Guild Wars 2

Aeka,

I think we are all aware of the possibility of turning down the graphic settings till the game looks horrible as a way to prolong the time you can play without crashing. The issues with that are that it looks horrible, you cannot see people around you in wvw because character model display is so limited, you cannot raise people from downed position when they are not visible despite laying right next to you, it looks horrible, and so on. In fact, my husband and I never play on the best graphics settings. We have turned down things to the lowest possible settings that still allow you to feel like you are playing a game from the last ten years and yet the crashes are persistent.

This did not used to be the case. In fact, prior to the EOTM patch, the mac wrapper was pretty good in wvw and large events. That patch essentially broke the mac wrapper. In the following patch, they put a bandage on it and have just left it as ‘good enough’ since then. So, the mac wrapper can work well, they have just chosen to not spend resources making the fix happen for whatever reason. As the developer above says, they are aware of the issue and yet there is still no fix over a year later on something so basic to the viability of a mac client for large scale events and wvw.

Fulmy.1027:

I want see my redfox fight other minipet <3

Here is a picture of Red Foxx fighting. Enjoy!

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

Hi all, this is a known issue for us and something we are working on but I don’t have any exciting news for this yet.

Been over 7 months since your post: any news yet? I tried wvw yesterday and was able to play about 20something minutes before my game crashed. I think it has almost been a year and half since this started happening now.

Any progress so we can play using the mac client in heavy graphic encounters such as wvw or world bosses without the client crashing yet?

I hope they are going to fix the issue with the client crashing with heavy graphic fights or a lot of players around. The issue has been a problem for almost a year and they do know about it as they said it is a known issue four months ago here. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Client-crashes-during-heavy-graphic-fights

Maybe it will finally be addressed in the expansion? The fix has been a long time in coming, so we can only hope.

After watching the cinematic at the end, it occurred to me that the Pale Tree betrayed the Pact by failing to mention the minor detail revealed at the end about the sylvari. I know the avatar is in a wounded state now, but I would think that Trahearne probably should have been given that bit of information once the news that the jungle dragon was active was acquired. Without that information, the Pact was on a course for destruction. Was the mother withholding that information till the last minute and then was wounded before she could say or was she always going to remain silent?

Crashed trying to do the new world boss with the usual error message. Would be nice if we could do these events.

Yeah, I thought this was great. Really good cinematics.

It crashes on large events (e.g. WvW large fights, large pve events like Teq) unless you turn the graphic settings low. They say they are working on a fix, but it has been like this for a long time. Hopefully, it will be addressed this winter.

For leveling and dungeons, it is just fine.

Any word on this? With the merger of the mac/pc forums, this was buried on page 20something. This issue still keeps us from doing large scale events without setting our graphics to the lowest possible settings (which is no fun).

I really like the daily activities as they are now. The reason is that you do it while playing normally doing whatever you wanted to do. The new ones look like a step backwards where you have to go to certain places and do specific things that you would not otherwise choose to do. You recently changed the daily activity choices and I thought that was the best you’ve done and was really happy with them.

The new reward system could be nice, but if the activities remained as they are now- things you do while playing normally.

Natural looking hair for human black female. Maybe something like Astrid from Fringe.

Super beedog pet.

Is there any official word on when we can upgrade to Yosemite?

Still having the issue with a process not shutting down after a normal exit. I exited the game last night normally (no error). This morning, I found I could not launch the game because a process was still running. Had to use Activity Monitor to Force Quit it before the game would run.

27-inch, Late 2013
Processor 3,4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2048 MB
Software OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)

Not really a question about the economy per se, but I have a question about the tp functionality.

Since the update, I have come across the situation where there were either no listings for an item or no bids.

In the case where there were no listings, I could not find a way to actually list my item. My only option was Sell Instantly on the button. I could not click in the listings box and change the button’s message to List Item or whatever it says. I seemed to only have the option to sell to the bids.

