Guild Wars 2

Hello, forum friends!

I’m Jen! :) Quill&Ink was born some nine months ago — off the back of some…questionable guild experiences — in the hopes of finally creating a sort of home away from home. And I know, I know, weary forum scroller, that literally every post on here claims the same darn thing…how tiring it must all be. But hear me out!

The Hook
Quill&Ink is a small guild (and happily-so!) of friends that hope to put people before players — a home for those for whom other giant, impersonal and drama-ridden guilds just don’t cut it. So before gameplay, skill, or age, we’re built around lovely people! (That’s you). If you’re not one of those, please scroll no further. You Shall Not Pass! If there’s one thought that runs through everything, it’s that who we’re with matters as much as (if not moreso?) than how many.

The Deets
We try do a little bit of everything, from fractals (T4s) to fractal-training (T1s), missions, raids attempts, Christmas parties and whatever else we can conjure up — and we’d really love to do a whole lot more! With the right people, I believe that’s only a matter of time.

All of this matters less though, than how we do what we do. And that’s: together. I’m faaairly confident when I say you’ll find nary a nicer bunch in all the land, so even if we have to peel each other’s corpses off the floor of a Fractal we’ll do it in good spirits! (And if you find someone that doesn’t embody that with us I’ll be having stern words…)

How It Works
As a small guild, every name on the roster makes a difference, and brings something new to the table. We really believe that, so if you’re one of those wallflowers hoping to join and be a nobody somewhere down the roster, you’re outta’ luck. We want our friends to eventually own, build and shape the guild together, taking it to new and exciting places together with us :) You might not be the most experienced player — but you’re a part of the family now! We’re still learning of course, but the idea is to work all our systems around getting as many people involved as possible.

Requirements
Be nice…? Heh. Be someone you wish others would be for you. A lot of our guild is built around and relies on that :) Other than that we’re a diverse lot — we’ve got people studying just about everything, artists, doctors, dads, ad-men, composers…you name it — and we love that sorta thing. Point is: Bring yourself!!! c:

We’re mainly looking for people who click with this mindset to really pick and invest in us, and to be a part of this little project together with us! So try not to be a wallflower (we’ll know you!!) and don’t be one of those people with six guilds just needing a seventh to fill that ‘social’ chatlist hole. Yeesh. There’s MSN for that ;)

Bye!
I always say I’ll keep it brief but I don’t, so I’ll tie it off here. Here’s the rest of it and obviously the contact form! http://quillnink.club/

See you in-game!
<3 Jen

Greetings! There’s so much I could say, but I will try to keep things brief for the sake of this post.

Background
A year ago, I (Jen) founded Quill & Ink to be a different guild. Having done the rounds in huge 400-man guilds, hardcore guilds, rp guilds…. I found nothing quite…clicked for someone of my temperament. Sure, they served their purpose. They were efficient, they were big and noisy. But none of them were… home.

Home [noun]; Somewhere familiar, within which you feel safe, individually cared for and free to enjoy your time – typically with family.

Quill & Ink was built on a single core idea; to serve people before players. An endeavour to build a different community than those you usually find in-game; one that’s genuine, kind, friendly and safe! (Yes, everyone promises this, but few go out of their way to actually build and invest in it, and it quickly ends up another giant guild with lots of randoms you can’t actually account for, filled with silly teenage drama, hormones and language).

To this end we chose to actively get to know each of our new friends, and with very slow growth (we don’t just throw invites out all willy-nilly on mapchat) started to pull together a group of Tyria’s absolute loveliest folk. (After three years of GW2, I still find it hard to believe such kind, generous people played games). Over time, we achieved something much bigger than we’d originally pictured.

We built a home

The Ask
We’re just 20 of us. A small guild. And we’re okay with that, because each of those 20 brings something different to the table and gives it all

We’re looking for people who can align with this, with what we’re trying to do, to come on board and help us build it. Specifically, we’re looking to build consistency, leadership across various aspects of the game, and expand our circle of friends. As we grow and take on new challenges, we’d love those who find joy in helping, mentoring, guiding, leading in to bloody battle to come own, lead and build this together with us. We’re by no means hardcore, or the best at what we do, but we’d sure like to be close. The more of you we have helping us, the more we can take under our wing and push the game experience in meaningful ways!

