Guild Wars 2

RAIDS come down to 3 issues (the same 3 issues that plague every other MMO out there)

1. Community
2. personal skill level
3. willing to work with others

I definitely am seeing issue with #1 and #3 with in the raid system right now. While #2 is more of a learning curve most of the time.

IMHO, the raiding community just sucks. The Ego’s are high, the insults fly, and the cost of dealing with that is just not worth it within the Pug scene. Which is why there are Guilds.

But, a lot of Guilds are starting to go way of the Pug community now too. They think ‘Oh we can beat this super hard raid, we are kitten and deserve better players!’.

its an endless cycle that hits every MMO, and IMHO, the current raids are not worth this stress from it. They offer NOTHING that you cannot get from other areas of the game (except ‘legendary’ armor, big Woop!).

Raids were supposed to be a challenge for players that felt the rest of the PVE mode was not enough. But now its turned into this uncontrollable ego power house.

And yes, I bought HoT so I can raid. Yes, Anet said they would be challenging. But the current form of raids are beyond anything that was promised and its tearing the community apart.

Something is going to have to change.

Chances are its a server side issue that only affects a select block of servers (Cluster). As 99% of the time I never Crash/DC, but that 1% of the time I am not the only on crashing and this comes from DS, Teq, And FOTM maps across the board. Also, right before those types of crashes I see massive skill lags and combat rubber-banding, then the crash immediately follows.

I think while we can probably point fingers back to Users ISPs (or rather their Transports to Anet’s servers) that is not the end all of the issue. As if it were, there would be more wide of an area of players affected and Anets support lines/CRM would be filling up along with the forums.

I also believe that the 64bit client fixed 90% of the memory issues with the 32bit client. the 10% that is not fixed affect systems with only 8GB of system ram and using ultra/high Character model settings. On my 32GB desktop, running max settings the game will take up to 12.5GB of ram in some maps.

I agree with what others said about locking placement in maps. I think we need an in game option similar to what Tera has for map switching, actually, So that we can self control lockouts.

The Maps are limited to 300 players. That’s fine, but lets see the maps raised to a limit of 400 seats, 300 for players and 100 for phantom players (Disconnection spots).

Lets have a drop down on our Mini Map that lets us control what map we port into. We can either choose our held spot in the map we got dropped from, or we can take a less filled map (listed via Map Channels). As we all know, each map has several spawn segments of itself, so why cant the players get to control what map#/ID they spawn into?

Oh right, cause that would break the already broken Mega server.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Let’s talk six months from now on how HoT is viewed. When LS 3 bores and only one other wing of the raid has dropped.

Any MMO expac should be judged on whether or not it can carry the population until the next expansion.

Does anyone think HoT can do that? Seriously?

no, it cant. HoT has already lost me. I only hit the new zones to help others with HP’s and getting down to DS. That’s it. I dont even Raid due to the ‘meta’.

I do old world bosses, Teq, and FoTM.

GW2 is on a single thread IMHO. If another MMO drops that doesn’t have a monthly and is as appealing as GW2 has been prior to HoT, lets just say I fear for GW2’s future.

HoT maps are challenging, and at times overly annoying due to it. It is a LTP issue cause you have to adapt to them or you will fail.

If you are having issues surviving the maps you need to rethink what you are doing.

Also note, HoT was NOT designed to be solo’d, I dont care what anyone says. So if you are trying to take on 5 snipers alone, you will probably fail unless you are running a heavily based CC build with some survival setup.

its a Nvidia issue, not a MS or windows issue. Nvidia’s drivers are junk right now and with Windows pushing down a reference Nvidia driver that is severely broken, you kinda wonder why Nvidia doesn’t do something about it.

what YOU can do is disable the driver auto updates on win10, and then roll back the driver to one that is known to work.

Agnes.3259:

Something might be wrong with mainboard, and my guess is it could be this thing marked on the photo (hidden under radiators). It might be either overheating or it’s faulty. It supplies power to the CPU, and GW2 is very CPU demanding. You can try giving it a better cooling by temporarily putting a fan to cool it (a room fan or something, just to test).

