Showing Posts For Moira Shalaar.5620:

Only 10 Daily Achivements?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

The daily/monthly achievement cap had its own interesting implications. Long term this seems a bit of a drive to push players into completing the rotating temporary content as the ONLY way to gain achievement points once we have completed the original base content.

I wonder if this is an attempt of a coordinated plan to raise the value of achievement points & Laurels. Not trying to start any conspiracy theories. Just contemplating the balancing act ANET has to do when handling so many different currencies in one environment.

@DavidH – yes, I too am over 40, although not on the wrong side of 50 yet. I too have limited gaming time which I see as adversely impacted by this policy change.

I refuse to call into question the intelligence of those who make decisions at ANET. I am confident that they have their reasons for making this change. However I do think that there are variables that they either may have not considered, or else assigned them a lower value than the community does. The whole point of us posting on the forum is to persuade them that those considerations have a greater weight than ANET currently holds them. Aspersions and defamation are counter productive to that effort as both the moderators and other community members have regularly noted.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Only 10 Daily Achivements?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I must admit that I too am more than a little dismayed at the significant reduction in daily achievement options. Neither my wife nor I will ever do PvP. Reducing our options will not push us into that. I dabble in WvW but usually only end up feeding someone else’s XP.

However here is what I see as a larger problem. Laurels are already a bottleneck in obtaining ascended equipment. For players who have multiple characters there is significant difficulty equipping them sufficiently to be playable/competitive in endgame content. This problem was brought up in the CDI for both horizontal and vertical progression. By reducing the likelihood of people making their dailies and obtaining laurels, equipping alternate characters has gotten HARDER not easier, despite what was brought up in the CDIs.

IMHO having alternate characters keeps the game interesting and varied. Any MMO has a limited span of time that they can hold gamers’ attention. I don’t know if the designers at ANET have considered this, but they really should encourage those people who run multiple alts. Making playing multiple alts harder only shortens the length of time they can keep our attention before folks get bored/discouraged/angry and move on to the next hot thing. Honestly that is going to happen anyway. The question is the length of time that GW2 will continue to capture attention. Living story was a part of that effort for ANET. So this seems counter productive to try to keep our attention on the one hand, yet to subtly inhibit the very variety that is so integral to holding our attention on the other hand.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Top 5 Wishlist

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Thank you for the opportunity for us all to at least have a bit of say in what happens to those of us who are Mac players.

1. Graphics performance – The Mac client only works for many of us when running on the very lowest setting. Anything higher leads to crashes:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Game-crashes-every-5-min-am-I-the-only-one/page/2#post2925250
There are several different graphics related errors that are common. dtsbits, LockedRcts, etc.
The artistry in this game is meant to be appreciated, but we really cannot see it because we have to turn so much off just to play the game.
2. Communication – ANET in many ways has been great with communication . . . except the Mac client. Communication for & with this group of players has been seemingly random and intermittent, which as you can see from other comments gives the impression that we are almost completely neglected.
3. Full Screen Support – Lion & Mavericks have very specific functionality for how apps are supposed to work in a full screen mode. It would be really nice if GW2 would adhere to that functionality so those gamers with multi-monitor setups can take advantage of their multiple screens the way they are designed to on a Mac.
4. BLTC – Can I get into the TC today? Does exiting and re-entering help? Not today. Maybe tomorrow, but that means missing out on the sale ending tonight. I guess I won’t spend my money on that after all.
5. Mac client patch testing – I cannot really comment on what you are actually doing since I am not in the office with you all, but it does truly seem as if each patch breaks something on the Mac client. This makes new patches/content something more feared than anticipated. This also works synergistically with #2 to create a less than inviting environment for playing.

I don’t know if a native game client would resolve these issues or not. I personally think that ACTUALLY resolving these problems is more important than HOW you resolve them, but I like to think that a well developed native client would make GW2 the beautiful, smoothly functioning game on a Mac that it usually is on Windows. I know that the Mac population is significantly smaller than the windows population, but perhaps it would help if you all consider this an investment in ANET’s future since APPLE has a significantly growing market share in the personal computing market.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Frequent crashing, usually when i change map

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

You might try turning your graphics presets down to best performance. There is a long standing bug that crashes the game for many mac client users when not on this setting, although nobody, including myself, has ever been able to pin down which combination of settings causes the crashes. It looks horrible in comparison to what it should be but it works.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Game-crashes-every-5-min-am-I-the-only-one/page/2#post2925250

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Client Crashing

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I posted elsewhere, but will add my voice here also about having this problem. I am glad to see the response from Matt and like everybody else I look forward to getting back to Tyria.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Mac Client Crashes, no error

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

This just started happening after the latest update today. one of the times i received the Exception c0000005 message, the rest of them the whole GW client simply disappears, no error. I don’t think I can even stay on long enough to accomplish anything.