If you’re a returning player, a weary veteran or simply looking for something different and meaningful from your guild experience, let’s chat!

slinkiestyew.6823

Love,
Jen

www.quillandink.club

After your legendary backpack, you get the chance to be a truly legendary soul and a really valuable member of community (as well as a magnificent person) by kindly queuing alongside the poor souls stuck in MMR hell (not bad players, mind you, just the ones the system RNGed to death) and helping them out of the pit so they can be awesome, just like you You’ve got nothing to lose, and you’ll be a truly valiant hero in their eyes.

Or you could play Overwatch.

As it currently stands, we’re getting awarded tickets upon crossing League Divisions (sapphire to ruby gives 20, etc).

This is fine in theory and well in intention, but paired with League MMR matchmaking (which has an equal chance of fast-tracking you on 40-long winstreaks to legendary OR 400-long losingstreaks to hell — roll the dice on those initial matchups!), these can be a frustrating endeavour to embark on.

Instead of musing about how matchmaking miiiight be better, what if we simply dropped tickets at the end of every X number of matches instead (make X high if you want – like 30 or something)? So even on my 70th blowout lost game in a row (thanks, Blizzard), if you choose to tough it out and grind you can still at least maybe progress a little bit toward your wings without feeling like you’re pouring both time and soul down a League black hole you have no chance of ever seeing the end or reward of?

I’m sure the ‘l33t’ players enjoying the good side of the mmr curve will say ’that’s just where you belong!’ aaaaaand frankly I don’t mind. Sure. We don’t all need to be ‘legendary’ tiered. I just think those who sink 300 hours of dedication despite matchup losses deserve their wings as much as the guy who got carried through it on a system streak in 3 hours, because I don’t know about you, but anyone who experienced and face-tanked that mmr hell is truly darn legendary in my books!

By having ‘pity tickets’ drop every say, 30 games, you’d also remove a lot of the toxicity in league from frustrated players who reeaally are just there to work towards a goal and play some fun matches, but at the moment have absolutely 0 way to beat the system or progress towards it, and are essentially forced to ‘hit legendary tier or bust’. I reckon it’d be a lot friendlier if people stuck in sapphire were still slowly chugging along, albeit a bit slower than everyone else. The same way wiped raids that still award pity Magnetite shards has helped a lot more people not mind dying.

Dusk

Bauxite Chemicals: NPCs to escort always get stuck in the wall (preventing progress) OR fail to spawn next to the crash-site. Letting them die and then reviving them does not free them from the wall.

Modniir Ulgoth: Gives the wrong collection completion credit – gives one for slaying an overlord in Kessex Hills instead of correct one for Harathi Hinterlands.

Bolt

Explorer Loana: Upon completion of the quest does not properly become a vendor – can’t get collection item off her.

I’ve just gotten into the wonderful world of Tyria a few months back. I’ve been enjoying every aspect of it – sinking endless hours into really exploring and immersing myself in this world. Every aspect, that is, but the Personal Story.

I’d trailed off doing my Personal Story quests at about L40…and never went back to it long after having hit L80. I recently decided to remedy this, pushing on with my quest till near completion. But as someone trying to immerse myself and really invest in my characters’ development, some things just really…get to me.

My Rise to Power

I main a Human. I find it real strange that in my storyline, as an originally insignificant, weak nobody, I pop in to save a few troops and citizens from a handful of Centaurs and am suddenly regarded as the Hero of Shaemoor even by Queen Jennah herself.

Just like that, I’m the most trusted emissary of the Queen – she has all kinds of meetings with me in which I could’ve easily assassinated her had my intentions not been so pure. Everyone barely knows me, yet I am suddenly given secret missions of upmost importance. I work my way up the ranks of my Order like a star – when in reality I’d merely slain a few unruly mobs.

Finally, we meet Trahearne and I’m seemingly his only trusted Commander. It kinda throws me out of it a little. It seems…silly. The quests I’m made to do feel trivial, and yet I am rewarded with the highest of honors for completing them. Are the rest of the NPC characters simply that incompetent? That feats of normalcy are mind-blowingly great? That’s not to say I don’t want to be a hero – just that I didn’t want to be a hero after a fetch-quest.

Heck, the same applies to Trahearne. This guy comes out of nowhere, proves nothing to us save for his lack of experience and his naivety, and yet every soldier and every character out there has utmost respect for him and follows him to their deaths. What’s going on?