Lol, thats the VRM’s and MOSFET’s. You can test those with load tests like Prim95, AIDA, …ect.

it could be a thermal safety shut off. In your BIOS look for BIOS events and verify what the shutoff temp is set it (if its enabled).

does the System just reboot or do you get a black screen before your Bios reposts? I would run some logging tools (GPU-Z and such) to desktop, and see what the logs output. also what is Event viewer telling you? I doubt there is a error code since its a reboot like this, but there could be something there.

also any recorded BIOS events?

How about this, lets see the CEO of NCSoft/Anet drink 10,000 drinks for the duration of the holiday event. If they can do it in life, then we have no reason to complain about it ‘in game’. Right?

Games should be more fun then in life right? I am sure they would find the visit to the ER ‘fun’, failing kidneys, soaked liver ‘Fun’ right? Just as much as we are finding out that farming out 10,000 items for the short duration of this holiday ‘fun’.

The direction Anet is going is simple; 3 Tiers, casual, semi-casual, hard-core. The effect shoulders are for the 3rd tier, hard-core player. Only those player types are going to get these items, and thats what Anet wants.

I personally only have an issue with the 10,000 drinks. Not cause of them being 10s each, or being a PITA to find via drops. Its because its only available for the duration of the holiday. Many of us do not have the time to devote to grind this out, and Anet is not being kind about it at all.

start in the right direction but the entire LFG tool needs overhauled, not just for raids.

Many of the tab options are too generalized, and if you default your LFG tag you go into ‘Open world content’.

Id like to see more of an interactive LFG page for Raids, and for PvE broken down by zones.

IMHO, Raid LFG SHOULD list your over all stats when you hover over a player that is not already in a party. OR the tool should do a gear check against the player who sets up their LFG tag, and prohibits it if the over all setup is not acceptable for raids in general.

SkyShroud.2865:

Jitsuryoku.9038:

SkyShroud.2865:

overclocking is effective for amd but not so for intel, there isn’t a noticeable difference when u oc intel for gw2

If you have a CPU that meets recommended system requirements you should feel no change at all – intel or amd. If your AMD cpu shows a performance boost in GW2 when overclocking then either your cpu is slow to begin with or it’s too loaded by other programs.

The topic author is running a 4 core i5 at 3.7ghz (default clock). I’m surprised anyone even considers suggesting he actually overclocks or upgrades to improve GW2 performance….

Until recently I was running a somewhat old i7 2.4GHz and GW2 showed no significant performance difference when i switched to a 4.0ghz default clock (no change in settings and settings were in medium range – not the highest).

Anet did not provide any recommended system requirements thus what you say base on that doesn’t apply. Where did you come up with your own set of recommended requirements btw?

A benchmark test on guild wars 2 for processors have already been done during the launch and it clearly show that amd has significant performance gain when you OC it while intel do not have any gain worthy of note. The reason for that is simple, anyone who has basic understanding on the difference between intel and amd will be capable of telling you that intel has a higher single core performance than amd.

LOL WUT?!

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/25390756-Minimum-System-Requirements

Windows® Minimum System Requirements

Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

Mac Beta Minimum System Requirements

Mac OS®X 10.7.X or later
Intel® Core™ i5 or better
4 GB Ram or better
NVIDIA® GeForce® 320M, ATI Radeon™ HD 6630M, Intel HD 3000 or better
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

Jitsuryoku.9038:

SkyShroud.2865:

overclocking is effective for amd but not so for intel, there isn’t a noticeable difference when u oc intel for gw2

If you have a CPU that meets recommended system requirements you should feel no change at all – intel or amd. If your AMD cpu shows a performance boost in GW2 when overclocking then either your cpu is slow to begin with or it’s too loaded by other programs.

The topic author is running a 4 core i5 at 3.7ghz (default clock). I’m surprised anyone even considers suggesting he actually overclocks or upgrades to improve GW2 performance….

Until recently I was running a somewhat old i7 2.4GHz and GW2 showed no significant performance difference when i switched to a 4.0ghz default clock (no change in settings and settings were in medium range – not the highest).

These statements totally depend on your GPU and ingame settings that you may run.

GW2 scales 1:1 with faster cores. the faster the cores, the faster GW2 can go, until your GPU bottlenecks.

thats how all games work that are CPU Bound.