I found this in my system log:

3/18/14
8:22:34.147 PM WindowServer191: CGXGetConnectionProperty: Invalid connection 92339

there are 11 instances of that at the time the client crashed. after that there is the following message:
3/18/14 8:22:34.327 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501292: (com.transgaming.guildwars2.688483724) Exited with code: 1

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

"All Bets Are off" because no credit

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

This event seems to really be struggling with bugs on giving credit for/towards achievements. I finally got around to running the Moa event tonight. We had a nice group. I participated, I killed stuff along the way. I healed. But I did not get credit for “All best are off”, despite the fact that:
1. the event was successful,
2. all 7 moas survived,
3. I got credit towards “follow me to the exit” and finished it with this event
4. other people around me in the group DID get completion credit for “All bets are off” for that specific event.

Is this something that Support would actually look at and help with? Or do they just say sorry, do it again, good luck?

I am having a similar problem with the heirloom achievement only counting some but not all heirlooms I pick up. A couple mights ago I started with a count of 10 on the achievement. I picked up 7 heirlooms from there rubble, only 3 counted.
1. My inventory was not full.
2. It was the first time I had run the event in over 24 hours
3. I did not repeat locations

Again, to Support or not to Support, that is the question.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Disconnected to Overflow = bad business

in The Origins of Madness

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I must admit a certain level of frustration with the present “cap & overflow” structure. I and a full party of guild members jumped into Lornar’s Pass an hour early to make sure we were on the main instance. We did events, opened map, ran griffin rook while we waited. When the event start we were coordinating, trying to work as a team towards completing the event, but half way through the Twisted Marionette event I was disconnected from the server. Even though I immediately re-entered the game, I logged back in to an overflow, with 4 guild party members in the main instance. There was no credit for the daily boss thumper, no credit for the event, no possibility of joining them until the event was over. As you might imagine, I was, and am a tad frustrated.

Please, please, please consider some way to leave a session open for a limited time so that a reconnect will bring someone back into the instance they left. Or at least leave a way for us to join our party in instance, an option that is available at other times.

I love this game. I play it daily. I am not gonna threaten to quit. I am not trying to be discourteous to the staff there at ANET. But I do think that whatever business decision that this cap and overflow policy was framed around should be reconsidered.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

CDI- Character Progression- Vertical

in CDI

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

I posted in that thread but would like to second the idea here as well. This is a horizontal progression rather than vertical, but in IMHO is one of the very best suggestions yet for horizontal progression. It benefits both casual and hardcore gamers, utilizing content that is already in place. Heart color could be used to differentiate between hearts that have been redone and those which have not, with color resetting when the month ends.

The only thing I would add is that there should also be a significant reward for those who manage to redo all the hearts in the world map in a month’s time. Perhaps an ascended weapon/armor box?

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

What if hearts were repeatable for T6?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I too love the idea of repeatable hearts. I also agree however that the T6 rewards should be guaranteed rather than RNG.

Side note: This is probably not a reflection of reality, but it seems that RNG works less randomly for some than others. There are enough other areas I can (and do) perpetually fail with RNG. Let’s not do that here too.

With regards to exploiting easy hearts, there are already plenty of places where rewards reflect content difficulty. It should simply be a matter of scaling rewards quantity (NOT quality) by zone level. Those who want more bang for their buck will do the harder (relatively speaking of course) content again. Those who prefer quick, easy gimme rewards like the Queensdale Champ Farms can still get their easy fix, but at a lesser reward rate.

I think that zone and map completion should give significantly greater rewards. If someone is willing to push through the whole map in a month, give them something really significant (Ascended weapon box?) to recognize that level of effort.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression/first
The current CDI discussion has become focused on Ascended equipment and one of the severely limiting factors with Ascended is T6 mats. It seems to me that this would reduce some of the accessibility issues while doing exactly what others have mentioned, driving people out of the LS driven zones and get people exploring again.

IMHO this is one of the best horizontal progression ideas I have seen on the forums.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

CDI- Character Progression- Vertical

in CDI

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I will admit to having skipped a few pages of discussion, so I may reintroduce items already thoroughly discussed, if that is so I apologize.

Equipment
The idea of possible modification of ascended equipment has already been introduced and well discussed. One other possibility is the possibility of changing the possession status of an ascended item. Ascended gear is supposed to be squarely between Exotic and Legendary. I understand that, but as previous suggestions have already broached the idea of blurring those lines (i.e. limited stat changing on ascended, something currently only available to Legendary).

