Guild Wars 2

You could look into an external cooling solution that works well with the unibody MacBooks.
Also you should definitely experiment with running the game on Windows. The performance will be better, and you can alleviate some of the heat issues by setting a limit to the framerate, so your graphics card and CPU aren’t constantly running at 100%.

Due to the ultra-compact design of MacBooks, heat will always be a bigger issue than with other notebooks. That’s the pice you pay for this form factor.

jackiebones.7431:

This is where my confusion comes in… I’m working with the Geforce 8500.. ancient card. lol I get low/med, running at around 20fps which is well playable… is the 630 NOT a large improvement over the 8500?

The 8500 may be old, but it’s a mid-range card. The 630 is a low-end card. As in designed-for-video-playback-not-games low end. Hence only a small improvement.

Nonlinear.9823:

It is not a trivial trade off. I don’t mind that it is a stat but it is a brutal trade off if you are stacking precision and sacrificing power.

Due to how precision and critdmg are budgeted on items, precision is actually more efficient than critdmg.
You’re getting really cought up on the idea that your damage is scaling down while under 100% critdamage, but that’s only how it appears because of how you’ve resolved your damage formula.
10% crit chance is budgeted equally to 16% crit damage. If you look at the table linked above, you’ll notice that damage scales up faster on the crit chance axis.

See attached screenshot. It’s the second option in the ‘combat’ section.

Zoul.1087:

dimentox.6019:

Where did you get the formulas?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Several people in this thread should take a look at the table a the bottom of that page.

There’s a checkbox in the options menu to disable the borders of aoe spells. Did you make sure it’s not checked by accident?

Dapper, your internet connection is of no relevance to your framerate, you can safely rule that one out.
And to clarify, this is not an issue about Mac vs. PC, it’s about trying to run a game at a very high resolution with laptop hardware that doesn’t have enough power to do so. That’s true for any laptop, not just MacBooks. The thing with GW2 is, not even even with high-end desktop hardware could you get a stable 60fps at that resolution with high settings.
Yes, you can sometimes get a stable framerate. When you’re standing still, not moving the camera a lot, and don’t have much else going on around you. That’s not the situation you want to benchmark against.

If a stable, high framerate is important to you, your best option is to run the game at a lower resolution via bootcamped Windows.

Playing the game at 2880×1800 resolution at max quality settings is very demanding, even from a high-end Computer (which a MacBook Pro isn’t). That’s not even a problem of the Cider port, you just don’t have the hardware for it.

If you can’t access a Windows computer, you could also use the free trial of Crossover Mac. That would give you a fully-installed Windows client from where you can then copy the GW2.dat file over to your OSX installation, like Magoo described. Read their forums for instructions though, their installation process can have issues too.

Both Asgard and Remorix should post their hardware specs though, including what graphics card is in their Mac. Judging from Asgards first post, you are quite likely below the minimum requirements

Booting from the recovery partition to do a full hard drive check & repair may also help.

The Mac client is not a native OSX port, it uses so-called Cider-port that essentially wraps around the Windows client, and translates the input and output so that OSX can handle it. That requires extra computing power, hence the higher requirements and lower performance.

I use both clients on a Hackintosh too, my experience is there is a noticable gap in performance between Windows and OSX, with OSX having much larger FPS drops. With your hardware you should be pretty ok on either client anywhere except maybe in large WvW battles.
Keep in mind that you can’t use the highest texture quality options in OSX, as it shares the limitation of the 32bit Win client.

Yes, that machine will run the game, though not very good. Expect a framerate below 20 FPS with mid settings. Running it on Windows will get you up to 30FPS.

Your friend may want too look into upgrade options for the graphics card. MacPro users aren’t as restricted as other Apple users, with a few tweaks you can actually use a much more affordable standard PC card in a Mac Pro.

Welcome to the world of computer programming, where things that should work flawlessly for every user inexplicably break for some of them, you’ve no idea why, and your angry users are demanding your head on a plate because of it ..

Equanox.2081:

It doesn’t mean you WILL lose or that player A will ALWAYS win; just that there is an advantage and you want to be equal in wvwvw.

