I wonder how long it would take to fix this bug if it was not just mac related but for everyone. Within 24 hours :P?
And here are my specs, got a bad case of the 3fps too.
MacBook Pro 15-inch, Early 2011
2,2 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB
Well lets be fair here. If every system saw a decrease in performance they never would have released it because it would be painfully obvious there was a bug (or several). Additionally, if this was an actual beta (i.e. the devs actually talked to us about what bugs to expect and what areas to test) this wouldn’t be out of the ordinary either.
Best we can do is try to figure it out on our own and hope the devs eventually release a fix.
I assume you’re talking about the various bags of loot you get off mobs. Are you trying to do this in the mists (opening bags doesn’t work in the pvp area)? Other than that, does this happen to all bags or just a single type?
Yes, I’m talking about after patch that introduced the bug in general. I’m specifically talking about the hot fix patch last night. I was detailing that the perceived lack of framerate issues that he himself stated he initially experienced due to a lack of people by describing the frame rates of a near empty Lions Arch. In fact, I am actually getting better frame rates when I’m alone but the performance rapidly plummets around people. For instance, I can turn anti-aliasing on and it actually improves my frame rates for whatever reason (I went from 2 to 5 fps during a marionette event post bug patch).
It really is best if we try to be as descriptive as possible about the actual performance and when we see problems instead of just give a blanket “my performance sucks post patch” assessment.
well solo performance is not that big of a deal the main this is WvW and worlds events thats the issue everyone is having.
and in Lion arch too right after patch i could tell something was up
Yeah, me too. I was like. “Wait, why does Lions Arch feel slow? Maybe it is just a server hiccup…time to go do the marionette…aw…nuts…” Not trying to justify the performance, just trying to understand it.
The beta was actually probably near a shippable state before the latest patch killed performance around people (which kills the entire concept of an MMO). Basically, if they actually hired some mac QA people or gave the ones they have more coffee or listen to them or whatever the problem is we’d probably be fine. At the moment the mac client is in a perpetual state of triage and we don’t have any clue what the devs are doing.
I can live with this for the most part because there are no real alternatives to this game for Mac at the moment (and the latest bug I can live with for the time being because I’m generally not around zergs and I’ve been avoiding Lions Arch for half a year due to the crash bug that existed back then). Obviously if something good came around for Mac I’d likely switch if they had any amount of Mac support (and no, that certain game on the horizon with a Mac client somehow has much much worse support…I’m really baffled by this it is pretty funny when you think about it).
But yeah, I wouldn’t recommend buying this game until ArenaNet decides they want the Mac community to truly be part of this gaming community by actually talking to us and treating us with some level of respect. At the moment it feels more like they think even inviting us to the party was a mistake and wish we’d just leave but don’t want to look like jerks. Sad but true. I knew that a native Mac port was very unlikely but I was hoping for a Cider port at least on par with the EVE Online client (which is actually quite good). Oh well.
Yes, I’m talking about after patch that introduced the bug in general. I’m specifically talking about the hot fix patch last night. I was detailing that the perceived lack of framerate issues that he himself stated he initially experienced due to a lack of people by describing the frame rates of a near empty Lions Arch. In fact, I am actually getting better frame rates when I’m alone but the performance rapidly plummets around people. For instance, I can turn anti-aliasing on and it actually improves my frame rates for whatever reason (I went from 2 to 5 fps during a marionette event post bug patch).
It really is best if we try to be as descriptive as possible about the actual performance and when we see problems instead of just give a blanket “my performance sucks post patch” assessment.
On the topic of the problem, I am not sure, but the evening (eu time) the patch came out, my husband and I did the Megadestroyer event before the first update to the patch was released. we did not notice any fps issues then. However, later that night after the first update, I tried wvw and had the issue we’re all describing. And, the day after, I did the Megadestroyer event again with my husband and we both had very poor fps. There were perhaps less people the second time we were there as well. It could be that something in the first update was a problem or this could just be useless and anecdotal, so take it for what it’s worth.