Someone previously has noted the discouraging element of disposable equipment and expressed a desire for upgrading instead of destroying. I would like to see the option to unlock a soul-bound ascended item (Weapon, armor AND jewelry). I imagine having two possibilities here.

One would a single use option (purchased or craft-able) for the purpose of moving an item to a different character. As others have noted, build and play styles change over time. It would be nice to be able to hand off stuff to an alt character without having to just purchase another item entirely. Single use unlocks should be somewhat expensive, but perhaps no more than 1/2 the cost of fully replacing the item.

The second is the ability to “upgrade” a particular ascended item to account bound. This should obviously be more expensive than the single unlock, perhaps 2x the cost of purchase/crafting an item. Upgrades, whether this or others to unlock stat combos should NOT interfere with other upgrades, the way infusing an item lost infusions already present. Each upgrade should be permanent.

Character
The present level cap is 80, and i imagine that more thought and framework is built around that cap than I am capable of imagining. Yet there is still some satisfaction from character development, that goes beyond equipment possession. Some of that is presently addressed with getting skill points even after lvl 80 has been achieved. I would like to see an option to spend those skill points as a form of character progression aside from unlocking all the skills. There is already an existing structure for account bonuses. I think it would be cool to be able to buy bonuses with skill points, much the same as we can progress them with achievement chests and salvaging luck. I know they would have to be expensive, especially with the way skill point scrolls can be farmed, so perhaps 100/ bonus purchased (250?). To keep people from figuring some way to skew things by exclusively stacking one bonus (say XP), the upgrades could be limited to tiers, so that if someone purchased MF first, the second could only be spent on Karma/Gold/XP, the third on the remaining 2, and the final one would be restricted to the only remaining option, but then the next tier would be open to all four again. Repeat.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Broken Mechanic: Environmental Toxin

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I was running in Kessex Hills and got caught in what may be a non-bug flaw. I ended up taking enough damage from the environmental toxin in the water around the Tower of Nightmares that I was downed while on the surface of the water. Because of the changes introduces quite a while ago I was unable to move, use downed skills etc. I was recovering health while simultaneously taking toxin damage. The result was that the two basically negated each other and I was stuck in a perpetual state of downed, unable to die, unable to completely heal, unable to map out. This was only resolved after an extended time a roving NPC came and put me out of my misery.

I don’t know if others have been caught in this situation, but it was frustrating. Personally I would prefer reverting the downed state in water to what it previously was so that I could have the option to move, but however the developers want to handle this, it really should be fixed.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Gold Sellers

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

We need feedback or wall of reflection skills that we can use to annoy them and make their life as uncomfortable as possible

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Collaborative Development: Commander System

in CDI

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

There have been several folks that have posted here in favor of making COMMANDER tags account wide, and a couple that have been opposed to the idea. I do not have a tag, so my thoughts are from the perspective of a person who is content to follow a good leader.

It seems to me IMHO that the issue is whether the developers want the COMMANDER tag to represent the character or the gamer.

In its present set up their position is that it is an attribute of the character. I imagine, although I may be wrong, that this went along with their philosophy for character based WXP. However the developers have already announced that they are revising that view so that WXP is account based (at the urging of much of the community it seems). Thus having account based COMMANDER tags that reflect the gamer rather than the character are a logical continuation of that shift in policy regardless of whatever other changes are implemented.

I think there is some definite value to having the tag represent the gamer as opposed to the character. Many of the commanders out there are exhibiting in-game leadership. There are a couple well known commanders on my home server that lead temple runs daily and are known for the quality of their leadership in-game. Are those gamers any less valuable players because they are on an alternate character? I am confident that they show the same level of expertise and cooperative gameplay even when not running their tagged characters, so why not acknowledge the value that they bring to the game regardless of which character they are logged in on? I would think that the developers ought to encourage those commanders to continue showing leadership by allowing them the freedom to develop and run alternate classes while still functioning as a commander.

Sure there are trolls who have just purchased their tags and run them with no effort at displaying the leadership that the tags should represent. But lets not penalize those commanders who are worthwhile because others who lack their character might look like them.

However, should ANET choose to go with account based tags, it would only be right to refund commanders for each additional tag they have purchased.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Will T/A contribute towards Dungeon Master?

in Twilight Assault

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Since the T/A path is replacing an existing path in the Twilight Arbor dungeon, will that path contribute towards the Twilight’s Idol and Dungeon Master achievements in place of the existing path? Or will the requirements for these two achievements be reduced to account for the fact that T/A will have its own achievement series now?

