of enemies right after, im toast. (unless I stealth an run – which is always super fun, having to run away… not)
Thief has abilities to help them avoid damage. However, do to most having a 30+ second cooldown, these are NOT abilities you can use to plow through group after group of enemies. Especially if you can kill a group in 10 seconds, your needed abilities will still be on cooldown, meaning if you engage the next set of enemies, you wont have your damage mitigation.
If you just explore and pick your fights from the random spawned stuff scattered around the world, you wont have much troubles as a thief. Most spawns rarely have more than 2-3 enemies, and are often far enough from the next group that you wont have to run after the battle leaves you at less than half life. Howevever, as the game zones get higher in level, more and more of the things to do in zones, are events focusing on a LOT of big groups of enemies. Often in tight spaces. If there arent other players taking aggro and hits away from you, chances are even with your blinds and cripples and stealth, you will find yourself quickly overwhelmed and swarmed with no place to hide or run. (stealth does no good if you cant get far enough out of aggro range by the time it wears off)
I dont know why so many people feel the need to come and defend their ego and pride with comments like “I play just fine, its not broken, you just need to L2P”. The concept here isnt that thief is impossible to play. The concept is that whatever a player can accomplish on a thief, another player can accomplish a lot easier on any of the other classes. when it comes to PVE.
Many people dont realize that shortly after the game went live, Trolls End was revamped, and made harder. The new changes make it nearly impossible to do. I know many people did it fine in beta, but it has changed. I challenge anyone to make a norn, especially a large one, and then do trolls end and post a youtube of you going through and actually completing it.
Fixing one problem by creating another
This is not the way to go about things Anet.
There was a problem. True. Most people can acknowledge that. Even those taking advantage of it, not wanting to easily give it up, realize it wasnt meant to be that way.
However, the implemented solution to the problem, created a new problem.
That problem isnt “omg I cant farm tokens in 20 minutes”
That problem isnt “omg the game isnt a cake walk anymore”
The problem is simple. The changes have made things not fun. They have made things frustrating. And NOT because you cant get easy rewards. Here is a little formula:
Fun > Reward > Low Frustration level
What does this mean? Simple:
A game should have elements that are Fun. First and foremost.
If an element ISNT exactly fun, it needs to feel rewarding, to make up for it.
If an element isnt fun OR rewarding, it needs to not be frustrating (because it doesnt offer fun or rewards).
Certain dungeons, before the fix, like CoF, werent exactly fun. Speed runs, through the use of unintended ways of beating the challenges, isnt exactly fun gameplay. It WAS however, rewarding to those doing it (which is why they did it). Not rewarding in that “I just beat a hard challenge” feeling. Rewarding in the “I got tokens and gold” fashion, which for many, was enough to make up for the fact that the Fun level was low.
This fix gets rid of the unintended ways of beating the challenges. This removes the “reward” from the picture because now people cant speed farm it. This means “Fun” needs to step in and take its place.
Does “fun” replace it? No. Why not? Simple. Untested, unbalanced game encounters and mechanics. You CAN beat the dungeon. Yes. But many people cant. Bad or good, doesnt matter, Not being able to beat a dungeon, isnt fun. Its frustrating. Dieing over and over (even if that gets you past something), isnt fun. Its frustrating. Encounters and events NEED to be tested and balanced so that they are FUN while still being challenging enough to prevent speed running via “unintended” gameplay. Eventually players will say “this isnt worth doing. its not fun, or rewarding, so im just not gonna play it.” I really dont think this is what anet wants its players thinking.
Right now, aside for those uber geared, or small 1% of elite uber skilled gamers, CoF isnt something they can play through, even slowly, and complete in a FUN and REWARDING fashion. In fact, most people I talk with, walk away extremely frustrated. Not because they cant farm it 5 times an hour, but simply because getting through it even ONCE is not worth it. The effort and frustration put in, doesnt equal the fun and reward it puts out. Gaming really does come down to that simple formula. THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED HAD THE CHANGES BEEN PUT ON A TEST REALM FIRST.