It is likely wishful thinking. Lions Arch was getting better frame rates immediately after the patch (like right after it hit) until everyone loaded up near the portals then it was back to watching a powerpoint presentation of gw2. So it definitely has something to do with the number of people running around.
Except people running the OSX client who seem to be reporting drastic decreases in FPS to almost unplayable levels on decent spec machines.
(I’d appreciate not being told to write this in the OSX Support thread because it does not have any sort of dev presence in it so I may as well be talking to a brick wall.)
On a more positive note – I do seem to have slightly better performance in Windows after the update, especially in Orr where I used to see a noticeable drop in performance.
Try the auto-detect settings and then remove anti-aliasing.
Actually, as I stated before anti-aliasing on actually increases performance with the latest bugs (about doubled the fps from 2 fps to 5 fps while fighting in a medium sized group). Additionally, even all the way down at the lowest settings we’re still getting horrible frame rates (I used to get 30+ fps on nearly the highest settings and now I get 5 fps).
Yup, another mac user suddenly getting 2-5 fps when there is any amount of players on the screen. Oddly, turning antialiasing on increased it to about 5-7 fps.
Yeah, the client actually gets updated every four or so months (not as fast as I’d like but they do seem to be updating it from time to time). The current version is actually quite stable as far as the BLTC. I still get crashes from being around zergs but I think that is problem with the game in general (i.e., windows too).
The main problem is that when significant bugs crop up we hear nothing for weeks to months. This leaves us with the impression that they aren’t working on the client.
Yeah, the community cheering each other on is a nice feeling. Sure, you get the poor sports who deride other players when they fail to break a chain, but for the most part, failure just results in the next lane going, “Alright, Lane X, it’s up to us! Let’s do this!”
Agreed, I’d rather have an inclusive server that supports people and tries to figure these events out rather than groups of people who hide in an instance and avoid contact with each other.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues to solve. There is very bad leadership communication tools at the moment which makes communicating much harder than it needs to be. This really needs to be fixed (and hopefully some changes come from the Commander CDI). But overall, I like where the game is headed as far as boss encounters.
Yeah, probably the only way we’ll get a real port is if they want to port it to SteamOS/SteamBox for whatever reason. It still doesn’t explain the protracted “beta” we’re in. I think that is the main issue. We’re treading water and they’re using the name beta as cover and we don’t know why. If this is because they don’t want to just screw us and say “whoops, we kind of don’t want to do the whole mac thing after all but we don’t want to screw you mac users over who jumped on the beta client so we’re just going to let you keep the beta client and try to not attract new mac users” they need to say so. As I’ve called for, call it a hobby client. If they really do intend to support us then remove the beta label and release this already. But complaining about this won’t change anything because they’ve proven they don’t listen to us anyway. We’ll have to be our own little community without them and hope for the best.
I never said ANet doesn’t care about the Mac client. They just don’t see to have the support apparatus setup to address the needs of mac players in a timely fashion. That could be due to a number of reasons (and since we have no information from ANet we can’t really conjecture). Honestly, the lack of information from ANet is the main issue here.
It is mostly turn around time for bugs being addressed and the support system not understanding they even have a mac client at times. The cider port is very usable when there isn’t a game breaking bug that sits unfixed for weeks.
I’d like a more detailed explanation why buying expansions is good but an optional sub is bad. What if they gave away expansions for free supported by people who pay subs and buy currency like EVE? How is that model worse than paying for expansions?
You are asking multiple questions and comparing a optional sub to a full sub? Anyway I will take it part by part.
“I’d like a more detailed explanation why buying expansions is good but an optional sub is bad.”
An optional sub still means the income is mainly generated by a cash-shop or similar system. That means game-design is focused on you buying the items (that might also be part of the sub.)