Storyline Drama

The thing that puts me off most about the Personal Story, though, is the scale of it all. Here we are, supposedly up against the biggest, darkest threat Tyria has ever faced – the all-powerful Elder Dragons. And what are we doing? Killing a handful of Risen. A literal handful. And doing that seems to lift everyone’s spirit. “That’ll show Zhaitan” they say. “We are like a thorn in its flesh”, “We’ve struck at the heart of Zhaitan”. I mean. Did I miss something here?

We proceed to INVADE ORR ITSELF….with a handful of Pact soldiers. Along the way we are faced by similar handfuls of Risen. The quests in this area feel absolutely trivial. We’re going after some small mobs here and there. Setting ambushes for small mobs. Trahearne seems to think this is a path to sure victory. Has he seen Tequatl? Tequatl, a lesser dragon to Zhaitan, can single-handedly wipe the map of all human life.

What’s missing is a sense of dread. A sense of doom. Zhaitan needs to swoop down out of nowhere and put some things in perspective – preferably mop the floor with Trahearne’s now dead body. Where are the armies? Where are our armies? And where are theirs? Or are all great wars fought in pockets of five mobs? As the player, we don’t necessarily need to engage millions of enemies, but we should at least see them off in the distance!

As it stands, the Personal Story feels…weak. Flimsy and uninspiring. It makes me feel like the mobs in any given dungeon’s Explorable Mode are tougher to take down than Zhaitan’s own army. I’m even okay with playing side-saddle to Trahearne…if he was more inspiring a leader. A soft voice with silly naive lines at what’s meant to be the most dire of times (like our camp being attacked and characters we know dying) does not a leader make.

Tonn’s (the Asura that was KIA) wife had more believable lines and drama in the span of five minutes than Trahearne did the entire game – making the dreadful mission of breaking the news to her the most compelling, most enjoyable moment all game. Where’s the sense of fear? Why does marching into the heart of Orr feel….oddly silly? Why do all the NPCs seem incompetent and naive? Why is there no real darkness, no real threat? Is the Personal Story made to accommodate players aged 5 and up? :/

This dungeon is rough, it’s tough, and it’s a barrel of fun and challenge! It’s got unique mechanics that take awhile to learn (above the usual skip-stack-skip combos) and are immensely satisfying when done right.

What’s WRONG is the community. It’s surprisingly awful ._. We’re getting these “Achievement Point” gated groups popping up everywhere – as poor an indicator as any on the quality of a player. I just picked up the game a few months ago, I’ve got a low AP rating, but I’ve cleared the dungeon and I know what I’m doing and am happy to be a team-player.

My two party mates, on the other hand, with about eighty bazillion APs each are bickering like six year olds with lines like “Oh I’M the better mesmer, eff you!” and “Oh REALLY! Why are you downed right now then? You suck.” and of course the “LET ME LINK YOU ALL MY GEAR. You guys ALL suck and I’m tired of ‘carrying you’” conversation that has me about ready to swap teams to join the Sparki / Slick party instead. Another party member tries to clarify a mechanic and is greeted with “-____-”s and “get out if you don’t know what you’re doing” mockery.

Of course, the group ultimately disbands, members rage-quit and all progress is lost as we are kicked out of the instance. …Again (Good riddance). It’s impossible to run this thing without being booted out of the dungeon halfway or having to find new members every few steps.

Is this the kind of community we are? :/ Here’s a call to patience, to teamwork and to having fun Drop the absolutely silly elitism and pride and enjoy yourselves already! Be a friend

*That said: If anyone is of similar sentiment, do add me and perhaps we’ll clear this thing together with smiles and cookies instead! As a mostly lone player without a guild of 2000 others to back me up, finding friends tends to be difficult.

The Tequatl fight is great fun, it really is! The fight mechanics are fantastic, I love that the fight has phases and I love that fighting a dragon feels just the way it should – terrifying, a vertical difficulty wall, exciting, with just a glimmer of hope for success.

What isn’t fun was my ability to experience the event. …Or should I say lack of? Never before have I had to wait so long to play the game. The first wait, of course, was the infamous Overflow wait. The system worked comfortably-ish for the Scarlet events, with Overflows doing their job, albeit with a lack of server pride. (Keep in mind Scarlet events also offered a consolation prize upon failure).

