Guild Wars 2

Yes, I’ve been experiencing this as well.

The system relies on having accurately set time on the server and client app, so it seems to me like the GW2 servers’ clocks are out a bit.

As far as I’m aware the config file settings related to graphics are ignored by the 64-bit client because they were part of the “wrapper” system the previous client used (the new client uses native OpenGL). Currently the new client has fewer opportunities to tweak settings (and fewer resolution options), but as I say, it’s all early days still.

There’s a long thread related to the new client here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Feedback-Guild-Wars-2-Mac-64-Bit-Client/page/1

How long ago did you last try the Mac client? If it was more than a couple of months ago, you may be interested to know that the old 32-bit “wrapper” client has now been replaced with a new native 64-bit client.

The new client is still pretty rough (it was only made available for testing at the end of June), but it’s receiving regular improvements and bug fixes and has come a long way since the initial release. While performance won’t compare with Bootcamp for a number of reasons, the changes they’ve made to it recently have improved performance for me. It really seems to depend on your config regarding how it’ll go… people without SSDs seem to experience slow load times compared with even the 32-bit client for example, but on my 2016 MacBook Pro with Radeon Pro 460 it’s overall a much better experience than the old client.

In any case, the main thing about the new client is that they can now actively work on improving it… the old 32-bit client had been dead in the water for a long time.

One positive data point: I haven’t experienced a single crash in the past few days. That’s a huge turn-around from my experience previously!

Blackwood.9072:

For some reason having ambient occlusion enabled is causing my character, all NPC / enemies, and lots of plants in the Brisban Wildlands to have these glowing yellow auras. Turning it off removed the aura, but is that what it is supposed to do?

I get that same issue with a Radeon Pro 460 (2016 rMPB with TB). The aura is caused by the ambient occlusion being applied at an offset to where it should be – definitely a bug. Occasionally, as has been mentioned by other people, the ambient occlusion will also get “stuck” for a second as you move, causing it to ghost over the whole screen.

The latest change to the Touch Bar is a bit weird: there’s now an F13 key and what appears to be part of an F14 key when the system Control Strip only has three buttons configured. Can you even have F13 and F14? Regardless, as mentioned previously, it would be more useful to have F1-F12 expanded out to fill the width given that they’re so small right now. Even more ideal would be only having Fn keys displayed in the Touch Bar if they’re actually key bound to a function in the game, and hiding all the ones that aren’t, so that the Fn keys can be wider. (e.g. if there’s only five Fn keys bound to functions, only show those five and have them much wider so they’re easier to hit)

At least it’s nice to see some changes happening with that – thanks!

Thanks for the info Jon!

Aphelion.7546:

Jon Olson.8439:

We are actively investigating the crashing. Unfortunately it hasn’t been easy to reproduce internally.

Jon, does that mean all those crash reports we’ve been sending in don’t help?

I would LOVE to know the answer to this as well, because if sending those crash reports doesn’t help I could save a lot of time by not submitting them. If they help, I’ll keep putting up with the delay, but I’d really like confirmation that they do actually help.

EchoPadder.7546:

There is also a new kind of crash, where it freezes, the CPU usage is minimal (2%) and I am only able to quit it via a force quit.

I had that one just now as well. After a couple of crashes during Frozen Maw, I then had it freeze with some background audio playing but everything was frozen and unresponsive and a force quit was required to stop the game. And when I got back in, of course there was no loot awarded.

Hopefully the crash report dialog is providing useful info to the devs (the one that drops down from the top with the “include email” option). It takes so long to submit the report and then relaunch the game, log in, etc that it’s almost guaranteed that the event I was in the middle of will be over (if I get back to the same map), so hopefully that info is useful or I’ve been wasting a heck of a lot of time for nothing.

The crashes are extremely frustrating, but in fairness the test client has only been available for a month, and the fact that they’ve done all the effort to develop a native client and are continuing to work on it is a huge turn-around from previous years of the 32 bit wrapper client. It means things can now improve where there was no chance of it before.

I heard the latest update apparently fixes the Mistlock Sanctuary problem – good to see a quick fix for that for Mac users if that’s true.

Unfortunately the crashes seem to be much worse now for me, too. It’s actually crashing more than the 32 bit client was.

I was trying to do the daily event completer in Cursed Shore and had a very difficult time making it through any event without a crash, even on the lowest graphics settings.

This is quite a bit different from when the client was originally released and I was experiencing no crashes at all, so I’m not sure what’s changed there (maybe I’m just doing events with more people now).

Just a quick post to thank Jon and the other staff who have replied here and who are working hard on the client.