Of course I can imagine an optional sub that works good. For example if they do not really give you anything in the game.. yeah maybe some tag but thats it. However in stead it would give you access to beta test for upcoming content.
But in the current case the problem there is that mostly the core focus will still be micro-transactions and a optional sub is pretty much just a way to get part of those micro-transactions elements automatically.
“What if they gave away expansions for free supported by people who pay subs and buy currency like EVE? How is that model worse than paying for expansions?”
You mean the people who pay a subscription for x months get the expansion for free but the people who buy the game / expansion get the ‘game-time’ for free. Yeah that would also work just fine. But thats not the case here.
You didn’t explain anything at all. How does an optional sub mean more money needed from the gem shop but optional expansions doesn’t mean more money needed from gem shop?
And your last statement saying my theoretical isn’t the case here. Prove it. How is that not a possibility. Point to evidence. You can’t, because we have no evidence what is going on. Lets not spread FUD when we have no idea what the specifics are.
Well then I guess I did not understand your question and to be honest I am still not sure if I get it.
What do you mean with an optional expansion?
When you focus on expansions you don’t need to focus on a cash-shop.
Pretty much you don’t need a cash-shop because you focus on expansion.
With an optional sub the focus is usually still on the cash-shop and the optional sub mainly gives you some thinks automatically that are in the cash-shop plus some other little thinks.
So then the question becomes. Why a focus on expansion in stead of a focus on a cash-shop and I did explain that in the link.
About the theoretical option.. No thats not the case.. GW2 does not have the option to buy expansions or a subscription.
Did you play GW1 at all? That is a good example of optional expansions. Several people have replied with explanations of optional expansions and how they split the player base. I think you might need to research a bit more if you are still having problems understanding what an optional expansion is.
And again, explain how focusing on optional expansions means you don’t need to focus on the cash shop. Explain the economics. How will the expansions be able to provide enough funds without the cash shop but a sub will not provide enough funds without the cash shop.
This is all theoretical, of course, because as is now proven, there won’t be a sub for the west. So all the instant doom and gloom is proven false. It still doesn’t make the lack of supporting evidence for the sub vs expansion argument you made acceptable in an argument. My position has always been we did not have enough information and requested more. I still would like that information.
I’d like a more detailed explanation why buying expansions is good but an optional sub is bad. What if they gave away expansions for free supported by people who pay subs and buy currency like EVE? How is that model worse than paying for expansions?
You are asking multiple questions and comparing a optional sub to a full sub? Anyway I will take it part by part.
“I’d like a more detailed explanation why buying expansions is good but an optional sub is bad.”
An optional sub still means the income is mainly generated by a cash-shop or similar system. That means game-design is focused on you buying the items (that might also be part of the sub.)
Of course I can imagine an optional sub that works good. For example if they do not really give you anything in the game.. yeah maybe some tag but thats it. However in stead it would give you access to beta test for upcoming content.
But in the current case the problem there is that mostly the core focus will still be micro-transactions and a optional sub is pretty much just a way to get part of those micro-transactions elements automatically.
“What if they gave away expansions for free supported by people who pay subs and buy currency like EVE? How is that model worse than paying for expansions?”
You mean the people who pay a subscription for x months get the expansion for free but the people who buy the game / expansion get the ‘game-time’ for free. Yeah that would also work just fine. But thats not the case here.
You didn’t explain anything at all. How does an optional sub mean more money needed from the gem shop but optional expansions doesn’t mean more money needed from gem shop?
And your last statement saying my theoretical isn’t the case here. Prove it. How is that not a possibility. Point to evidence. You can’t, because we have no evidence what is going on. Lets not spread FUD when we have no idea what the specifics are.
I’d like a more detailed explanation why buying expansions is good but an optional sub is bad. What if they gave away expansions for free supported by people who pay subs and buy currency like EVE? How is that model worse than paying for expansions?