However, combined with other mechanics in the Tequatl Rising content, the thousand naysayers in mapchat (those who’d somewhat understandably already given up before the fight had even begun and were actively encouraging others to do so), it became an exercise in frustration and futility.

The only glimmer of hope then, of course, lay in getting into my server’s Main map. I’m from the Tarnished Coast – a large server with a decent rate of downing Tequatl. Of course, this means getting through about ten bazillion Overflow maps – which is exactly what I did. I stood. I stood. And I stood for four flippin’ hours before I got into my server’s Main. Hours I’d have LOVED to be spending actually, yknow, playing the game maybe? But stand in Sparkfly is what I did. Tabbed out to, yknow, not play the game or have to look at that same old level 66 dragonfly while waiting. And I was absolutely ecstatic when I finally got through.

This, unfortunately, was only the beginning of the wait. See, the way the event is designed, it’s only possible at the RIGHT time of day when EVERYONE’s online, playing and god-forbid putting half a heart into it. It’s much like having to catch the moonlight that one day each year to read the runes on Thorin’s map (The Hobbit). At most other times, the map is comprised of 1. AFKers holding their spots for “later tonight” 2. People whining about AFKers and spewing all kinds of unwholesome content in mapchat 3. People who’ve given up due to #2. It’s absolutely infuriating.

“Give it a few hours” they tell me in mapchat. “THEN people’ll be online and Tequatl will go down”, they say. Unfortunately, it’s 4am, I’ve stood in Spark flippin’ Fly for about infinity hours now – a map I’ve completed and REcompleted about 70 times and I’m sick, disappointed and tired. I’ve dedicated a good 3/4 of my day to this thing with not a single anything to show for it but my new white hairs and frown wrinkles.

The absurd 1.5 hours between spawns that absolutely HAS to be spent standing in Sparkfly (or you’ll lose your place in Main, see), that closed content designed ONLY for Peak-Time America (that I’m not a part of), all the waiting while tabbed out just to be disappointed by an event whose success depends on naysayers and understandably angry folks on mapchat…

That, is the complete opposite of fun. Designing challenging content is great. Designing challenging content that one barely gets to access….feels downright awful. Super Adventure Box’s Tribulation Mode was awfully difficult, and it had me going at it for fabulous, enjoyable hours. Because I could!

The same way I could be a Sunbringer.
…If they’d only let me try.

Irraia.3065:

The issue is not the poor performance of the computer since I get normally 30 FPS on max settings in a medium-dense population just sitting in Lion’s Arch and still have the crash after 5-15 minutes. On low/lowest settings, I get anywhere between 24fps on extremely populated maps (Killing Scarlet Event with hundreds of toons standing around) up to 300 fps watching the dredge play in the blowing snow from on top of a Dredgehaunt Cliff (60-90 FPS avg/normal gameplay with slightly above low settings) and the crashes still happen abet in lesser frequency dependent on the amount of characters/actions/effects in range over time.

It is clear the root issue is with the underlining technology of the VM to run the client for macs whether it struggles to keep up with the amount of data being passed or performing garbage collection routines.

HOW is everyone else on the Mac client getting such absolutely fantastic framerates? I’m on a rMBP with 16GB RAM, 2.6GHz i7 processors and I’m struggling to hit 18FPS – ever (even in the emptiest of maps) on the Lowest / None settings. It’s AWFUL. I’ve tried everything I’ve read / know how and am about to resign to the fact that I’m doomed to be playing a slideshow forever despite my high-end (ish) machine.

I spent a very, very large portion of today (a good six hours) running the last zone of World 1 today on Tribulation Mode. Yes, it could’ve been done much faster, BUT I’m kind of a scrub when it comes to jumping around and I’m trying to figure my path out — and I haven’t enough baubles to get myself a torch so everything’s about two times slower.

THAT isn’t the problem though. Mind-melting, suicide-inducing hours and half a billion continue coins later, I manage to defeat the King Toad. AND I DIE. For reasons yet unknown, I’m suddenly dead. And given a bunch of seconds to get back to the Chest for my coin. And of course, I can’t because those darn lilypads with the split second of lag makes it nearly impossible to do.

All those hours. All that pain. For naught.