I would suggest the 380x above the 960, as its beats it in nearly every benchmark, and can be found for the same price, the next up would be either a 970 or 390. You do not need a 390x for this game unless you were running 4k resolutions.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2193-amd-r9-380x-review-and-fps-benchmark/Page-2

really, is this anything that we have not come to expect of Anet? They have been doing this for a long time now.

OGDeadHead.8326:

HoT seems to be far more taxing on the gpu compared to vanilla game – more effects in general, so I would think everyone will notice a decrease in performance there that’s not bound to the performance of the cpu.

On my system I run a frame rate limiter set at 60 fps (through MSI Afterburner). In vanilla, it’s more or less always maxed out @ 60 fps (not on world boss events or in wvw), and the gpu is working at maybe 60-70% or so.

In HoT fps drops down to 35-45 fps in many places, and gpu usage is right there at max (99% is what afterburner shows). So it’s not so much a cpu issue in HoT, but rather gpu. In large events it’s again the cpu that limits performance, and combined this can turn out really bad when running around there.

Anet should provide more options when it comes to their graphic settings imho.

(I’m using a R9280 card, Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz, 24 gig ram, Win10)

This is due to the Field of view clip plane Anet chose to default to for HoT zones. Since the zones are deep (read as Tall and wide) you are seeing far more data then in vanilla GW2.

The only option to combat that is to lower your ingame settings. and even then, you are at the mercy of Anet’s defaults for certain things.

Also, at somepoint Anet also messed with character limit settings. Low has more models in it now, closer to what medium used to be, same with lowest settings. So I am 100% sure this is also playing into this with HoT performance as well.

sephiroth.4217:

sirsquishy.8531:

Elites, with how HP’s are right now, are fine IMHO. Once you learn the maps its quite easy to hammer out all your HPs to finish said elite spec now. the first couple where hard, had to learn placement and such. But the last 4-5 I did I was able to complete in under 3 hours each. So really, its a non issue. Just more annoying then anything else.

what we should be demanding is more content from the HoT purchase. I feel like I did not get my money’s worth out of this expansion. A month in, my two mains are full ascended, FoTM 80 equiped (AR), and all 9 of my characters have their elite specs.

All there is to do for me is Raids (seems to be elitists groups now), FoTM Grinding(dull and boring) DS and Teq, with a mix in of WvW when the server feels like bonding together.

Map Metas in HoT are constantly failing. If you are lucky to get in on a good map, eventually you will get a crash or a disconnect kicking you to a failed/failing map, so I just stopped doing them.

This game is extremely lack luster, and still buggy as hell.

I’m a PvP/WvW player.

I am not going to finish work and use my spare time playing a game mode that requires me to grind and play parts of the game I don’t enjoy. I would much rather spend my money and waste my free time on a game that doesn’t punish me for being a customer.

I’ve already put $100 into LoL skins in the last 2 weeks instead of character slots like I normally would, simply because I am not punished for doing so. I buy what I want, I then use what I paid for. (Anet can check that my account is in the top 10 on gw2effeciency for character slots, also top .03% of wealth, mostly from, you guessed it, GEM SALES with cash)

I am not a PvE player, if the game forces me to PvE, I’ll go back to GTA or Farcry where the PvE is actually fun and gives me a sense of accomplishment.

well yes, this I can understand. Also they nerfed the reward system under WvW for elite unlocks. You dont get them in bonus chests anymore. Its one of the main reasons I no longer WvW. Hell as of late I dont even log into the game anymore, just to get my daily account chest when I can remember.

GW2 has really gone to the dogs with HoT IMHO.

Extreme.8350:

sirsquishy.8531:

Extreme.8350:

sirsquishy.8531:

Extreme.8350:

Nobody knows for sure but when it comes to performance per dollar
I think Skylake wins by a long shot doesn’t matter if you go i5 or i7
Make sure you get ddr4 ram with fast timings.

I’m just going to leave this here.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/16

Please I said THINK i haven’t bothered doing any scientific analysis.
Its still not a bad choice. I’m using lga 1366 and it works flawless for my 60hz monitor.

Point is, since Ivybridge there has been no serious CPU gaming performance increase. And DDR4 makes no different compared to DDR3, because its in dual channel mode.