How will this work if one has run the path being replaced, but not one or both of the other paths, so that the Twilight Idol achievement was not completed before the release?

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Dishonor System

in Suggestions

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Would you all at ANET consider implementing a Dishonor system somewhat like in GW1 to discourage people from bailing on instanced events before completion? People have lives outside of GW2 and things come up from time to time. That happens. but there ought to be a way of penalizing people when early abandonment becomes a regular manner of gameplay.

There seems to be at least in my experience a high rate of abandonment while playing with Pick Up Groups in dungeons.

1. establishing a way to penalize single players leaving a party before completion
2. take into consideration when the party disbands (3 people departing within 1-2 minutes)
3. set criteria to distinguish between single player abandonment and party giving up because unable to complete
4. Set criteria where kicking a party member while in an instance contributes to dishonor, but at a much lower rate given the significant potential for abuse
5. address game mechanic where party leader ends a dungeon instance for all party members by exiting
6. establish a cooldown timer where offenses drop from history after a certain length of time
7. create a way to recognize in the LFG players who have hit/maintain a certain threshold of dishonorable offenses (i.e. names show RED, or display dishonor icon)
8. temporarily prevent players who have a very high level of dishonor from joining parties through the LFG tool until their cool down has reduced their dishonor points to a lower level. (By associating this penalty with the LFG tool, they can still play, can still party with known associates, but reduces their options of affecting game play of Pick Up Groups.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Poor FPS graphics after SAB update

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Is anybody else seeing a drop in FPS after this new update? I game on 2 different macs and both have taken a hit since this morning. I played earlier with what was a normal FPS, updated around 12:00 and then lost about 1/2 – 2/3 my FPS. my imac is now only getting 35ish FPS and my poor MBP is getting 3-5 FPS. I Was getting ~55 & ~25. I dont see anything in the update notes that specifically address graphics performance but I definitely can see the difference. I know my MBP is under the suggested hardware requirements but I have been gaming with it fine on best performance . . . until today.

mid 2011 27" iMac
3.4 GHz i7
8GB DDR3
Radeon 6970M w/2048 GDDR

mid 2009 MBP
2.9GHz Core2 Duo
4GB DDR3
G-force 9600M w/512 GDDR

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

No stats equipped (SOLVED NO BUG)

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I was looking forward to this patch, and now i just keep rage on it due to this message saying i have an item with no selected stats equipped,

So i close this dialog, after 15 seconds this window is open again, i close it and again it comes back up, so frigging annoying

See attached image for info on what window i mean

Check your Hero [H] screen. One or more of the items you have equipped had an inherent magic find bonus that is no longer there. You will have to double click on the item and choose a different stat set for it before it will be viable. I had this pop up for a shield. Fortunately that was the only item for that character. It is really annoying, but I think the developers are tying to make sure you dont unknowingly run around with less than a full set of functional equipment.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Invasion Zones

in Clockwork Chaos

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I do love some aspects of this event. I like the mass fighting perpetual zerg. I am a hack’n slash junky. But a lot of different folks have put their finger right on some core problems:

1. Timing:
a. if you miss your start time you are out of luck unless you know someone who made it into the event.
b. unlike almost every other release, this one is very specifically clock bound (clockwork??) so that players have to check in on the top of the hour. The advantage is that there is some predictability, we know when to find the next event. The down side is that we are tied to the clock checking in hourly if you need 1-2 maps..

c. I really enjoyed the Pavilion with its never ending combat. But some of that enjoyment came from the ability to hop in when I had time and to leave when I was out of time. With the current release that is not the case. participation in the event is rigid. I can’t just hop in when I want, I have to game on a schedule, and that is a schedule that cannot take into account family, work, real life responsibilities.

2. Randomized Rotation:
a. this is more “realistic” I guess. No opponent with half a brain is going to announce: I am gonna come at 12:00 A.M. and attack you at x location. However no matter how much we suspend disbelief, we are also all gamers with real life outside GW2, kitten many have pointed out here. Many of us are die hard gamers, we genuinely desire to complete most or all of the content as it comes out, or this wouldn’t be a matter of so much angst.
b. Like many, I have been tracking which maps I have completed, at least since I realized it would be necessary, but it would be nice in this and in many other achievement categories (Divemaster anybody?) to be able to isolate which ones have actually been credited towards the achievements and which ones have not despite what we may have thought as we participated. But with a random schedule (see I got back to my point on randomized rotation) gamers cannot even work backwards to isolate which maps one has or has not done.