Given the long running frustrations with the old client, it’s great to finally have a native client and no longer be in the limbo of wondering if it would ever come to fruition. Of course it has issues that need work, but I can appreciate how much effort must have gone into getting it to this point already, so… thanks!

After not getting a single crash for the first two or more weeks of using the client, I seem to now be getting quite a few crashes during big events. Hopefully the data from the crash report submissions helps!

Mighty.7548:

There is also a weird sort of glowing effect around my pet and myself, which is easier to see when I stand in a shadowy area, but the shadows on the ground melt away as I seem to bring the sunlight to it. It makes it seem as though my character is incredibly reflective to redirect that much light.

I’ve seen this same issue – the “spotlight” lighting (doesn’t seem to always happen) and the offset outline around things (see my post here – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Feedback-Guild-Wars-2-Mac-64-Bit-Client/page/2#post6626970 ). The last part appears to be an issue with ambient occlusion.

And here’s the second issue:

2. Thank you for adding Touch Bar buttons for F1, F2, F3 etc! One minor issue is that when the Control Strip (the system controls on the right of the Touch Bar) is configured with fewer than the default of four buttons, GW2’s Fn buttons don’t expand to fill the available space like they should (and like the system Fn buttons do). It’s a minor issue, but given that I have stuff bound to F1 and F2, any extra width on those buttons is handy What would be even more awesome is if it hid the Fn buttons that aren’t assigned to anything, e.g. if F7 is not mapped to anything, don’t display it at all, and expand all the buttons to fill the full width.

Woo! New client is great so far! Two things to report (on a 2016 MacBook Pro TB with Radeon Pro 460):

1. Something’s odd with ambient occlusion, where the effect looks like it’s offset or being calculated incorrectly, causing a halo around objects offset to the right and up. See attached screenshot. It’s more noticeable with certain areas/backgrounds – screen is near Frozen Maw.

Issue 2 to follow as I don’t know how to attach more than one image to a post…

Yeah, what SlippyCheeze said ^

And I wasn’t suggesting it indicates anything about release timeframes (I’m sure the only reason it’s there is to allow external staff testing), but it is at least nice to see stuff going on that shows that they’ve gotten further with the build system.

So I saw online that there’s apparently a native client build somewhere on the CDN now (not that anyone should attempt to download or use it because I’d imagine doing so could get you banned). But that’s at least a good sign that they’re progressing with things I guess.

As someone who’s not from the US, am I right in reading this as meaning test versions will be available this month to try? Is it just for people who are enrolled in a special testing program or do you think it’ll be open to any Mac user to install the test version?

Here’s hoping there’ll be another update on all of this in the presumably upcoming AMA for the new chapter…

Yep, I definitely get that – as I mentioned I know that estimating development timeframes is really difficult.

I’m not asking for a specific date or month, but surely they know if they’re on track to release it this year or not. Even an incredibly rough time frame like “we can’t say when, but it’ll be this year” would be helpful. Or if it isn’t going to be this year, say “it’s not likely to be released this year” so we can all stop coming back to this thread…

Or, if they aren’t willing to even give an estimate to the year level, at least communicate progress better. They communicate progress about lots of other things they’re working on with the game, so why not the occasional (like, monthly) short update to say “still working on the new Mac client – this month we got this thing working”. Some communication can go a long way to keeping people happy even without giving any timeframe.

(also lol @ having to select the “override bump” option for this reply)

You may have been thinking about the fact that the Windows version of the game still supports Windows XP, which forces their hand regarding what version of DirectX they support on Windows.

But anyway… I too really hope that there’s something we can start testing sooner rather than later, because the wrapper client is so slow and buggy. Sometimes I launch it and have to wait a couple of minutes before it does anything at all! It’s painful. I often think, is it working or should I force quit it?

With each AMA, although it does seem like they are making progress, it’s very frustrating that they are never willing to give any suggestion of when it might be available. I know that development timeframes are notoriously difficult to estimate, but surely they know if it’ll be in the next few months, or whether it won’t even be this year. Throw us a bone.

Thanks for the info penelopehannibal, it did eventually install and now runs.

Everyone is right though, it’s incredibly crashy. The number of times I’ve had it crash back to the desktop during an event is ridiculous – by contrast, I don’t remember the last time the Windows client crashed on me.

If you want to play anything with the Mac client, you’d better join a group or you’re going to have a bad time. A native client can’t come soon enough…

I’m trying to install it on my new MacBook Pro (first time Mac owner – was surprised to find that GW2’s Mac situation is like it is) and it’s continually wanting to redownload “tgupdate 1.12”, whatever that is. Every launch, the same thing. A real Mac client can’t come soon enough.