There is NO POINT in buying Skylake if you are on 3rd gen or newer Intel i5’s or i7’s. Just look at the benchmarks.

All right I’m just going to take you’re word for it.
Also i am aware of that x99 v3 processors are best and they also cost WAY more
While skylake is affordable for average customers.

X99 is not the ‘best’, they are really completely different. They use QPI instead of DMI to talk to the chipset, they offer more PCIE lanes, and exceed the standard 4 core count (current are 6 and 8, Broadwell-e is bringing 10core for the top end CPU).

and dont take my word for it, do your own research. start by looking at the benchmark review i linked. You will see just how much of a ‘difference’ there really is between CPUs for gaming.

Extreme.8350:

sirsquishy.8531:

Extreme.8350:

Nobody knows for sure but when it comes to performance per dollar
I think Skylake wins by a long shot doesn’t matter if you go i5 or i7
Make sure you get ddr4 ram with fast timings.

I’m just going to leave this here.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/16

Please I said THINK i haven’t bothered doing any scientific analysis.
Its still not a bad choice. I’m using lga 1366 and it works flawless for my 60hz monitor.

Point is, since Ivybridge there has been no serious CPU gaming performance increase. And DDR4 makes no different compared to DDR3, because its in dual channel mode.

There is NO POINT in buying Skylake if you are on 3rd gen or newer Intel i5’s or i7’s. Just look at the benchmarks.

mrauls.6519:

Skylake is Intel’s 6th gen right? DDR4 is new too right?

I’m not sure if both are compatible with the Z97 I have

Skylake will require a new CPU, new Motherboard, and new RAM.

the fastest CPU you can get (IF you are going to overclock) is the i7-5775c with out replacing your motherboard and ram.

And the cost of a decent skylake socket 1151 motherboard…might as well look at the X99 platform and wait for the Broadwell-e 8core CPUs to become available. THAT is going to be the best bang for your buck until Skylake-E comes into play.

Extreme.8350:

Nobody knows for sure but when it comes to performance per dollar
I think Skylake wins by a long shot doesn’t matter if you go i5 or i7
Make sure you get ddr4 ram with fast timings.

I’m just going to leave this here.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/16

Elites, with how HP’s are right now, are fine IMHO. Once you learn the maps its quite easy to hammer out all your HPs to finish said elite spec now. the first couple where hard, had to learn placement and such. But the last 4-5 I did I was able to complete in under 3 hours each. So really, its a non issue. Just more annoying then anything else.

what we should be demanding is more content from the HoT purchase. I feel like I did not get my money’s worth out of this expansion. A month in, my two mains are full ascended, FoTM 80 equiped (AR), and all 9 of my characters have their elite specs.

All there is to do for me is Raids (seems to be elitists groups now), FoTM Grinding(dull and boring) DS and Teq, with a mix in of WvW when the server feels like bonding together.

Map Metas in HoT are constantly failing. If you are lucky to get in on a good map, eventually you will get a crash or a disconnect kicking you to a failed/failing map, so I just stopped doing them.

This game is extremely lack luster, and still buggy as hell.

OP – Something like this will get you good frame rates at 1080p

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/sirsquishy/saved/#view=TW2MnQ

Your CPU is fine. Chances are your GPU is whats holding you back.

But, the best CPU you can get for your system is a i7-5775c (500-560~ USD now and rarely found).

sounds like a dying/faulty Video card.
Only thing I can suggest is to make sure you are installing the MOBILITY drivers and not the desktop drivers.

I equate HoT to D3:reaper of souls.
And who still plays D3? I sure as hell dont…..

Add glider skins to the game for gem costs is just a slap in the fact to players who are HoT enabled, IMHO.

to use a glider you must have HoT, no F2P account is going to have that. So instead of letting the player base earn these new glider skins via seasonal rewards, we must go route of gems.

Its pathetic and needs to stop.

no reward in GW2 is good, and that’s the problem. Since the middle of November (when i finished my last Specialization) I have not played more then 2-3 hours a week until yesterday when I went back into FOTM to see how that part of the game is going. Its crap, its all a bunch of crap now.

Until the rewards increase, I refuse to play anymore. I am logging in for my daily account login chest, then logging out until i see some serious patch changes in regards to the rewards.