How do we know it isn’t some lame, lame, limited+consumable buff, like the “Collector’s Edition” and “Digital Deluxe”? How many people use Mistfire Wolf?
Calm down little Quaggan.
How do we know it isn’t a subscription fee? The fact that it is unknown is irrelevant as we should still give feedback on what we want and do not want to avoid Arena Net making mistakes.
I think the issue is that people are threatening to leave (and some are saying they want all their money back). Going nuclear when we don’t have any specifics outside of a very basic feature list is FUD.
If you have patched, does auction house section of the BLTC load? If not, this just the BLTC being buggy (windows users also have this issue). You’ll need to restart the client until it loads (might be an issue with authenticating, dunno).
Maybe I should point something out: Felicja posted at 2 this afternoon. Our QA person had already been in contact with the Mac specialist in preceding days and was gathering information and testing possible solutions prior to posting.
All credit to a player for providing what ended up being useful information! But please note that we can’t post quite as randomly, and the team began investigations of problem-solving steps prior to this afternoon. The team simply has been showing due diligence in testing the process and noting its applicability, effectiveness, and safety.
So hold your criticism, please, and consider the bigger picture. Saying “it took a player to solve the situation” isn’t neither accurate nor fair.
And because there seems to be a remarkable “jump on The Negative Bandwagon” mentality going on, let’s lock this thread until we have more information to provide.
I do think we try our hardest to be understanding (I mean, we’re mostly okay with this client being indefinitely cider as long as it works). But it becomes really easy to just assume the worst when we get no communication from the developers about the future and support tells us to repeatedly do ineffective things. The worst, of course, being that the mac beta support has stopped entirely and we’re sol (which hopefully hasn’t happened yet). It wouldn’t be the first time that a Mac version of a game is dropped off the face of the planet after Mac users have put money into the game. I think a lot of this negativity would go away if we were reassured about the future of the Mac client. Just removing the label beta would go a long way. Yes, this means you couldn’t really fudge on support by pointing to the beta label. But honestly, as Mac gamers we all know what to expect from Cider ports (they break and we have to do work arounds until they get fixed eventually). You wouldn’t be the first game company with a somewhat buggy Mac cider port (coughTheSims3cough).
So I strongly encourage you guys to throw Mac users a bone and help us to feel like we’re part of this community and have a place in it. But yeah, my last off topic post regarding this update bug.
And tell them the community came up with a work around that doesn’t involve purchasing an OS before they did and they should be extremely embarrassed by this.
Just a note, you do not need to run the game under 10.8. This looks to be 100% an issue with the patcher not working automatically under 10.9, not the game itself (basically, people running 10.9 cannot patch to the newest version automatically so we’re getting all the wonky issues). So you either need to patch the game using a different OS (I ran 10.7 under virtualization) or you need to download the patcher and apply it manually (directions are in the tgupdate 1.11 thread). Yes, manually patching is a pain but it is less of a pain than installing an older version of the OS on a partition or using virtualization. And once it is patched the game works fine under 10.9 again.
My testing with the updater suggests otherwise. I could successfully patch the same client in 10.7 but could not under 10.9. This suggests there is an issue with the patcher under 10.9 for whatever reason. This doesn’t mean 10.9 is bad. Maybe something got depreciated and the patcher dev either wasn’t on the ball or doesn’t exist. Still, this does appear to be a problem limited to certain OSes.
Good job there. Much more trustworthy than having to distribute the patched client ourselves. Sucks we’ll have find this info out by listening in on network traffic from our computer. Oh, and I think you can get around the whole changing system preferences by right clicking (or control clicking) the app and selecting Open. This should give you a dialog box asking you if it should let it open and you should say okay. Saves you from having to edit your Security settings constantly.
So I fixed the issue for myself by installing 10.7 into a virtual machine and installing Guild Wars 2 from scratch on the virtual machine. It only lets you do the first patch due to the lack of a recognized graphics card but that is all you need. Copied it back over to the main OS and started again. No more TgUpdate 1.11. So yeah, the devs need to figure out the 10.9 sandboxing or whatever is causing the patcher to fail.