Things are NEVER equal in WvW. WvW is unbalanced PVP by design. You don’t play it to have balanced 1v1s on the field.

Originally, a raid means a large group of players working together to do a specific type of content. In earlier MMOs this was often very large boss monsters like dragons etc.

When people are talking of raids today, the often mean a very specific type of raid, the one popularized by World of Warcraft and the MMOs that copied it. In WoW, raiding made up the majority of your gameplay once you reached max level, it was essentially the ultimate goal of why you played, to such a degree that some players who’ve played WoW for a long time, or haven’t played another MMO before WoW, have trouble imagining an MMO that doesn’t do that.

You cannot set keybindings to your primary mouse buttons. Doesn’t matter which mouse you use.
If you have a mouse with additional buttons, those can be rebound, for example I have dodge bound to a thumb button.

Mrowqa.3861:

First of all get Ati card instead of Nvidia. They seems to preform better in this game due to bandwith of data etc.

Interesting, my impression just from monitoring the feedback on here was the opposite. Did anyone do the work to pull together a list with graphics cards and reported FPS for comparison?

Are you asking why a piece of armor breaks on death or why it’s always the same piece?
If the former: because that’s how the death penalty in GW2 works.
If the latter: No idea. I also remember a dev blog post that said it’s supposed to be random, so maybe that’s a bug.

Actually you don’t have to fix it immediately. The stat loss isn’t affecting you until *all 6 *main armor pieces are broken.

Do you even need to be on the same server to recieve mail?

Try a lower resolution, like 1920×1080. The native resolution of a 27inch Mac is a bit too much for this combination of game & hardware.

Same drop rate as before the rainbow patch.

You may want to read the original source again. They do not “in fact” have automated bans.

You can switch the functionality of the f-keys in your system preferences, or you can use an app like FunctionFlip to change the setting for individual keys.

Not exactly normal, but not uncommon either. Various games have problems with Crossfire setups, it’s a problem with drivers not properly working with the game engine.

Ceribis has it right. Look for the option “Sampling” in the graphics settings, make sure it’s not set to ‘sub-sampling’.
‘Supersampling’ is most likely too demanding for your hardware, so leave it at normal.

Other players will not refuse to group with you just because you don’t have a specific skin.
They will refuse to group with you if you don’t have a specific level of stats.

The problem isn’t how you aquire the items, it’s how the other players treat you if you don’t.

I would hold back on this suggestion for the reason that currently all posts on this topic are consolidated into one unholy megathread, and this suggestion, which I fully support, will likely remain unnoticed.

Martin Kerstein has some thoughts on this matter: http://mkerstein.tumblr.com/post/35618548307/musings-about-the-internet

Azjenco.9425:

Naqaj.6219:

LFM Fractal ppl w/o Ascend need not apply

That’s how it’s going to affect people.

Well, I haven’t seen this in chat before:

LFM Arah full exotic chars only

So, I’m not so sure if that will happen.

I’ve seen it. Not every time, but it exists. With exotic being the top tier stat-wise, the difference between someone fully decked out and someone partially decked out is still small enough that this stupid elitism isn’t running rampant yet. The larger the gaps become, the more likely people are to start discriminating.
These one or two pieces of ascendent gear likely aren’t going to be much of a problem , but when it becomes 6, 8, 10 pieces of ascendent gear in subsequent patches, the difference will be large enough for people to assume skill alone cannot overcome it anymore. Let’s not forget, it doesn’t really matter how much of a difference the higher stats really make in raw %, what matters is what people think the difference is.

NO to new stats

YES to new looks

I have no problem at all with Agony as a mechanic to increase the dungeon difficulty in subsequent runs.
I do have a problem with introducing a gear stat to negate it.

saurus.8290:

and how this affect you?

10 more dmg make you more PRO?
0.00001% more crit chance make you more PRO?
getting 4% MF in WvW make you more PRO?
not able to add runes, orbs or sigils to these items make you more PRO?