One last thing. Punishing good players, players who are skilled enough, and geared enough TO do dungeons quickly and more importantly, without “expoiting”, is the wrong way to go about things. Having diminishing returns on dungeon rewards based on how quickly you do them is just WRONG. Its like saying, “I know you are geared and skilled enough to get through this in 15 minutes, but you need to purposely slow down and take at least 30 to get through this, even if you dont need to”
Thats punishing good players. Even Blizzard realized this, as much as I hate to admit it. Its why their system limited the number of runs you could do in a specific time period. That let skilled, geared players rush through a dungeon as fast as they wanted, getting 100% of the rewards, but still managed to put a kind of soft cap on how often they could reap the rewards.
If you try playing a pure melee thief, you will struggle more than if you learn to use a lot of ranged attacks, especially with the shortbow.
This may not fit into many peoples “idea” of what the thief should be, but its how the game works. If you dont take advantage of it, its a much bigger struggle.
Imo, you can stay alive really easy as a thief, however, the elements that provide this are extremely boring. Things like:
Dagger/pistol: Just keep Blackpowder up, and auto attack things to death. You can solo Vets higher level than you often never taking ANY damage.
Sword/Pistol: Spam pistol Whip with auto attacks. Its cone aoe damage, it stuns frequently, often totally interrupting the targets attack, which helps you take very little damage.
Both those are things many thieves do to get through PvE content. Its boring imo.
The other thing many people dont specify. Playing a thief solo vs playing a thief with even ONE extra person, is an entirely different gameplay experience. With 1 additional person, you will feel like a amazing class. Not just dishing out damage, but providing all sorts of utility to your partner. You will also feel safer using gameplay and techniques that you otherwise would have avoided solo, for fear of dying too quickly (thanks to mobs not always focusing on you when you have a partner.)
And just for the record. I have 55 tokens from CoF. I had these long before the “fix”. I just didnt find the runs to be fun, even if there were ways to speed run it. So this isnt me complaining about something being taken away. This is me simply being astonished and disappointed that the professionals at anet would allow something like this to happen in the way that it did. Very amateur of them.
This is not the way to go about things Anet.
There was a problem. True. Most people can acknowledge that. Even those taking advantage of it, not wanting to easily give it up, realize it wasnt meant to be that way.
However, the implemented solution to the problem, created a new problem.
That problem isnt “omg I cant farm tokens in 20 minutes”
That problem isnt “omg the game isnt a cake walk anymore”
The problem is simple. The changes have made things not fun. They have made things frustrating. And NOT because you cant get easy rewards. Here is a little formula:
Fun > Reward > Low Frustration level
What does this mean? Simple:
A game should have elements that are Fun. First and foremost.
If an element ISNT exactly fun, it needs to feel rewarding, to make up for it.
If an element isnt fun OR rewarding, it needs to not be frustrating (because it doesnt offer fun or rewards).
Certain dungeons, before the fix, like CoF, werent exactly fun. Speed runs, through the use of unintended ways of beating the challenges, isnt exactly fun gameplay. It WAS however, rewarding to those doing it (which is why they did it). Not rewarding in that “I just beat a hard challenge” feeling. Rewarding in the “I got tokens and gold” fashion, which for many, was enough to make up for the fact that the Fun level was low.
This fix gets rid of the unintended ways of beating the challenges. This removes the “reward” from the picture because now people cant speed farm it. This means “Fun” needs to step in and take its place.
Does “fun” replace it? No. Why not? Simple. Untested, unbalanced game encounters and mechanics. You CAN beat the dungeon. Yes. But many people cant. Bad or good, doesnt matter, Not being able to beat a dungeon, isnt fun. Its frustrating. Dieing over and over (even if that gets you past something), isnt fun. Its frustrating. Encounters and events NEED to be tested and balanced so that they are FUN while still being challenging enough to prevent speed running via “unintended” gameplay. Eventually players will say “this isnt worth doing. its not fun, or rewarding, so im just not gonna play it.” I really dont think this is what anet wants its players thinking.