I offer no solutions. Plenty have already been posted. I am simply trying to organize both what has already been said and my own opinions into an organized fashion. I assume that the developers actually browse these posts from time to time because we do see responses, even on this one previously. Perhaps this might help as feedback for them to consider how they implement other future events.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Game crashes every 5 min, am I the only one?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Procedure:

start with the graphic preset “Best performance”

Then Turn up your first setting to maximum (i.e. group 4 would use reflections) and then pick a second setting to also run on Maximum/highest possible setting. Try running a few events with zergs ~15 minutes minimum. If no crash turn off that second setting and repeat with a new one. If you can successfully get through all without crashes turn your second setting (i.e. group 4 would be Reflections + Post-processing) and then do the same thing, working through a setting at a time adding in a third setting on maximum.

If at any time you get a crash, run a -repair and also repair disk permissions to remove those as potential factors then using your newest setting reduce it down by 1 increment and try again.

Post your results here. Hopefully if we can get a group of folks trying different settings it wont take as long. I know there is some overlap in my method, but not sure how else to ask for help without more direct communications. Thanks.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Game crashes every 5 min, am I the only one?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I am working through

Group 1:
Anti-Aliasing – Smooth edges of objects at a slight cost in performance
Drop-down options None, or FXAA.

Render Sampling – renders samples at either the current resolution or smaller (improved performance but quality trade off)
Drop-down options Subsample, Native or Supersample.

IS anybody willing to take:

Group 2:
Textures – Controls texture resolution. Higher values give more detail on terrain and objects, but require more video memory and bandwidth.
Drop-down options include Low, Medium, and High.

Environment – Controls the complexity of terrain, props, decals, and ground cover. Higher values show more detail but require more GPU bandwidth. Some features may not update until the map changes.
Drop-down options include Low, Medium, and High.

Group 3:
Shadows – Draw simple character shadows in addition to static map shadows.
Drop-down options include None, Low, Medium, High, and Ultra.

Shaders – Controls the quality of various shader effects, such as wind and lighting. Adjust to lower cheaper materials and fewer textures, which can improve performance for low-end GPUs.
Drop-down options include Low, Medium, and High.

Group 4:
Reflections
Drop-down options include None, Terrain and Sky, and All.

Post-Processing – Controls visual quality such as bloom, depth blurring, portal distortion, character lines, light rays, and selective scene tinting.
Drop-down options include None, Low, and High.

Group 5:
Animations – Controls model animations and simulations, such as cloth and water.
Drop-down options include Low, Medium, and High.

Full Screen Gamma
Number with linked Slider, range: 0.5 to 3.5

Vertical Sync – Forces the frame rate to synchronize with the monitor refresh rate. Helps eliminate tearing artifacts, but can result in artificially low frame rates.
Check-box, on or off.

High Res Character Textures – Enables high resolution textures for NPCs and other player character models. Requires a map change for the setting to take effect.
Check-box, on or off.

Enable Stereoscopic Rendering – Rendering for 3D capable monitors. Requires full screen mode.
Check-box, on or off.

all settings referenced from:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Options#Graphic_option_notes

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Game crashes every 5 min, am I the only one?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I have finally worked through all of the individual settings at each level with nothing providing a crash even at the highest settings. I have now turned on FSAA and am working through the settings again. I am about 1/2 through the settings on this second run through with no crashes. The gist is anybody should be able to pick at least one setting and raise it as high as you might like without crashing.

Sorry this is so slow, but if anybody else wants to help testing I certainly would not turn down the assistance. the thing is that testing has to be methodical and crashes reproducible in order to help point the developers in the right direction.

I hate this issue as much as any out there, but this is a point where we as a community can rise above moaning about the problem and be a part of resolving it. If you think ANET is too slow in fixing it, then help isolate the issue so we can hand them a clearly identifiable point where we use x combination and it crashes, but we remove Y and the problem no longer happens.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Disconneects prevent getting achievment

in Clockwork Chaos

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

A suggestion i came across last night was that if you group up, even with strangers, then if you DC you can get back into the same instance with your party members. If you log back in and end up in a different instance, you can goto your group, right click and choose “join in xxxxx.”

I am not sure I understand the logic behind how instances are created, but I know that this is a problem over all. A couple nights ago when the hotfix came through we were well into finishing the event and then everyone got kicked out. We had a whole zerg pop back up in an overflow with no way of getting back into our instance to finish.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Karma hoarding - wanted warning about change

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

We’ll find a way to restore for folks who dumped all their karma so far today too, more info from the community team soon when we get it all ironed out. Our goal is for everyone to get what they would have karma wise, hang tight.