GW2 is a pile of crap in its current state.

warbignime.4610:

sirsquishy.8531:

I would say HoT is worth it if you are Free2Play right now. If you have the core game already, I honestly do not think HoT is valued at 49.99 at all. Its an expansion that is worth 29.99 and not 1 penny more.

If you are casual you only get 5 new maps, 2-3 that have good meta’s, 1 that has a crappy meta that never succeeds on a 2 hour cool down, 1 new Class, a handful of soloable achievements that yield skins (mist walker armor for one) and the mastery system (Auto Loot is VERY nice, but should not be a mastery!!!!!!!!)

So even at my 29.99 price, the content just isnt there. But it is NOT worth the full price as it stands.

It’s not about number of maps, need I to remind you that every single HoT map are extremely large and has incredible verticality, so every HoT map is at least 2~3 regular maps. Also TD meta is awesome just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s a well designed meta.

5 Maps that can be mapped out in a day if you are OCD about it or a couple of days if you are casual does not make them HUGE maps. Each map is about the size of a major City with 2 Levels. Thats it.

and the Meta I am complaining about is Dragons Stand. If you are not lucky enough to taxi into a successful organized map, you are typically on a farm map with no hope to completion.

The other 3 metas are fine and fun. But we need more content. its not worth the 49.99 we all paid for it. Esp those of us that already had the core game.

I would say HoT is worth it if you are Free2Play right now. If you have the core game already, I honestly do not think HoT is valued at 49.99 at all. Its an expansion that is worth 29.99 and not 1 penny more.

If you are casual you only get 5 new maps, 2-3 that have good meta’s, 1 that has a crappy meta that never succeeds on a 2 hour cool down, 1 new Class, a handful of soloable achievements that yield skins (mist walker armor for one) and the mastery system (Auto Loot is VERY nice, but should not be a mastery!!!!!!!!)

So even at my 29.99 price, the content just isnt there. But it is NOT worth the full price as it stands.

Since we know that the base cost for the next expansion is 49.99, and we now have expectation on how MUCH more content that 49.99 gets us….

……
……

No, I will NEVER buy another expansion for GW2 again. Period.

HoT is a pile of worthless garbage and really shows what direction This game is going in.

I will continue to Play through HoT (already beat the Story on 3 characters, working on Raid progression) but after I have had my fill, Im out.

Swift.1930:

Healix.5819:

First, you should refer to your motherboard manual to determine which slots you should be using for optimal performance. You may also want to update the BIOS and manually configure the memory based on what is recommended by the manufacturer.

If you’re using Windows 7 or higher, search the control panel for “memory” and run the memory diagnostics tool. Alternatively, download and boot memtest86.

I’m confused… what are you suggesting this for? I’m not facing a RAM issue. Everything’s working perfectly here. Seriously… if you’re going to reply, please read the post first.

Chances are there is a Motherboard issue with Dual channel setup. The Fact that GW2 causes your system to crash and ‘other’ programs don’t just means GW2 is hitting your ram faster and more often then those other programs.

What you should do is put the ram back to its optimal config (dual channel) and then run Memtest86+ on it for 24-48hours and see if there are any reported memory errors. If so, then you know what the issue is. Follow the errors down to what channel and bank they happened on and replace the defective memory module. If errors happen on both banks, then its probably the system board at fault (unlikely that both sticks would go bad).

You are better off buying a G3258 and a half way decent motherboard then buying an AMD board for that FX8350.

And you’ll have several upgrade paths that will be more then viable for up to 6 years from now, where the FX8350 IS THE BEST chip on AM3+, and the AM3+ Socket is being retired in 2016 when Zen comes out.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8232/overclockable-pentium-anniversary-edition-review-the-intel-pentium-g3258-ae/2

http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3

edit
Just for a fun read – http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/07/amd-processor-core-class-action-lawsuit/

NilSatis.6720:

Kraggy.4169:

A piece of software can’t “set your GPU on fire”, overheating is due to bad or inadequate cooling which in your case doesn’t seem to tolerate the GPU being run at load.

By definition, a piece of software can’t make a processor work harder than it is designed to do, so any heat issues are poor cooling design.