I would throw myself off a cliff at this point, but I’ve already spent all day doing that in the SAB. If there was perma-death in-game I’d opt for it right now. My soul is absolutely crushed. WHAT KIND OF HORRIFIC MECHANIC IS THAT?!

:(

Josh Foreman.8250:

Smaller team, actually. And the length was my own desire to get as many ideas as I could in there. I spent several months pulling 16 hour days and a couple weeks where I did a couple 36 hour stretches, went home, slept and came back and did it again. No one else wanted me to do that. In fact those sort of crazy hours are discouraged at ArenaNet. I did that because I freeking love what I do and wanted this release to be the best thing ever. Turns out I pushed too hard to get those new mechanics in there and I’m being told here over and over that all that work was wasted and it’s making people miserable. I’ve learned my lesson. Won’t happen again! And for that, my family thanks you!

The hours of dedication and passion you put into the game and playerbase are very, very much appreciated I wouldn’t count the hours as wasted at all, and I actually very much enjoyed many of the new mechanics.

I absolutely love large, substantial content updates and I think they’re one of GW2’s strongest selling points. Like you said though, it’s not so much the LENGTH of the content or even the AMOUNT, really. A lot of the complaints had to do with camera-angles and wonky glitchy jumps that WEREN’T part of the design but rather limitations of the engine.

As a designer myself, I entirely get the desire to make something so feature-rich and undeniably awesome that I sacrifice family, friends, sleep, food…. I think just being able to be passionate about what we do is amazing So no, you’re not making anyone miserable, but yes — go home already!

I personally really appreciated the amount of content provided, but didn’t quite enjoy the amount I had to do in a SINGLE sitting. It’d be nice to have, yknow, Start —> Save Game Progress so I could actually enjoy it at a pace better suited for me instead of planting myself in the same environment for four hours straight

I’d suggest a tiny bit of work on the Party side of things. The nature of the jumps and the deaths means that the team gets separated across the map (with some starting over, some bouncing way ahead) with no real indicator (minimap) as to where they are. It doesn’t encourage much teamwork or communication, except when everyone maybe meets at the end of the level. (The near-the-chest mechanic also means I often miss the bounty I spent many gruelling hours getting to if I get knocked off the cliff at the last minute or am still catching up due to a jump I struggled with. And that’s just a little disappointing).

That said, thanks for the work you guys do I continue to be an ardent GW2 evangelist (even despite my rather crummy and unsupported Mac Perma-BETA Client) and content like this is what keeps me returning!

As a first timer to the SAB, I do love the environment design. It’s a nice place to explore and everything – but the difficulty wall is insane! Don’t mistake me, I’m always happy about challenge. I’d go at it for hours, really, because I’m a bit of a completionist. I was happy with Diablo 3 mobs one-shotting me back in the day because it was a thrill to kite them and figure out boss-fight mechanics. So it’s not really about that. I’m okay with well-hidden but still visible dart-traps or iffy jumps. Those are real cool.

(Less cool are the absurd river rapids that’s an absolute nightmare because of the strangled camera-angles and the mid-jump knockbacks. I was happy drowning in those waiting for someone /else/ to hit the checkpoint.)

However, in this case I feel like the reward just isn’t quite there. I’m getting a handful of baubles per hour — LOSING them at a /much/ faster rate from all the continue coins I’ve had to buy (to the point I’ve resorted to NOT buying them and simply re-zoning into the area using the party system).

My achievements are barely progressing (as a lone player, it’s hard to get into a party that’s like-minded in hunting down every last bauble on the map or letting you know about it) and…well. My hopes of getting a skin (20 × 250 baubles?! I can barely climb over 200 and I haven’t even been able to afford that shovel or next continue coin) are almost zilch I play for skins, if anything, and this saddens me a little.

…And I begin questioning my own existence. “What are we even doing here” I ask my party. And nobody knows. Ploughing through it bit by painful bit, barely clearing Zone 1 (with no bauble / secret room completion) after more than a very long hour.