I seem to be in the same boat as many here since I too consumed all my hoarded Karma with the same grudging acceptance that it was nerfed and I was just out of luck. I commend Colin on taking responsibility for how this was handled and really look forward to seeing how they respond. It should provide an excellent opportunity for some creative thinking on the part of the developers! Is there a consumable buff for that?

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Celestial Equipment already obsolete?

in Crafting

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Some of the posts here are just trollol or just ignorant.

1. Magic Find on equipment is being REPLACED with something else, not flat out deleted.
2. No one knows the recipes for Ascended equipment yet. Based on speculation, it’ll probably require the EXOTIC verison of the equipment you’re wanting Ascended, similar to how some of the Ascended trinkets work, ie back slot items.
3. There is some significant time gating in place. You’re still gonna need some sort of equipment to begin with.

Well then, I am happy to ponder and pontificate in my presumed state of ignorance. I always appreciate comments that are analytical and detailed, especially when some effort is taken to research before hand. However, since an interest has been expressed in performing a detailed level of analysis on the references I quote in my initial post, I propose that such analysis be thorough as well as detailed.

1. “Magic Find on equipment is being REPLACED with something else,”

if you mean that magic find on equipment is being replaced by account based and consumables based MF, you are absolutely correct. Colin makes that clear in his statements:

“As such, we’ll be removing magic find entirely as an item stat and turning it into account stat” and “You can improve your account magic find through the account achievement reward system and from consumable items found in game”

However, if you mean to to understand Colin’s statement:

“In the near future, we’ll detail the system we’ll use to replace the existing magic find items. Our goal will be to have as little disruption as possible to those who currently own items with a magic find stat on them”

to mean that the the magic find attribute will be replaced with a different attribute on any particular item, that simply is not what Colin has said. They will be replacing the items that have the magic find attribute with other equipment. I can see how you may have misunderstood my original post, but I believe my question still stands unanswered, and unfortunately will until Colin’s “near future” becomes the present. If ANET simply replaces items, then will there be the option to pick a comparable item with a different attribute (i.e. my speculation about boon find), or will they simply offer the same attributes at a higher ratio, or will they leave the ratio the same, but remove MF as one of the attributes without offering any additional attribute change for celestial equipment?

2. No one knows the recipes for Ascended equipment yet. Based on speculation, it’ll probably require the EXOTIC verison of the equipment you’re wanting Ascended, similar to how some of the Ascended trinkets work, ie back slot items.

Thank you for identifying this as speculative, and personally I agree with this speculation in general, although I have to wonder if when Colin says: “this new tier of materials will be made by combining lower tier materials” whether that might mean only the crafting materials (basic, fine, rare, etc.) without the base item for upgrading. Curiosity and speculation on my part.

3. “There is some significant time gating in place. You’re still gonna need some sort of equipment to begin with”

This was my point as well when I said

“Exotic equipment will always remain of certain value for ectos and intermediate steps for new characters until they can be outfitted with ascended.”

This upcoming announcement will be significant. My original post was to express concern and question regarding these significant changes and their impact on celestial armor. If that question is ignorant or “trollol” in the opinion of some, my ego can certainly survive the criticism.

*edits to formatting quotes

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

(edited by Moira Shalaar.5620)

Celestial Equipment already obsolete?

in Crafting

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Except people don’t buy celestial for the magic find so it’s not much of a loss. Having said that, it would be interesting to know what they plan on doing.

I realize that people do not buy celestial gear for the magic find, but my point is that with bonuses to 8 different stats, that gives magic find a value of 12.5% of the attribute bonuses. if they just delete the magic find bonus, that would leave celestial armor running at 87.5% attribute bonus, as compared to other equipment without magic find. So either ANET needs to replace magic find with another attribute not represented in the 8 attributes in celestial armor (boon duration?) at a comparable ratio, or increase the statistics of each piece to compensate for the 12.5% loss of hacking off magic find.

I know that exotics are about to be made obsolete anyways, but even farming as much as time permits, my efforts are going to be put into ascended equipment for a different class than I plan on putting into celestial armor, and I expect that outfitting 8 characters in Ascended armor, trinkets and weapons is going to be very time consuming and expensive, so for a while at least exotic armor will not be completely useless. Exotic equipment will always remain of certain value for ectos and intermediate steps for new characters until they can be outfitted with ascended.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Celestial Equipment already obsolete?

in Crafting

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I thought about calling this topic intended obsolescence, but that sounds a bit too conspiracy theorist for me. I am quite interested in making some celestial armor for one of my characters however it looks like there may not be a point.