This fixes the gem store issue too. Perhaps we should find a way to distribute this patched Guild Wars 2.app file (minus the data file so it isn’t insanely huge).
Can you provide evidence that the tgupdate issue was happening at this rate? I have been following the forums too and I did not see this issue at all until this last round of updates.
Edit: Were you running a prerelease version of 10.9 at some point? Because I think this is the first time the game has had a mac patch since 10.9 was released so it really seems like this is a case with the mac patcher just being broke under 10.9.
I love the overall silent treatment we are getting from Anet on this matter.
Their silence is not unique to this particular situation. It’s the standard on the Mac ‘Support’ forum. Have a look around through a few pages here and you will see. It’s unfortunate. Anet seems to have customers eager to give them money and they don’t even stop in with an update or say they are still looking into it.
It is standard for most gaming companies when it comes to mac support. Yeah, lots of stuff in the background that makes porting to mac difficult but it doesn’t excuse the frequent and almost inevitable second class citizen treatment we get as far as customer support (why I’m very cautious about ESO because I’m seeing signs of the exact same problems). Oh well.
Anyway, this is weird because usually they’re pretty fast at fixing the bugs that prevent us from giving them money. It really makes me wonder what is going on and if this is indicative of the beta client being axed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a browser rendering issue (cider uses IE5, right?). Basically, the iframe for the gem purchase form doesn’t show up or renders so wonky that it doesn’t show up in the right spot. This is all conjecture but it makes some degree of sense.
Agreed, I like this direction (and hope we get more complicated puzzle opportunities in the future but understand the need to not go overboard). You guys are getting really close to providing rapid fire quality work with a unified arc (Scarlet still needs some work but pretty much every other character from the latest incarnation of jobtron to the more mainline NPCs are good).
The mouse spin issue is likely caused by the 1.11 patcher always firing at launch (so the game doesn’t have the mouse since the patcher stole it or something). The fix is to command tab out of the game then command tab back. This is apparently a common cider bug where the mouse sort of gets lost by cider.
I do not believe this platform is intended to be used as a work around for our current situation but if it works…well better than nothing maybe. Still, I would be careful because it is unsupported (just like the Mac beta client!)
I was somewhat optimistic about that date too but due to recent interactions with that date’s support system I’m not holding by breath that said date will have any better support than what we’re seeing from Anet, unfortunately. We’ll have to see.
They answered this question during their event around PAX this last summer. Basically, the mac client is not a priority and the implication was that it probably won’t be unless major factors change.
For about a week now, I’ve had the TgUpdate every time I opened the program. When I logged into the game, I had the camera issue described above, with the camera wildly spinning even if I gently nudged the mouse. Minimizing and then maximizing the screen solved the problem, so I would just go about my business, no big deal.
Starting today, for some reason, whenever I start GW2, TgUpdate would launch, download completely, but then GW2 would just close. No launcher, no nothing. It doesn’t matter how many times I re-open the program, it just closes once the TgUpdate is done.
Hey! What gives?
Edit : I tried launching the game with the Terminal to see what it said. I got the following error messages, if it’s helpful to diagnose this issue:
“failed to launch task: launch path not accessible
2013-12-15 23:24:49.180 cider[22484:507] regapi failed: 1
wine client error:0×56: Unable to retrieve bootstrap port”
I’m not sure what that means, but I’m looking into it. Can anyone decipher this for us?
I replicated this issue of the launcher not showing up after the “update” by removing the Guild Wars 2 folder in the Application Support folder. If you have this folder backed up, try reverting the Guild Wars 2 folder to an earlier version.
Edit: Has anyone tried https://gemstore-live.ncplatform.net/authenticate as an alternative to installing Windows? It is an at your own risk feature to check on gemstore stuff (they have a trading post one too).