Likewise, with the case where there were no bids for an item, I could not get it to let me create a bid. I just got the Buy Instantly button.

Am I missing something?

Any progress on this? Getting so tired of having to turn all graphic settings down to low or lowest positions on a new computer just to play with less chance of crashes. I used higher graphic settings on my 2011 iMac prior to the eotm patch than I can on my new iMac which has much better specs.

I have multiple processes, too.

What type of information do you want? I crash daily at least a couple of times if I do wvw or large events. It would get really redundant if I posted every time I crashed. And, when I do crash, it says that it was automatically reported to ANet. Is there something specific that you want that isn’t in the automatic reports that would help?

System specs are:
iMac
27-inch, Late 2013
Processor 3,4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2048 MB
Software OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)

I didn’t like this new system at all. Please make a way to turn it off at 80 or something. My husband made double value in mats what I did after an hour of playing. He on a mesmer, me on a guardian. Now, if I want gold through playing normally, I have to play a specific class, it seems?

Firestarr.4518:

I have the same issue with my mac. It def all started after the new patch. It only launches after I restart. The only way I can get it to respond and launch at all is to restart it. I was playing tonight and the screen went black and now I can’t get it to launch. I am tired of restarting just to play… I am getting the message “The application ‘Guild Wars 2.app’ can’t be opened. -1712” Please update us with when you have a fix. Thanks!

Fire, try opening Activity Monitor and seeing if Guild Wars 2 is running there. If so, use the Force Quit option. That way, you don’t have to restart your computer.

Lacy, the BLTP isn’t crashing since one of the recent patches for me or my husband. Still crashing all the time in large events, though. It is the thing where the system runs out of memory and either crashes just GW or our whole system and we need to restart. The auto reporting should give you guys plenty of info on those since the message says it is reported.

Last crash was:
MathisUnitVector(forward, 0.01f)
A serious error has occurred …

You should make sure that you have how to kill the broken processes in Activity Monitor in the stickies you have since the game will often not restart till you kill the two or more instances of GW2 running and sometimes the cider wrapper thingie with a Force Quit. I think some people are having to restart their computer because they don’t know how to stop those.

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

ananda.5946:

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

Hi, my name is Gavian and I am the head of production for ArenaNet and I am also a Mac user. I am enjoying the discussion of various development methedologies, and that is something I could talk about endlessly, but I wanted to drop in and let you know what we are doing on the Mac.

Our current focus, like what we are doing right now, is reproducing Mac specific bugs and issues we see reported on the forums and working towards fixes. I will say that it is heartening to see everyone here helping each other out and it helps us out as well.

As has been pointed out, we do have a Mac specific client, it just happens to be using Cider.

We will try and post more to keep you in the loop about issues we had addressed that are Mac specific.

As a side note, for development methedology we use a number of different approaches, depends what the team make up is and what we are trying to accomplish.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update, Gavian. I have a couple of questions if you’re still around.

Are you guys working on the issue where the game crashes from running out of memory at large events as this guy shows here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Client-Crash/first#post4360855
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/165825/GW2_MacBETA_OOM.png
This is sort of a big deal since the client consistently crashes in large scale events and, with megaservers, that is almost every world boss. Also, it makes wvw impossible to enjoy.

Thanks!

We are still looking into this – we are actively trying to recreate it in a bunch of different ways. I know it is annoying.

That would be great. If it helps, this issue, I think, goes all the way back to when the amd improvements in the eotm patch broke the mac wrapper and the subsequent fix. If this got fixed in the interim, I don’t know as my husband and I stopped playing from april till last month as we got tired of fighting the mac wrapper, but it seems like it is still the same problem introduced then. Prior to the eotm patch, the wrapper was in pretty good shape. Since then, not so much.

Gavian Whishaw.2930:

Hi, my name is Gavian and I am the head of production for ArenaNet and I am also a Mac user. I am enjoying the discussion of various development methedologies, and that is something I could talk about endlessly, but I wanted to drop in and let you know what we are doing on the Mac.