Right now, aside for those uber geared, or small 1% of elite uber skilled gamers, CoF isnt something they can play through, even slowly, and complete in a FUN and REWARDING fashion. In fact, most people I talk with, walk away extremely frustrated. Not because they cant farm it 5 times an hour, but simply because getting through it even ONCE is not worth it. The effort and frustration put in, doesnt equal the fun and reward it puts out. Gaming really does come down to that simple formula. THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED HAD THE CHANGES BEEN PUT ON A TEST REALM FIRST.
One last thing. Punishing good players, players who are skilled enough, and geared enough TO do dungeons quickly and more importantly, without “expoiting”, is the wrong way to go about things. Having diminishing returns on dungeon rewards based on how quickly you do them is just WRONG. Its like saying, “I know you are geared and skilled enough to get through this in 15 minutes, but you need to purposely slow down and take at least 30 to get through this, even if you dont need to”
Thats punishing good players. Even Blizzard realized this, as much as I hate to admit it. Its why their system limited the number of runs you could do in a specific time period. That let skilled, geared players rush through a dungeon as fast as they wanted, getting 100% of the rewards, but still managed to put a kind of soft cap on how often they could reap the rewards.
Right, my post was sarcastic at your troll response. Your second reply actually offers some kind of minor advice, which is better.
People do struggle. Just because you didnt, doesnt change that. My post was here to offer some of my personal experiences that I found made things better while playing a thief. Others have done the same (ie: the suggestions about caltrops, and blackpowder for more than one mob, etc etc).
However, your opinion that traits cant help someone who is struggling, I believe to be a situation of circumstance, depending on the player. I struggled, and the traits made that struggle a lot less for me.
For many, skills such as steal arent helpful to their struggle, but after they trait it (for damage, and init gain for example) suddenly they find it much more worthy of using and actually adds to their ability to perform as a thief.
Struggling doesnt always mean someone is a bad player. To treat it as such is just ignorance. To post it as such is just trolling.
(edited by Gadzooks.4687)
How about as an additional bonus effect to its current use, actually making it steal money in PvE and marks in pvp.
its STEALING… not some wacky krull cloning ability.
They will fix it by adding a trait to the last tier of a tree that no one uses called:
“Resourceful”
Abilities that use initiative regain 2 back if they miss the target.
Okay I’ve had a good look at everything possible as well as these forums. There was a mention of a Large Address Patcher. Which was mentioned earlier in this forum. This may actually fix the majority of peoples fps problems.
However I am unable to find the link. So if anyone has any information on it would be greatly appreciated.
They already supposedly fixed the large address issue in an official patch according to this:
So ive seen the vast amount of armor/weapon dungeon vendors in LA. Very nice looking gear, a lot of selection too.
My question is simple. If I were to grind out the tokens to purchase a chest piece from one of the dungeon vendors, and then I then grind out tokens for another chest piece, from a different dungeon vendor, do I have to keep/manage both chest pieces in my inventory/bank if I want to keep both “skins/styles”? Or does the game have a way to select between the various end game skins you have purchased on the fly? (ie: Like costumes styles in DCUO.)
For everyone worried about the whole turning up your GPU voltage, perhaps a safer solution, that should give a similar effect: Underclock your GPU, leave the voltage where its at. While underclocking it will lower framerate, it will also help make things run more stable and consistent. If your card wasnt getting enough “power” at the faster clock speeds, causing variations in framerate, it shouldnt have that problem at a slower clock rate. If the concept of upping your voltage really is your card trying to do more without enough juice, then simply turning down how much your card is doing should help with that, and not require you to make your card run hotter. Just a thought.