Frustrating. Also game crashes each time I do tezquetl – actually re-logs-in my mac user so that all my programs restart even, very odd.
No luck with replacing my app with the dropbox one and copying my .dat file over.
When I try to do the commands by the mod at the top I get this error:
~ ? /applications/guild\ wars\ 2.app/contents/MacOS/cider —use-dos-cwd C:Gw2 — C:\\GW2\\GW2.exe -repair
2013-12-15 19:19:49.404 cider[5205:507] failed to launch task: launch path not accessible
/applications/guild wars 2.app/contents/MacOS/cider: cannot find ‘—use-dos-cwd’
Make sure you change the em dash (the long dash before “use-dos-cwd”) to two dashes “- -” (but without the space between).
Once you put the command in correctly you will discover this does not fix the problem, though. The last patch seems to be fundamentally broken for whatever reason. This will be fixed days (most gem store bugs get fixed quickly) to months (laser hawks forever) from now. And when it does get fixed we will have a chance of a staff member informing us but we will likely hear absolutely nothing until then. And don’t bother with emailing support because they will be completely clueless, tell you to do the same exact thing you’ve already done and then close your ticket. Don’t blame support, it isn’t their fault (blame should go higher up in the chain).
Frankly, I think the commander system needs to be scrapped and redone. One of the largest problems with the commander system at the moment is that it is a way to show you have (or had, rather) 100g. The method of acquiring commander doesn’t reflect what a commander should be doing (leading). There is no method attached to help the person learn nor ensure they are competent at all.
So, how do you attach methods to ensure competent leadership as well as a basic framework to help new commanders learn and grow? I feel that the best way to do this is to put it in the hands of the community. What do I mean by put being a commander in the hands of a community? Essentially, what I would like to see is that there is a set number of commanders. Every season (or whatever if the WvW season thing changes) the world gets to vote on who should be commander. There will be sufficient number of slots to ensure that trolling votes wouldn’t have a significant ability to screw up a server by making the commanders random accounts. This leads to the problem of how do you campaign for such a position of leadership and how do you learn how to command if the only way to get commander is by being good at it already (i.e., proving you can command to your server)? Well commanders should get the ability to deputize people (call them Lts or whatever). These deputies would have similar abilities but would be visually distinctive. So people will know they may not necessarily be great commanders. There will have to be some limit as far as how many people a commander can deputize at any one time (potentially even upgradable). Another good idea would be to show the commander who deputized the person. This way the commander is somewhat accountable. The commander will then have a personal stake to make sure the deputy learns and will eventually become a capable commander.
Okay, this was all rather WvW focused. What about the PvE commanders? Nuke it. Give guild leaders similar abilities but make them only visible to guild members (useful for guild missions). What about the champ farming commanders? First, the question needs to be addressed if ANet even wants this behavior. Second, no one really follows the commanders in PvE anyway. Just listen to map chat in any zone with a champ farm train. There is drama about the train being derailed every 15 minutes. PvE farming commanders doesn’t address any problem well and it can be argued only creates drama. Other systems to organize PvE players on maps may be a better idea (such as integrating better automatic map pings for events like Scarlet invasions to show where people are attacking specifically during the invasion). Essentially, PvE commanders serve a completely different purpose from WvW commanding so the systems should be split to ensure we have systems that work the best for the respective areas.
I’ve actually been coming to like Glyph of Renewal. The cast time is a still a tad long considering how long the cooldown is and how it will fire even if you don’t rez anyone and the lack of a ground target for the thing now that it is ground targeted is just annoying. But in certain situations it can actually really help.
Yeah, it always just felt a bit too rng for me, though. I’d prefer it work a bit more like arcane power or put an aura up so the person has to be hitting you but will always get the condition if they do.
The ones I personally blame are antialiasing, shadows and shaders. I turn of aa and set the others to medium. Everything else is high (except for reflections is only terrain).