Our current focus, like what we are doing right now, is reproducing Mac specific bugs and issues we see reported on the forums and working towards fixes. I will say that it is heartening to see everyone here helping each other out and it helps us out as well.

As has been pointed out, we do have a Mac specific client, it just happens to be using Cider.

We will try and post more to keep you in the loop about issues we had addressed that are Mac specific.

As a side note, for development methedology we use a number of different approaches, depends what the team make up is and what we are trying to accomplish.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update, Gavian. I have a couple of questions if you’re still around.

Are you guys working on the issue where the game crashes from running out of memory at large events as this guy shows here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Client-Crash/first#post4360855
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/165825/GW2_MacBETA_OOM.png
This is sort of a big deal since the client consistently crashes in large scale events and, with megaservers, that is almost every world boss. Also, it makes wvw impossible to enjoy.

Thanks!

At least they didn’t use Comic Sans. :P

New hair do for human in the form of a couple of cute afro styles. The choices now are all straight or wavy. My character wants to stop using a flattening iron every morning.

Also, still want Super Bee Dog pets to come back! So cuuuuuute!

- I’d like to see the max quantity button back and have it default to selling the max quantity like it used to. I never want to sell 1 of the 15 claws in my bag and moving that slider every time I want to sell a stack is annoying.

- Once you set a quantity to sell, it should not reset when you click between Sell Instantly (or whatever) and List Items. Moving that slider multiple times is just annoying and extra clicks.

- The armour search fields are strange given that all armour of a given quality, type and level have the same stats. Why not just have ‘Berserker, Rabid, etc.’ in the drop down list instead of the Diablo 3 like stats and numbers?

- Fix the TP on the Mac client so it doesn’t crash the game and/or my system.

- Too many clicks to sell items.

- Possible bug: Both my husband and I have had the situation where we get the ‘Partial success’ message when attempting to buy a stack of cloth, et cetera. When we then go to buy the rest of the quantity we wanted, it seems to have defaulted to making a buy order rather than a instant purchase. Both of us ended up accidentally making buy orders this way when we thought we were just proceeding to buy more.

Chris, what happened with the update on the Mac client? There was no update.

Also, the Mac client has some issues since the patch and there is no support in the Mac support forum.

The new trading post crashes my computer reliably. I guess no QA was done on Mac client again.

It is crashing the game.
it is also crashing my whole computer.

Errors received:
Timed out while creating browser view… – crashed the computer so it had to reboot
destBits[level] – crashed the game

After the crash, you must go into Activity Monitor and Force Quit the instances of GW2 running. I also noticed that there are three instances of GW2 running when I launched the game in the Activity Monitor. Not sure if that has always been the case or not, but after crashing, two of those are still running.

How could QA have missed this if QA was done on the Mac client? This is not a hard to reproduce error.

Would love an option to turn these off, too. They are super ugly and some of the kits even clip through the middle of my character’s head… It would take new art to make it work, though.

Super beedog minis again. I was hoping they’d turn up in the sale last week. So cuuuuuuuute.

Still with the new and interesting messages while the client crashes:
MathisUnitVector(forward, 0.01f)

Kirito.9207:

^ What Nageth said.

Whenever you’re going to go into large groups LA/World Bosses/WvW turn your graphics all the way down. This will stop the crashing.

Also, try to group up with someone when doing an event because when you crash (not if), you will be able to use that party member as a link back to the instance you were in before so you can complete the event you started.

Maybe they will have some good news for us on tuesday.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/page/16#post4329274

Chris Whiteside.6102:

ananda.5946:

Chris, since you are actively posting in this about communication, can you tell us if the Mac client is being looked at? It crashes all the time in large events and there is no active support in the mac support forum.

If you don’t mind i will get back to you on this on Tuesday.

Chris

Oh, nice. I look forward to reading about it. Thanks.

