Guild Wars 2

Bastion.2457:

Um I don’t mean to be rude here, but games basic core functions are to reward the player. Whether it be by giving them new areas to explore, scores to beat, special endings, achievements, new gear, weapons, items, more gold etc etc etc, a game is designed to reward you.

You put in time, and get an experience as a reward, in whatever way the game chooses to give that experience to you.

You are in the wrong place, and exploring the wrong hobby if you don’t know this.

If you define rewards that broadly, of course. I meant it in the more narrow way of “grinding items, gear, tokens, useless stuff to hoard”, a reward scheme that is inevitably finite, and therefore ill suited for an MMO.

As opposed to what they started (but haven’t expanded on enough yet) with events and meta events, that provide an ongoing reward scheme that is based on individual player experiences, mini narratives, and incorporation of player actions into the world.

TL;DR: Grind is the worst kind of replayability. Ask for better replayability, this game actually has the means to provide it.

Such a sad state of mind.

More rewards, more rewards, more rewards!
And if you’re inevitably done with them?

Then we’ll have even more rewards!

Straylight.7408:

Aeolus.3615:

Catherine Taber on Countess Anises voice.

Ah thanks, didn’t know that. I just looked her up on IMDB and she also voiced Vette from SWTOR.

Dear Lord, what delicious implications …

Anise, obviously.

Think of it, she’s a master Mesmer. Clones & Phantasms …

Cowrex, those numbers are correct, but they are also very outdated, as they refer to the time shortly after launch.

Number of sold copies is significantly higher now, as the game has remained pretty high in sales rankings for the whole last quarter.
Concurrent player numbers are most likely lower now, as the 400k number was from launch time where players were logging on much more frequent and much longer than now.
Yes, both of those are just educated guesses. We simply do not have any more accurate numbers of how the player population is now.

Make a stationary version of the bell that can be purchased for a small fee and be installed in your home instance.

- Easy access for musically inclined individuals.
- Limits the ability to annoy other players.
- Slightly reduces the absolute uselessness of the home instance.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks for the description. That map issue seems a genuine Mac client bug that needs reporting, preferably both an in-game bug report and one short concise post here. If you’ve done that, very good! Don’t wait for a dev to answer to it, that’s not how this works.

As a general rule, not being the first one to report an issue doesn’t make it a common issue. Having 10 other people have the same issue still doesn’t make it a common issue. Making up numbers about how many people have the issue still doesn’t make it a common issue. The only one who knows whether it is a common issue or not is Arenanet.

As mentioned above, the missing high-res textures is a limitation of the 32bit Windows client. That is where it has to be fixed. It’s a valid point to make, just make it in the right place. The difference in performance is a result of using a Cider port. This cannot and will not change anytime soon. Even if there was a native OSX client, performance would likely be worse, courtesy of OSX. We chose that fate when we chose the Mac.

Believe me, I’m not happy at all with the current OSX client. But feedback only works if it comes in the right form. This is essentially a budgeting problem. With the day only having a finite amount of time for a dev to spend, you’ll have to make a post that is worth spending the time to read on as opposed to spending that time working on the game. Don’t wait for a response from a dev, as that is almost never going to fit in a devs time budget.
Also, don’t flood the support ticket queue unless you have a support request that actually belongs there.

Back on that map issue: I haven’t seen your system specs anywhere, could you post them? Might help to check whether there is a common hardware configuration between the people who have that problem.

Textures not loading at all is definitely a problem that needs looking into.
The high-res texture limitation needs to be fixed where it occurs, in the 32bit Win client.

It’s not Mac specific because users of 32bit Windows have it too. If you mean they have the option to upgrade to 64bit Windows , well, so do you.

Besides, crashing up a storm doesn’t do anything usefull besides wasting the forum moderators ’ time. Report whatever problem you have, then your job here is done.

Let’s get into some details, shall we?

diabluz.2860:

1. world map lag
2. camera issues where the camera goes crazy and starts spinning uncontrollably
3. audio gets distorted and makes loud thumping sounds etc
4. weird streaks coming from light sources and shadows
5. significantly lower frame rates than on the Windows version
6. no high texture option

1. Never had that issue. Can you be a bit more descriptive? What exactly happens? When does it happen? What did you try so far to avoid it?
2. Faintly remember that one right after launch of the Mac beta. Never occured since I changed the camera sensitivity settings.
3. Not a Mac-specific problem
4. Not a Mac-specific problem
5. Technical limitation due to Cider port.
6. Not a Mac-specific problem

Do not buy the 16GB RAM upgrade though. For the time being, 8GB is still more than you actually need, unless you’re heavily into video or photo editing.
If you really need more RAM, the 27inch iMac allows for user upgrades, you can buy your own RAM for half the Apple price.
I’d rather put that money into a Fusion Drive upgrade, since that one is NOT user upgradeable.

Playing a graphically demanding game will always be a large battery drain, which OS you use makes hardly a difference.
Since you only have the integrated Intel graphics, using Bootcamp is still recommended for more playable performance though.

The percentage is based on the numbers of files left, not the size.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

If I’m having fun, I win.