Utter utter rubbish. You display a simple 3d environment on a modern gpu capable of churning out 2000 fps on that image and it will overheat and cause coil whine etc as the capacitors are strained. That is not what is happening on this game, but badly coded/optimised games also can, and will heat your gpu/cpu up more than they should; and this statement you made is utter crap. The “setting on fire” is an expression if I really need to tell you that; what they mean is their gpu is working far harder than it should be and is heating up as a result. Good cooling or not.

I have noticed (liquid cooling on cpu; tri-x cooler on gpu) that this game is really heating up the gpu/cpu a LOT more than any dx9 game should by definition. There is something badly wrong with the latest patches since HOT and they need to investigate asap. I know people who are artifacting etc. JUST on this game because of said issues. There is a major problem and Id suggest they know this. Fixing it needs to be a priority and statements like this are stupid and achieve nothing.

I see some good suggestions about cooling above, but when you have played the game extensively you can see the problems that are there now that never used to be there; users cooling issues are another “issue” entirely.

Sorry, you are wrong.

TDP has been an RFC for a long time and for good reason. If a GPU, CPU, or RAM is overheating its due to poor cooling. That could be a bad/clogged fan, dried up Thermal Paste, or blown heatpipes.

its not going to be the fault of the software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

OP – It’s ok, you’ll be back, cause as MMO’s go GW2 is hard to beat right now.

And since there is no Sub, you are not really leaving. You just think you are :-)

lets add some HoT Dailies that get players;

Killing an legendary Drake
doing 3/3 Hero Points (getting credit if you have them already)
Random Gathering
completing Events during one of the Metas
opening X ground Boxes with Zone Specific Items (Crowbars and the like)

I think Anet needs to make these types of alerts ingame on popups or something as well as in the forums. So many players never come to the forums and so many more dont know they exist.

UnbentMars.9126:

I completely agree with Sirsquishy. Sure, the monetary rewards may not be all that high, but then go do something else. I have waited for raids a long time and I’m extremely pleased that Anet is finally making a concerted effort to add lasting endgame content.

I could not agree with you more.

I think old school GW2 players are going to be pleased with the raids. Personally I am hoping that ‘pro-raiders’ from other games get hooked on raids in GW2, as we could use an experienced raiding community.

But the lack of Gear progression is going to throw a lot of those ‘pro-raiders’ away from GW2 as they wont feel as they are getting as much from the experience as they normally do in other games.

so its a double edged sword :-)

time will tell. Raids were in Beta for a short short while. I am sure Raids will be tuned as time moves on.

As it is, there is a raid token system along with that 10G + RNG stuff. And since Ascended is the top stats in the game you are really not losing out on anything with raids being what they are on paper today. Once you are in full ascended stats, all thats left is how you look (FashionWars2: Heart of Thorns Edition).

So really, even with raids, we will all be back to what the game was at the time HoT was announced. Just with less ways to earn good Gold to convert to Gems for the once a month(If that) Gem store item that may find its way into your account.

Personally, I am looking at raids as a thing to DO in the game. rewards are a 2nd or 3rd notch below the activity itself. The way I look at it, Ill raid on 1-2 main characters, get them all equipped in ascended and then after they are done, move to my next 1-2 main characters for that quarter (I am thinking 3 months per character to be full equipped for the harder wings?)

I am looking for more achievement Points (Id like to get my full radiant set), Mastery Points (we need more!) Skins and Minis. Gear, stats, and that kinda stuff is not nearly as important here.

As for Gold, I have other ways to farm for gold. So thats hardly an issue here. For me its finding interesting things to do in the game. As it is, I have Elite specs on 7 more toons to complete + map exportation in HoT on them. Teq, Map Metas in HoT, and the Mouth to kill. Mix Raids into that and now I have a full week of things I can switch it up with. rather then the same old crap night in and night out.

I am no longer doing the world boss train, Though I do Jormag and Shatterer if they are up when I login before Teq, I am no longer working on Map completion, and I don’t farm Champ bags anymore. And I would like to keep it that way.

Though I do miss a good dungeon run, but the rewards do not justify the time and frustration with other players there anymore.

The HoT maps are garbage maps IMHO. They are there to make the content last longer by making you ‘Think’ out of the box to get from Point A to point C.

Just do what I am working on.