It looks to me that ANET has a specific formula for balancing equipment, and magic find has its own value in that formula, but that value is > null. for example, everywhere magic find is included on this list of attribute combinations, it replaces a different attribute:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

So when considering the celestial armor & trinkets I can only assume that magic find is part of the formula used to balance celestial equipment with other existing equipment.

The problem arises then with the announcement that ANET intends to remove magic find from gear:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/ (Account Magic Find)

So now we have the nice and shiny new celestial gear, intentionally made to be EXPENSIVE and it is already obsolete. If they just hack off the magic find from the basic stats, then celestial becomes unbalanced because magic find was part of the balancing equation.

Has there been any indication on how ANET intends to handle dropping magic find from equipment? People who crafted or purchased equipment with magic find are all in this situation together, but I question the wisdom of crafting/buying celestial armor and trinkets until ANET clarifies how they plan on handling magic find equipment.

I dont really expect anybody to ever answer why, but I do wonder why they released celestial equipment with magic find when they had to have know which direction they were planning on going with account magic find.

edit for spelling

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Game crashes every 5 min, am I the only one?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

After setting the graphics to best performance I have been testing each setting individually to see if I can figure out what is causing the crashing. Working from top to bottom, I have tested from Animation down to Render Sampling. I have stepped up each setting one at a time without causing any crashes. At the moment I am running with the Render Sample at Normal, with all else at the best performance/lowest setting. If you want to change your settings on any single one of those to a higher setting, from what I have seen you should be able to do so safely.

I will continue to work through the rest of the settings one at a time and keep updating this post. It will get a little more complex when I get to testing multiple settings simultaneously. However I will try going back to a higher performance preset and then just reducing only the Render Sample to see if that works. It would be nice to have the solution that quickly.

Sorry this is so slow, but I want to make sure that I am giving the game plenty of chance to crash before considering a particular setting “safe”.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Game crashes every 5 min, am I the only one?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I created another post elsewhere regarding these issues, but will throw my name on the list here.

27" iMac
3.4Ghz core i7
8GB DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB
Mac OS 10.8.4

I followed someone’s suggestion elsewhere to reduce the settings to the preset: Best Performance. It looks shabby, but stopped the crashing. I am in the process of slowly adding things back one at a time to see if I can figure out exactly which settings/combo of settings are causing the problem, but this will take time since I am trying to give each change time to crash before ruling it out. I will post what I find when I do actually get through.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

LockedRect.pBits crash

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I have the exact same machine as Shots, with the exception of 8 GB ram. This happens consistently every time I enter combat with any other players. any form of play other than true solo does not even seem possible now.

I would guess that this is related to the new efforts to reduce the graphics in combat. I have had this crash 5 times in less than an hour between this and the dstbits errors.

EDIT
Reducing the settings to best performance does seem to have alleviated the issue, but I have never seen guildwars 2 look so bad.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Molten Portal Graphics Artifact

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I have noticed flickers of left over flame & frost molten portals in both Diessa Plateau and in Wayfarer Foothills ever since the living story has moved past those. Usually they are there and gone, just a brief flicker. However on 8/4 I found a portal artifact in Diessa Plateau that was persistent enough that I could get it with a screen capture. It could not be selected, but as you can see, it was very visible. I dont know if it matters, but I was on the Northern Shiverpeaks server, running a Charr. I use the Mac Beta client.

It is not a game breaker or anything like that, but seems to hint at some code/graphics left over that should be cleared out.

Attachments:

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

"lockedRECT.pBits" error in Jubilee

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I just received the above error message after downloading the latest update and running around in the new area in Divinity. I have never had this error before today, and wasn’t even doing anything except walking around looking at the new scenery. I saw another post about this error coming up in WvW and am concerned that it is related to the next graphics changes.

I already crash pretty much every time I try to run a Zerg in Orr, but that gives a different error, and I do a repair and disk permissions repair after each time it crashes. If I start crashing just running around not in events, it isn’t going to be good.

2011 27" iMac,10.8.4, 3.4 GHz Core i7, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB VRAM.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

No Credit for Killing Hydra

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

thanks Albane. It sucks and I think it will take some time to build up the interest to spend an hour on the off chance I might actually get the achievement.

Ayrilana, when some get the achievement and others do not in the same event, this is a bug, not something dependent on meeting environmental requirements.

It seems to me that making folks wait through 3 iterations of the clearing the risen event before allowing the regular event to kick off is itself either really poor design or another bug.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

No Credit for Killing Hydra

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Several of us just finished the Northern Shiverpeak event for Killing Admiral Covington. At least four people who participated in the event including myself did not get credit in the achievement section under bosses for completing this event. Speaking for myself and one other, we definitely participated in fighting the admiral, we got the personal chest and the major chest, just no achievement. Is there anyway to have this credited for us?