Correct answer. The only way to win an MMO.

No joke! I was contemplating petitioning Anet to allow making staff earth 2 a seperate permanent keybind …

You can change the look of gear however you want, so there’s no single best gear/look combination.

There is no THE gear, just lots of it.

Sometimes people list these items just to free up inventory space.

There is a list of discovered Forge weapons on the wiki

The graphics card upgrade is recommended, the extra power is usefull to run the huge resolution of the 27inch screen. The mobile 680MX is about equivalent to a desktop 660ti, which is the absolute minimum I’d recommend for such a huge display.

The upgrade to the i7 is optional. For gaming, only the slightly higher clock speed is relevant. The additional virtual CPU cores are usually not used by games.

I actually ordered the same machine, though also with the Fusion Drive option. Alternatively, you could purchase and install your own RAM to the maximum capacity of 32GB, and run the complete game from a RAM drive. Don’t order RAM upgrades from Apple, they are criminally overpriced, and the 27inch actually allows for user upgrades. Buy your own for a quarter of the price.

Either way, the hardware should be able to run the game nicely on OSX, but you still may want to consider Bootcamp, since with 64bit Windows you can get better texture quality options that would certainly look nicer on that screen.

Are you using the same screen resolution as on the old one? Or did you upgrade to a retina MBP?

Some thoughts:

LFG-support. Yes, needs to be much better implemented into the UI. The current Wintersday dungeons are a very interesting anomaly to this. You can go into the city with Tixx’s dungeon, invite the first 4 people who write ‘LFG tixx’ in map chat, and get a dungeon group ready in less than a minute. If we could get a functionality like that for the other dungeons, without the chat spam, that would be perfect.

Combat: Can’t relate, never had that issue. I automatically keep my targets centered while fighting.

NPC: there are guides in each city. they put a marker on your map for pretty much all special interest NPCs.

Player roles: Disagreed. Very much prefer the current combat system to fixed (or just more defined) roles. It’s more interesting, more demanding, more chaotic, more fun. You still can define a more narrow role for yourself if you like, but you’re not forced to. The important thing to consider here is that this has implications for combat. Combat with fixed roles was like having autopilot, it was the most interesting when things went wrong and your role became irrelevant. Downside to current system: encounters need more variety, better pacing. Less mobs with ridiculously large HP pools, and more mobs with interesting abilities to challenge you.

No end game content: again, prefer the current solution. Not having to schedule my game time around a guild is a huge bonus. As is not having to deal with elitists who think they can tell other people how to play. Downside to the current solution: not enough variety yet. The original idea of keeping all game areas interesting through (meta) events is still good, but there aren’t enough events, and there’s not enough variety within events.

The forum community is a minority. Certainly not an unimportant one, but a minority nontheless.
Once a thread is posted, a point is made, the interaction is fulfilled. Don’t wait for devs to answer you, that is not the purpose of this forum, and it never was.

Granted, more regular announcements wouldn’t go amiss.

Now that’s just lazy …

Also, lol at profanity filter in links

Wait a second, even with your logic, this still makes no sense. If anything, the ability for other players to just buy stuff makes your effor more valuable, not less.
In old MMOs you never even had a choice, it was grind or bust. Actually having the option to go the easy way, and doing it the hard way regardless makes your accomplishment greater, not smaller.

You escape into another world to do more work?

I’m beginning to understand why your argument doesn’t make any sense to me.

Diva.4706:

My point is that real life wealth should have zero impact on the game.

Our point is it has no impact, unless you convince yourself it does.

If you spent 30 hours of gameplay you didn’t actually enjoy to get something, that time was wasted, period.

If you spend those 20 hours actually enjoying the game, others getting the same stuff by paying for it doesn’t take away the time you spent enjoying the game. They only cheated themselves out of 20 hours of fun.

If you need ‘effort’ to enjoy a game, make an effort to only do fun stuff and never let yourself waste time on pointless chores you don’t enjoy. That’s an effort nobody can take away from you with any amount of money.

Diva.4706:

you miss my point entirely

Then what was your point?

Gehenna.3625:

I wouldn’t call it pay2win as such, but the OP does have a point that a lot of achievements in game can be bought. I also find that disappointing, because it does invalidate a lot of content this way.

Good call, that is the first argument against RMT that has some real merit. I guess there are people that are really serious about achievements, those would certainly be somehow affected by this.

Hmm, ‘strength booster’ … ‘wreck some bunnies’ … is this conversation still PG-rated?

Alastar.2863:

(now, in wvw that will definitely be unnoticeable under all the circumstances there.)

Damage and armor booster doesn’t work in WvW or PvP.

People run fractals to get a special gear piece that protects against agony damage. A special type of damage that those BL chest armor boosters actually do not help with.

Not to mention that you’re still not ‘winning’ this game by being slightly more effective in simple PvE content that you can beat just as easily without paying extra money.

From the wiki:

“When applicable, the stats of the character that activated the finisher are used to calculate the combo effects.”