Thank you Drake, for that helpful, kind hearted post. It really added to the helpful, suggestive tip I gave in my own post.
I was one of those thief players that just couldnt quite seem to make thief work. I mean, I was leveling, but I was dying a TON and just felt like battles against even 2 mobs my own level, were a real challenge.
To start with, I play a melee thief. So if you are a P/P or Shortbow thief, this wont really apply. Ive read about lots of builds and guides, but at lower levels, you dont get a lot of trait points, and are limited by how far into the trait lines you can go. My suggestion in fact, doesnt do much to help those thieves under level 40, because of this limitation.
However, if you do reach 40, I discovered 2 traits made ALL the difference in my thief and making him feel playable and actually capable of doing most PvE content without a huge struggle. These arent some revolutionary concept, many end builds include them. I was still amazed at how two little minor tweaks to the system, caused thief to feel like a solid, complete class finally. Those 2 traits:
1. Preparedness (15 point trickery) – This trait was the one that had the biggest impact. Having these 3 extra init points suddenly opened up a whole new world of combos I could use before running out of init. It almost makes me feel like thieves should start with these 3 extra points, because imo they dont feel like a complete class with what they do have before this trait.
2. Opportunist (15 point Critical Strikes) – I crit a ton on my thief. Our base init regen is pretty darn slow. With how fast we attack, and how often we should be critting, this can seriously help get our init back up faster without the need to run and kite while waiting for it to regen.
So for me, and maybe for others, playing well on my thief came down to simply not having enough base init, and not being able to regain it at a decent speed. (again, this is low level we are talking about)
Perhaps if you are struggling as a thief, and have hit level 40, you might give these traits a try, especially Preparedness. I know its hard to pass up a lot of the traits from the Deadly arts and crit strikes tree (damage always seems good), but for me, being able to chain together more unique ability combos really rounded out my thief and made him feel like a solid class. My death rate went way down, and Im actually having a ton of fun on him now.
I think it’s because the Vistas are just what you said, cutscenes. They don’t require much in the way of power from the GPU to play.
Someone on reddit posted an interesting “workaround” for low FPS, maybe it will work for some of you;
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/zvv45/if_youre_struggling_with_fpsperformance_issues/
Make a shortcut to GW2.exe on your desktop if there isn’t already one. In the “Target” field in the “Shortcut” tab, add “-dx9single -nomusic -nosound” (without the quotation marks of course) after the quotations of GW2.exe. ;
If cut scenes removed all mobs and players from the scene, id agree with you on this. But they dont. The battle between the 50 players was going on VISIBLE in the cut scene. Meaning the cut scene was still having to render the animation and effects and textures and whoosiewhatsits for the battle still.
The only thing the cut scene removed, was the games need to process my characters interaction with everything else going on around him. This seems more like a client/server/netcode issue almost in a way. But then, Im not the expert on the matter, Im just supplying some info ive gathered so the real experts can fix it.
Just an interesting tidbit i noticed in wvwvw (where i mostly have issues with framerate).
I was standing within visual range of a 25vs 25 battle, getting about 12 fps. Note: I wasnt close enough to actually be taking part in the battle.
I was actually trying to sneak around and get a Vista in the center Fortress while the enemy was occupied.
Even inside the keep, my framerate continued to be low, even though I couldnt see the actual battle outside. Climbing on top of the keep, standing at the Vista mark, I could see the battle below, my framerate was STILL low.
Clicked the Vista marker, the screen broken into the typical movie like cut scene. Low and behold, my framerate sky rocketed. I was getting a solid 60 FPS (capped by vsync). AND, the cut scene showed the battle going on as well, and yet, it was running smooth as silk.
As soon as the cut scene was over, I had 1-2 seconds of smooth framerate, and then it dipped back down to around 12-15 fps.
I have no real understanding why the above happened like it did, but I figured its just more info/data for the devs to trouble shoot this.