Pick your 1-2, or * characters you want the Elite Spec on and get as much as the maps discovered as you can. Farm out the HPs to complete the specs, make sure you discover the maps WP’s where the good Meta’s are.

Then never go back into HoT except for the Meta. Just.like.the.rest.of.the.game.

That is the future of GW2. Maps are there to gate you to ‘completion’ as filler until Anet can come out with something better (AKA Raids, this week supposedly).

Also, try mapping with your younger family members in HoT.

HoT’s maps are not 9 year old friendly at all…..

Currently the LFG tool is not being very useful for HoT content cause the LFG general list is full of meta maps. I think what the LFG tool needs is to be sectioned down by ‘Central Tyria’ and ‘Heart of Thorns’ and then the respective Maps. So that for those of us looking for a HP train, or just general mapping can do so with out dealing with hundreds of LFG:Meta lists.

what needs nerfed are the lines they leave behind. IMHO the lines do to much static damage when you are moving over them. When you get 4-5 snipers making those stupid lines, your dodge roll doesnt always clip all the lines, and you can take some serious damage.

Otherwise the snipers are easy to contend with.

There are optimizations in the 64bit client that are not in the 32bit, and it could be something as simple as better memory management.

I loaded the 64bit client on 5 machines last night and I saw huge increases in many areas of the game.

Over all;

All systems can run higher character settings now. Both model and limit, and the FPS hit is not nearly as bad as on the 32bit client.

Combat mode does not drop the FPS by 30-40, now its by 18-25

On my Laptops I can run everything on max and get 65FPS in open areas, 35FPS looking at a large number of players (Teq for example) and 24FPS in combat. on the 32Bit client it was significantly less. Such as open areas was scratching at 30FPS and in combat was 8FPS. So something is different in the 64bit client.

On my machines with 16GB of ram or more (My workstation and Laptop both have 32GB) setting the character settings to max the Game jumped to 5.4GB from 1.7GB immediately, and as more character models where being rendered that ram usage peaked at 10.2GB on both of these machines.

On the machines with 8GB (Another Laptop and my WIP ITX build) the Ram usage never seemed to go above 5.7GB.

System specs are as follows, for performance comparisons.

Laptops
M4600 Win7x64 i7-2620QM R9 M270x, 240G 850Evo SSD 1080p
M6600 Win10x64 i7-2720QM HD6970M 480G Arc100 SSD 1080p

Desktops
i7-4790K@4.6ghz(MSI Z97-G45) R9 295×2 32GB RAM 240G ARC100’s RAID1 1600p
i7-4790 Asrock H97M-ITX/AC R9 270x 16GB ram, 250G 850Evo SSD 1080p
i5-4570 ECS H97M-ITX R9 390 8GB of ram, 240G ARC100 SSD 1600×900

TheHeretic.3529:

Chaba.5410:

Guardian of Angels.9867:

Most curious thing happened, my FPS counter from nVidia Shadowplay doesn’t work in the 64 bit version.

I just checked and it’s still working on the 32 bit version :P

I wonder if this is related to something I ran into last night. MSI Afterburner would not record when I ran the 64-bit client.

Has anyone been able to record gameplay footage while running the 64 bit client?

I can confirm that I had to change the name to be able to record with Nvidia Shadowplay.

Thats a rights issue. 64bit code is signed, and windows has a security lock down from 64bit runtimes from being accessed via shared processes if they are located under ‘program files’ and ‘widows\system32’. So that makes sense.

Anet – there are a few things you need to do here

1. Make a proper 64bit installer, have it detect the 32bit .exe and rename it to _old or something. Then have the 64bit installer name the new 64bit client to gw2.exe. This will fix the Laptops with switchable graphics issues reported earlier.

2. have the installer move the game files from “C:\Program files” to “C:\Guild Wars2”, which includes the entire runtime folder and redo all the desktop and start menu shortcuts. Otherwise 3rd party applications will NEVER be able to interact with the GW2 64bit client due to Microsoft NTFS security lockdowns. The only work around is to run the game as an administrator, and that is NOT a proper workaround and very dangerous to the local system if the game client becomes compromised.