I think I’ve had this discussion with kirito before

It’s not a typo, but it’s only one benchmark result. That’s good enough for a general idea of what range a graphics card belongs too, but never judge a cards performance by just one benchmark. In other benchmarks, the 670M and MX score higher than the 580M.
In actual games, the performance will be different yet again.

Depends a bit on what you consider a good frame rate. You will have to turn some graphics settings down to do WvW with a good framerate. Not even high-end gaming PCs can do large WvW battles without some FPS drops.
You should be able to get stable 30FPS with medium-high settings at full resolution. Performce should be slightly better when running on Windows via Bootcamp than using the OSX client.

Are you gathering resources? Craft some stuff once every 10 levels or so? Both give a lot of bonus XP.

They were probably thinking something like “Hey, this way even players without a lot of resources can rig their character to perform at close to maximum efficiency. For the people who want to go the extra mile on customization, we’ll implement those runes. Just like we structured item sets. Pretty clever design, hi5 bro!”
*High-fives fellow developer
*Then shoots him with a nerf gun

Delete the file mentioned in that error message. Restart the client, it will create a new one. You will not lose any character data, but you may have to redo your graphics settings and keybindings.

ReigaK.9572:

leveling should mainly be done with events.

Not sure what you’re doing, but that’s exactly how I leveled up. Are you sure you’re not missing half of the events because you move along too quickly?

The in-house development of a GW2 app has been cancelled (or ‘postponed indefinitely’, if you prefer). Instead they said they are going to release APIs so other app developers can program their own apps with access to the server data. I don’t think there has been an official release of those yet.

How to avoid unneccessary download:
First you need to download official Gw2 mac client software.
Install the client on your mac, but when it begins the large download, close the client.
Open Finder, go to your GW2 app.
Right click Guild Wars 2 icon and click “Show Package Content”
Navigate through the folders to find the GW2 files (Contents > Resources > Transgaming > C_drive > GW2)
Copy/paste your GW2.dat file from your Windows folder to the folder above. Overwrite the one that’s already there.
Restart GW2 Mac client.

How to use F-keys:
Personally I use the FunctionFlip app, and found it working great. Incidentally, F1 to F4 are functions I never used anyway

How to right-mouse-button:
I strongly disagree with Entaurrus. While you can play without using right-clicks, it’s like trying to eat asian food with only one chopstick. There’s a lot of functionality you’re losing without right-click functionality. The magic mouse can be enabled to simulate right clicks, but a real mouse with 2 buttons works even better, since being able to use both buttons simultaneously is desirable. Personally I use a Razer mouse, but there should be many choices for Mice with OSX drivers. Find one that fits your hand.

One major downside of the Mac client is that it has the same limitations as the 32bit Windows client (since it pretty much IS the 32bit Windows client).
Meaning, you cannot chose high-quality textures in the graphics options, it only goes up to medium quality. To me, the difference is pretty noticable, though it may not be an issue for you.

I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re trying to tell us, but it sounds fascinating …

ShaiHulud.7410:

But there are some players like me who want more out of their gaming experience. I want to strive, to compete, to come out in front. To have a 500 gold sword because I love it’s unique look and because I know that only 2 % of the population has it.

To have a cultural Tier 3 armor set because I know I am unique and not looking the same with 90 % of the server population.

You really don’t see the fallacy in this? If it didn’t require a huge investment either of time or money, it wouldn’t be an item only 2% of the population has.

Funny enough, once you ditch the usual MMO-mindset of MUST-AQUIRE-MORE-STUFF!! and just play for fun, non of these issues have any impact on your game.
I get enough gold for what I need just from playing the game, even have some spare to trade into gems. I have full exotic gear and am now replacing trinkets one by one too. Haven’t farmed a single minute, simply because this game doesn’t require you to.

Your f-keys are by default set to control special hardware and media functions, so the game can’t recognize them.
You can either turn off the media functions in your keyboard settings, or use an app like FunctionFlip to change the behaviour of specific keys.

Also search this forum for “f-keys”, you’ll find several other threads about this problem, including solutions.

I’ve stumbled upon that site in another thread, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Never look at just a single benchmark to make a decision.

I’d use http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.130.0.html
They give you several benchmarks and actual game tests for comparison, and even give short concise information about things like chipsets, memory speed, shader cores etc.

Does anyone have other recommendations?

Consider bumping the graphics card from a 660 to a 660ti.
It won’t make a big difference in GW2 for reasons mentioned above, but in other games you’ll get a noticable performance increase for relatively little additional money.

I wouldn’t rely on just one benchmark for a performance comparison. Different benchmarks can vary wildly according to what exactly they are measuring. Try to get comparison overview over a few different benchmarks and actual game tests.

It should be a noticable step up. This site has a nice table to compare different mobile graphic chipsets, including the two in question here:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html

Problem with a direct comparison is that the new model has a resolution of 1920×1080, so the new graphics card will actually have to work harder.

One of the recent patches caused an increase in out-of-memory crashes with people running the game on 32bit Windows.
Since the Mac version is essentially the 32bit Windows client, it’s likely suffering form the same issues.

The performance drops significantly once you get near the minimum requirements, so I think they are fine. You’re considerably above them, so you’re experience is quite a bit better.