Chris, since you are actively posting in this about communication, can you tell us if the Mac client is being looked at? It crashes all the time in large events and there is no active support in the mac support forum.

I would love it if you guys discussed what is happening with the Mac version. The game crashes constantly in group events and wvw making it really difficult to enjoy playing. Also, there is no support in the Mac support forum.

What happened to the new mac person they introduced?

My husband and I have come back for another try at GW and the client crashes constantly at large events. Almost killed Teq for the first time last night, but then the graphics went all blocky and the game crashed and I got back in an empty version of the area. The client crashes with various messages, including:
CharMotion has invalid matrix
LockedRect.pBits
and so on.

It crashes more now than it did before the eye of the mists patch still.

Just out of curiosity, if I wanted to run GW in bootcamp, would I need to buy another copy of the game or can I download the windows version having already bought the game?

Since there is a new mac specialist, I will ask again and see if I can get a reply. Have not been playing at all, but would if there was a fix for this.

I thought this thread was a metaphor for the Mac client.

If they are serious about the mac client, it seems like they should hire a dedicated mac expert to the dev team. Till then, it’s just going to be the same misadventure and firefighting, even if the rep does eventually clean up the support threads with the help of the customers.

It was nice they added a mac wrapper to the offering, but it doesn’t feel like there was much effort beyond the initial wrapper creation so far. It remind me of the time I took up knitting and made half a scarf- looks great so far, but lots of problems and perpetually unfinished. I hope ANet resumes knitting at some point- this game could be a lovely scarf for a mac if they finish it.

1- Native mac client and all that entails.

2- Barring a native mac client, then an optimised mac client that utilises more of the options to improve performance and get rid of bugs.
—I cannot even play wvw on my new iMac since the EOTM patch fiasco and subsequent ‘fix’. The performance issues prevent me from enjoying it. The fps is really low, there are sound problems in large groups, et cetera.
—My fans often go crazy on my system while playing this game, even while just standing around in town.
—FPS is poor in general compared to the computer hardware I have.
—I feel like i struggle against this client every time I login. It erodes my game experience till I just don’t even want to login anymore despite loving the game.
—Trading post is bugged so often.
—Et cetera

3- A mac specialist on the dev team who spends at least most of her or his time on the mac client.

4- A dedicated QA pass on the Mac client before every patch.

5- Waaaaaaaaaay better communication. Not just these firefighting bits of communication, but ongoing interaction.

I should note that both my husband and I have stopped playing because of the poor state of the Mac client. I login once in a while, but he’s given up till something happens to make it better.

imac
27-inch, Late 2013
Processor 3,4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2048 MB
Software OS X 10.9.2 (13C64)

Before the patch that broke the Mac client in January, wvw was fun. It was playable, even if the performance wasn’t perfect. Since the ‘fix’ that happened two weeks after the patch that broke the client, wvw has been unplayable for me and overall performance in other parts of the game has been worse.

Specific to WvW:
- I get 14fps in big groups which is just headache inducing (used to get well over 20)
- even out of large group combat, my screen stutters and catches, even while having high fps. (used to not happen)
- Sound effects now don’t work in large groups (e.g. I use a skill and don’t hear any sound cues for it or the sounds of any other players). Large encounters, my system goes nearly silent. (used to not happen)
- Sound cues out of combat while in large groups are delayed and other people’s attack/ability sounds rarely play. (used to not happen)

I am so sick of the mac beta. I feel like I am fighting the game client every time I log in. One of the reps posted that there is no dedicated Mac team and it really shows.

Is Anet going to ever hire a team or at least a person to optimise the client so it doesn’t feel like a struggle to just play after every patch? I played another game that has a native mac client and it was amazing- it was as if I could just play the game and not think about the game client at all. Then, coming back to GW2, it was a huge disappointment with the lack of optimisation and poor performance for the client. It really, really shows! Even being a wrapper, this could perform so much better if you guys dedicated time to it.