3. Since the game client is small and both 32bit and 64bit use the same .dat file, make a new launcher that gives users the option to select 64bit (when a detected supported OS is present) and 32bit (for legacy support/testing). So that users do not need to mess with file names and structures here. Also move the in game settings to be accessible via the launcher and setup system detected limits from here, you can better explain the in game options from this screen. As once in game you can always adjust them after the fact.

I think doing some of this will really help getting users on board with the 64bit client, and you embed 32bit support via a new pre-launcher.

The 32bit version of the game has memory management issues. The more character models on the screen the worse these memory management issues become. The current work around is to reduce your character limit settings to reduce the memory foot print the game takes.

I run Medium on my desktop and Low on my laptops and i NEVER crash. If I run High I nearly always crash after 1-2 hours in a populated zone, Very High with in 30mins near a mess of players (Like a MAW world boss fight).

its that character limit setting that fixes/breaks the OOM crashes.

Holidays have little to do with it.

The fix is to reduce your character limit setting down to Medium, Low, or Lowest (depending on your current setting) or upgrade your PC to 64bit and use the new (beta) 64bit GW2 client.

Ansau.7326:

a) Making the game multithreading is the optimal solution, but it’s also the hardest task for devs, since it requires to redo a lot of the coding of the game engine.
This is not an easy, neither a quick thing to do in a game which is constantly being updated, so unless thy have being doing it secretly, there’re pretty much no chances to see it happening.
Also, it is false the game uses one core. I can guarantee you there’s a problem with your configuration or you have a setting that is making a huge bottlenecking.
I have an i5 4690k oced to 4.5GHz and it’s easy to see cpu being stressed nearly to its maximum, being the least used core to around 60%.
Also, there’re videos in youtube of 8 core FX using all cores and seing % of usage beyond 40%.

b)A dev said recently upgrading the API wouldn’t bring performance improvements, since the worst scenarios in gw2 are not bottlenecked by the graphic rendering part.
Also, the upgrade from dx9 to dx12/vulkan is really huge. The newer APIs are low level, which means devs need to do a lot of the work the driver was doing since now.

You are correct on the DX API. The multi-threading is what the game needs the most.

The game uses a single management thread to control all of the little parts. That management thread needs to be split between 2-4 (on an i7) threads depending on the detected CPU. That will give the most performance out of anything else that is left to do.

GW2 will spawn 50+ threads depending on the in game settings, what zone you are in, if you are in or out of combat…ect. But all of those worker threads are controlled by a single management thread and that is the bottleneck.

But for today, I will take a 64bit client!

Ok so the game currently does use more then 1 core. My i5-4570 with my 390 running the 64bit client was pulling 10GB of ram in HoT zones, and hitting EVERY CORE at 75%+. Nothing else running in the background (Fresh Install of Win7x64 + Drivers only).

Game runs smooth as pie on max settings, played for 8 hours last night no OOM crashes.

This 64bit client is a god send, its EXACTLY what we needed.

Kobrakatana.8264:

Has there been a recent test of what graphics setting have the biggest impact in FPS?

I’m currently running a ATI R7 370 card with a phenom 4 core at 3.8 ghz. (set at High Performance) I realize I wont be able to render 100 fps in Lion Arch at prime time but want to squeeze as much beauty out of the game as I can without talking a hit in frames.

So what is your trick to get good FPS

The R9 370 is a pretty old card. Its actually a HD7870, which was rebadged to a R9 270 AND R9 270x, then again for your R9 370.

In all its a pretty good card for the price (about 119~ TOPS) but its not a ‘real’ performer by today’s standards.

The biggest short coming of your system is that AMD CPU. If you were to upgrade to a Haswell G3220 and continue to use that R9 370, you would be able to get 50-60FPS in lions Arch with the correct in game settings, and you would break 100FPS out in open areas.

I had a G3220 and a HD5770 setup for a while (you can find screenshots in my posting history) that would break 100FPS in queensdale on Medium settings (HD5770 is quite old)

that is how OLD that Phenom II actually is. It will be beaten by a 3.0ghz Dual core Intel CPU you can buy on amazon for 39.99.

Did you name the 64bit client gw2.exe? If so, it should be working.

Looks like the 64bit client trashed your .dat file. Do you have a backup/copy of your data.dat anywhere else? If not, you now need to redownload the game data, as it was deleted and recreated.