LFM Fractal ppl w/o Ascend need not apply

That’s how it’s going to affect people.

There are a few threads about this on the general tech support forum if you want more details, here’s the short version:

Due to innate limitations of addressable memory in 32bit Windows, high-resolution textures are disabled to avoid out-of-memory crashes. To use those options, players need to run the client on 64bit Windows, which can simply use more memory.

Very much possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezer_burn

My Fat Monkey.7382:

I’ve heard that changing the sound settings from ‘Highest’ to ‘High’ (or at least not ‘Highest’) solves this problem.

I have done so and haven’t encountered it again as yet.

Which setting exactly would that be? When I encounterd that problem, changing the sliders did ‘restart’ the pulse, but not actually fix it

As long as the 32bit Windows client has this limitation, the Mac client will have it too, since it’s essentially simulating 32bit Windows to run on.

Luceid.5631:

Well, to be honest, the real problem is even worse: The topic receives no attention from the devs or CM’s. It’s kinda like this topic is hushed up

Basic advise for game forum use of any kind:
Just because a certain issue does not immediately recieve an answer from a dev/CM does not mean it is “hushed up”.

What it does mean is that right now they don’t have a solution to the problem, and instead of wasting everyones time by going through every thread and posting, “it’s ok, we recognize your problem, you may feel special now”, they wait until they have an actual answer.

They have read your thread. They know that there’s an issue. They employ several people to do nothing else the whole day than reading the forum and relating this feedback to the developers. They don’t need to answer you, and you shouldn’t hold your breath until you get a response. You’ll live and play much happier that way.

The store is kind of seperated from the rest of the game in that it uses an internal web browser to display the contents. It’s called awesomium (no joke), and it seems that browser has issues on your machine. I’m not an expert on this browser, but maybe a bit of research into awesomium and the issues people have with it might help.

With 850W, it’s unlikely to be too small. If the PSU really is dieing it should be a warranty case.
Akisame, you wrote earlier the crashes would mess with your keyboard. Did that keyboard come with its own drivers? Did you try to remove them?

The most common way to do this is using a RAM disk software. Google will easily set you on the right path to get the information you need. Since the GW2 client is already 16GB and more, you’ll really need a LOT of RAM though.

Exzar.6420:

your computer video is being over clocked, and its over heating our compute. You need to find updated drive NCSOFT has negelected to tell their customers about. If you do not do this it will damage your laptop. I had the same problems and it was over clocking my video cad to 90-100 FPS, if you log into your Options menu and see what your FPS during game play you will see if its higher than normal. That if you ever monitor your FPS before.

Please stop spouting this nonsense. Leave the tech support to the people with a better understanding of how computers work.

Either save the complete game folder, or at least the Gw2.dat file.

In terms of raw stat numbers, exotic is the upper end. You can however built more than one set with different stat combinations for different builds, if you’re serious about min-maxing

Using the google authenticator for login might be another source of disconnects. Are you using that?

Your first point might be adressed by unchecking the touch gestures option in the general game settings. Hope it helps, good luck.

One method to reduce the amount if heat is capping the maximum frames per second. There’s an option for that in the graphics settings. Put it on 30 FPS max., and test if that reduces the amount of overheating. If the cause for the heat problem is indeed the game, that might help.
It could be a problem with OSX or the MacBook itself, but for now maybe try if capping the FPS helps.

It will run the game, but since it only has the integrated Intel graphics, performance will be limited.

Your best option for a MBP that also runs games is one of the 15 inch versions with the Core i7 processor and the Geforce GT650M graphics card.
Despite being significantly cheaper, using the non-retina version may even be preferable, since you’ll want to run the game at native resolution for best picture sharpness, and with the lower resolution of the non-retina MBP, you’ll get better performance.
Of course the retina display would be advantageous for other, non-gaming tasks, so you’ll have to make the decision what’s more important to you.

Just be glad your Legendary doesn’t shoot rainbows …

There is no native support for gamepads, but you can try to use external software that maps controller buttons to keystrokes.
Xpadder is a popular one on Windows, maybe you can find something similar for OSX.