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Sanctum Sprint: Everlasting checkpoint 5

in Bazaar of the Four Winds

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Every time I run sanctum sprint I get the notice that I have reached checkpoint five at every checkpoint. I even get it at the very beginning of the race! I assume that there is supposed to be an actual counter for the checkpoints but it is forever stuck at 5. Is anybody else seeing this?

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

inspector kiel bugging out

in Sky Pirates of Tyria

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

Ahh the conundrum of response. At the risk of leading the thread away from its original point, I see you reject my appeal to conscience and human decency and ignore my appeal to logic. Even if you might detest ANET developers for a perceived theft of your gaming time, I still assert that insults are not going to be productive in spurring them on to faster resolution.

But for the record, I do not have 5 hours a day either to dedicate to this pastime. I too get frustrated when things don’t work properly. I just thought to encourage others to work together in exhorting the developers to patch this and avoid the counter-productive insults. However I am not terribly surprised that my efforts in that direction are not entirely well received. Hopefully this side discussion does not also derail the original point of the thread.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

7/6 Superior Runes

in Crafting

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

On the Wiki the entry for the Breathing apparatus states that the stats for the Breather including runes replace those of the headpiece when underwater. Can anybody tell me if this is accurate? I have a full set of superior runes on my armor, including the breathing apparatus and now show 7/6 Runes. Can I get away with replacing 1 rune for something else and still get the full bonus all the time?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Breathing_apparatus

MY apologies if this duplicates someone else’s post. I tried searching and could not find an answer anywhere else, but I may have used the wrong terms.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

inspector kiel bugging out

in Sky Pirates of Tyria

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

There are plenty enough people who have successfully completed the dungeon. The fact that many of us have this problem does not necessarily indicate that ANET was in any way negligent in testing the content. But that aside, I am certain by the tenor of many of the posts above that you all would like the dungeon fixed as much as I do. If you think about it those of you who have chosen an antagonistic tone in your posts are being counter productive. “You are an incompetent . . . do what I demand” is not really going to motivate the developers to any greater lengths than they already are working to resolve this issue. I know I am less inclined to provide assistance when the request immediately follows insults. The fact that they continue to assist us despite the insults heaped upon them is a testament to their professionalism.

From one gamer to others, please try and keep your posts at least civil. They also have to go home to their families, and those families do not deserve to have their husband/wife/father/mother to come home angry/frustrated/depressed simply because our favored form of entertainment is not 100% perfect. And heaping insults, cynicism and hate on them is no more right than it would be upon anybody.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

inspector kiel bugging out

in Sky Pirates of Tyria

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

We too had this same problem. one of the party reported it as bugged from within the game. Kiel stopped about 1/2 way up the tunnel going up to the fight. We wiped all the enemy out before she got there and she just stopped. I am not sure what other info to provide. We flipped the switch for the lightning on the bridge before ever getting to the jumping puzzle, so I don’t know that that is necessarily related. We did party wipe a couple times before getting to this point. 2 of us did the jumping puzzle and then dropped back down to follow the rest of the group up with Kiel. hope that helps.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Game freeze on log-out

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

This is happening to me as well, 2009 17" MBPro. It was not happening before the Jan 28 patch and now is. I have a work around though. I have tried logging out to the character select screen and then from there logging out to the launcher and quiting. it is tedious but at least it does not require a hard reboot.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Personal Story Lines and Asura Gate Limits

in Suggestions

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I have found that the green star indicating direction to the next location for my story line often has tried to route me through Asura Gates that are not yet available. This has happened at least 3 times to me where it has sent me running across a region just to find that I cannot get there from here. It would be really nice if whatever algorithm that calculates these things could also account for whether the asura gates are actually usable by the player.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Chhk the Windmill King

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

I have the same problem, Northern Shiverpeaks Server, for what it’s worth. Its been missing for at least 2 days for me. I too see his announcement in the chat dialogue, but he does not actually spawn.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM

Guild Chat: can't post

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Moira Shalaar.5620

Moira Shalaar.5620

in the grand scale of things, this is fairly minor, but I cannot post messages into guild chat channel. While in the guild tab all posts still go to “main”. I can see everything that is said in the guild channel, just unable to reply.

Thanks for making this available. I realize that Cider is not native, but it is really nice to be able to just game on mac w/o bootcamp. I would love to see a native client some day, but am grateful for what you have already provided.

mid-2011 iMac; OSX 10.9.5; 3.4 GHz Core i7;
16GB RAM; AMD Radeon 6970M 2GB VRAM