I don’t understand some of the systems either – like why there isn’t a minimap. I often feel abandoned by my party as they jump off into the distance or around a heavily forested area and I’ve got no idea where they are on the map. Often times it feels like a solo-quest with a ginormous vertical death wall and not much loot at the end of the tunnel. (If I get knocked off at the last minute of a boss-battle I miss the chest I spent the last hour running towards – and that chest only gives a handful of baubles, too). It’s just slightly disheartening

This would be fantastic! I’ve never really understood why a skin I paid good gold / gems for / spent days hunting for in an event is only useable once and gets lost forever once I take fancy to a newer skin and transmute over it. I’d personally love for it to be like the Achievement Panel skins that you could “withdraw” numerous times after having earned / paid for them

It needn’t just apply to Legendaries, either! I mean, I’m happy paying transmutation crystals, but let me stash the skins somewhere – they’re collectables, to me, and I’d love to be able to go back to some fond previous skins (memories?) once in awhile. I’d be much more willing to spend on them if I knew they’d stay THEN I could really start collecting, yknow?

Saying they’ve already done it in whichever format and that it’ll be a pain and a cost of resources to give us a dedicated Mac port might be true, but it makes it no less necessary! I love Guild Wars – I see the game going for a great many more years, what with all their amazing updates and all – but if it intends to be taken seriously by its fans (like me!) for much longer I’m strongly behind a dedicated Mac client.

Sure, Mac gamers might not be their main audience, but I’m sure we’re a significant number. If even small Indie game studios cater for us, I don’t see myself gritting my teeth and trying so hard to enjoy a useable but ultimately unenjoyable wrapper client that’s in permanent BETA (I’m not even sure if it’s being worked on) from a large studio like ArenaNet for that much longer!

I absolutely love the game. I think it’s tragic that I have to be playing on 2001 Runescape-esque graphics when I’ve got a top-of-the-line OSX machine — and perhaps even more tragic that ArenaNet is happy allowing our (perhaps smaller) Mac population to experience all the wonderful work they put into the game on the Lowest graphics settings forever just because we’re not as many as their Windows userbase.

I would gladly pay a top-up fee or even a small subscription (though that’d be somewhat against my morals) to see them give some consideration to a properly supported Mac client. To give us a mediocre appeasement BETA toy and then kicking us out into the streets indefinitely with no further word like that is frankly rather unprofessional, and it makes me sad.

It’s a shame, definitely, that a top-of-the-line souped-up Mac has to run such a beautiful game at Low graphic settings (sometimes even setting options to ‘none’). It’s tragic. The wrapper port we’re using now gives us nothing close to the full capabilities of many of our machines. We have performance that is bearable at best, but that makes for rather disappointing game-time with a game we so badly love and want to continue enjoying.

I do understand that this might be a massive undertaking or a large investment of time and resources – but I think it’s fully necessary for the rapidly growing OSX userbase if Guild Wars intends to continue to be taken seriously by fans (like me)! Even tiny startup indie-games on Steam release their games on three platforms from the get-go! It makes me sad that we’re being neglected here with a wrapper that’s neither improving nor moving out of BETA

Hello, friends! I write to you for support (or at least consolation) after having ignored (or having tried to ignore) awful framerate that I should not be having given my high-end late 2012 macbook pro.

I am on a Retina MBP, but am using an external Apple Thunderbolt Display monitor (not my RMBP screen). My system specs are as follows:

2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

My system is fantastic with the work I do (system-intensive graphics / design programs), but yet gives me a framerate of 5 in Divinity’s Reach. I’m playing a slideshow! On predominantly Low settings, too, meaning my beautiful steel Aetherized Hammer looks like it’s made from play-doh (which is tragic as I’m an absolute sucker for visuals and aesthetics)!

I know there’s something about graphics cards switching and resetting of SMC. (I’ve read the sticky post on this forum). I’ve done those — I’ve even installed a program that allows me to override said graphics card switching so I can manually force the use the “better” one when playing!

I’m at a loss as to how to proceed from here. I understand the GW2 client is some form of PC wrapper or something but I don’t think I should be getting the poor performance I have with a system like mine. I’ve shut everything off but Guild Wars, no background processes – not even Skype or Safari. What am I doing wrong?

I’ll also add that performance is additionally poor when my mac is not at 100% battery charge. Even if plugged in, the game gets extra choppy until my battery is at full charge. sigh

Of course, everything runs extra smoothly even on High settings on Bootcamp, but constantly rebooting every time I take a short break from work is not entiiiiirely practical (or enjoyable in the slightest).

Any help, suggestions, insight or shrugs of sympathy would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!

Edit: Attached are my settings and me trying out a smaller letterbox resolution with mediocre results.