I am so disappointed with the mac performance, it is hard to want to continue playing unless something it done to improve it. Are there any plans at all to dedicate time to making the mac client better or is it just going to be business as usual- firefighting after you break something? It’s a beautiful game and I really do enjoy the philosophy and intent behind the game; I just wish it wasn’t so constantly frustrating to play as a mac users.

Shadow Swe, I think my husband wants a more active guild since he wants to have people to do Fractals and stuff with.

Darko, thanks, will check it out.

Neksis, Unfortunately, I don’t think we can guest on NA servers from an EU one. Sounded nice, otherwise.

My husband and I are looking for a guild aimed a bit toward older players on Piken Square (EU). We’re hoping for a guild that has achieved a critical mass so there are people with whom we can do things. So, 20+ people online for a typical evening would be nice. Might be too much to ask for in one package for GW2- not sure, but can’t hurt to ask.

We like to do dungeons, fractals (more him than me) and wvw (more me than him) in addition to easy going socialising. Roleplay guild is okay, too, as long as there is an active pve aspect to the guild.

We would be willing to move servers if the guild seemed just what we were looking for and was on a well populated server with active wvw, but would prefer to check our options on our current server first.

Mahkno.7593:

am getting the “lockedRect.pBits” error/crash since the last patch. happened twice in the middle of new LS boss fight (both times was the “green” knight).

also frequently (even before this latest patch but still with it) sometimes crashes would actually restart my computer which is just insane. not sure if that was the “lockedRect.pBits” error or not since…my computer restarted…

i’m using a macbook pro retina with os x 10.9.2, 2.7 ghz core i7 and 16bg ram. this shouldn’t be happening.

This is happening to me, too. I’ve put my iMac specs in a post above. Can’t finish the event because I crash every time and then come back to an empty overflow. And yes, it has crashed my computer twice in addition to just the game crashing. Was this patch tested on macs? It crashes constantly. I was excited to do the end of this living story, but it’s just a pain with non-stop technical issues.

Also, the fix was never really a complete fix, but an improvement over broken. Are you guys still working on the performance because it is not the same as it was before you broke it.

I think people are right in that, while it is playable now, it is not up to the performance we had before. I didn’t do any benchmarking previously, but my fps was not something I noticed in big groups in wvw previously. Now, it gets on the edge of still playable and it is noticeable. I’ve been dipping down to 12fps in large groups on a late 2013 iMac.
Processor 3,4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2048 MB

And, yes, I get the crashes all the time, to, but those messages say they are being automatically reported.

Gaile, did the dev or testing team do benchmarking with comparisons of performance prior to the patch that killed our fps and the new one? If so, what were the results?

Nageth.5648:

I think that was code for, “It’s a good thing because it reduces the cost of having a Mac port to the point where the client can exist.” not, “Our programmers are gods who can code the entire game in FORTRAN in their sleep. Mwahahahaha. Even now they are reprogramming the Matrix!”

I’ll take what I can get, but I hope some lessons were learned to avoid such game breaking bugs from hitting us again even if we continue with this type of “beta”.

If I may make an analogy…

My husband and I both have razer naga mice. I am left-handed and he is right-handed. Last summer, Razer released their naga for left-handed users. For that, I was very happy. However, once I paid for the mouse (same price as the right-handed model), I expected it to work just as well as the right-handed model. I would not be grateful just to have it if it was constantly performing at a subpar level and occasionally failing to work all together. Even if it were free, I would not be happy with it if it performed like that.

With GW2, we all knew it was a wrapper when we bought it, but we expected an optimised, fully supported wrapper product. That is not what we got. The lack of a mac team and, if the assessments of this transgaming are near accurate, explains a lot.

If, as they keep saying, the mac market is important to them, I hope to see strong improvements in the future. A game client should be transparent and the only thing we should think about is the game experience itself.

I just got the new iMac and noticed the exact same thing. The fan really goes crazy where it did not on my 2010 model.