HippieJoel.9537

> @"PadmaPhala.1824" said:

> With the release of Catalina, Anet shouldn't sell Guild Wars 2 for MacOS if there is no full 64-bit client.

Give them some time - I'm sure they can work on getting the dependencies up and running in 64 bit.

I honestly wouldn't worry about the use of CoherentUI. If they've given the code and related libraries to Anet then it stands to reason that it shouldn't be *too* involved to port it over to 64-bit and get it working. It's just understandably not a priority.

Truth be told (and I promise I don't mean to fearmonger with this) but my guess is that ArenaNet don't have anyone working on the Mac client as such, but that isn't really an issue - my understanding is that Jon's work essentially allowed the Windows client to be cross-compiled for macOS from the same codebase, meaning that as long as the Windows client is maintained, the Mac client will be too.

The real question is how API-agnostic the game's renderer is - when they start adding in say, new graphical features, how well that'll port over to OpenGL, but regardless, I wouldn't worry.

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

> > @"PadmaPhala.1824" said:

> > > @"Menadena.7482" said:

> > > > @"PadmaPhala.1824" said:

> > > > Is there any update on making the Coherent UI Host process 64 bit instead of 32 bit?

> > >

> > > Do we know that is the only 32 bit dependency in the 64 bit app? If so does anyone know if there is a workaround?

> >

> > Yes, I think it is the only 32 bit process when GW2 is running.

>

> What does the process do though? Given I only see the message now and then though I wonder if it is something we can live without?

I don't work for ArenaNet and I could very easily be wrong but my understanding is that the CoherentUIHost is used for things like the Black Lion Trading Post. Essentially it allows them to embed Google Chrome within the game for showing web content without having to open a separate browser.

It should be fairly straightforward to swap it out for a 64-bit version but then I don't work for ArenaNet so couldn't say for sure.

> @"Towelie.9504" said:

> > @"SpectralHorseman.1962" said:

> > It is basically due to the engine that the game runs in. GW2 still runs in OpenGL, and Mac has now adopted something called Metal. A new smaller framework that is more efficient. Since Mac is not super optimized to run OpenGL (I don't know if it ever was optimized), GW2 just needs to adopt the Metal framework for their client. WoW adopted the Metal framework soon after it released, which is why it runs much better.

>

> GW2 uses DirectX, not Open GL. It has no capability of using OpenGL as well (unlike other games like WoW which can run on either).

>

> While things like Wine mimic the DirectX API calls to OpenGL on GNU systems, there's no direct OpenGL support from the engine. The engine is based on DirectX9.

>

> The answer the OP question, Guild Wars 2 already is a severely unoptimized game when it comes to FPS on windows platforms. If you're trying to run it on what is essentially translating DirectX calls to OpenGL and then passing it off to the GPU it's even slower not including all the efficiencies when it comes to the threading issues that this engine has. That's the sad state of things, of which Anet doesn't seem to care. It would've been nicer if Anet had supported OpenGL in some way directly or made a jump to at least a new DirectX API that isn't a decade old that was known to have severe overhead issues and limited amount of draw calls to what today's graphics require.

Actually this is not true and has not been for quite some time. Guild Wars 2 does indeed natively support OpenGL, at least on the Mac client, and it does not use Wine or any other kind of translation layer.

Unfortunately, as others have noted, the performance isn't particularly great regardless.

> @"Xillllix.3485" said:

> Hey, getting a Mac Pro soon... Does the mac client support dual gpu and cpu? It has 6 x 3.5ghz cores, 64gb ram, 2 GPU with 3gb of ram each.

Don't - the Mac Pro is about 4 years old now and you'd be much, much better served by an iMac (even the standard 5k one - not the Pro), especially for gaming as the higher clock speed will give much better single-threaded performance (which matters for Guild Wars 2).

Personally I'm using a hackintosh but if I was using a real Mac I'd almost certainly go for the 5k iMac.

> @"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:

> And it's ridiculous if Anet expects new players to come to this game and immediately run out and buy an extra piece of hardware to make their game run properly. I suppose the Mac population is doomed to dwindle to the point where they don't bother to support it at all any more, unless they get moving and fix it.

Give it time - things are absolutely improving and I'm much more optimistic about the state of the Mac client than I've ever been. It's not perfect, but the performance has absolutely been improving over time and I'm sure it will only get better.

Keep in mind as well that all MacBooks now ship with SSDs as standard and I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation iMacs have them as well. In fact, I'd recommend them to anyone just because of how much they improve a Mac's performance in general.

It's a known issue which is being investigated:

> @"Jon Olson.8439" said:

> We're still investigating long loading times and the reported excessive storage media reads. No ETA for fixes, if any.

> @Veirilli.3975 said:

> > @blambidy.3216 said:

> >

> > If the 32 bit Mac client was windows wrapper for Mac. Couldn't they just make the 64 bit wrapper since it was more stable? I mean only taking a minute to change maps vs 5. And taking 1 min for PvP matches vs 5. Why wouldn't arenanet just done that since it flowed so well?

>

> No. There are technical limitations which prevent a 64bit wine wrapper from working on macOS, mostly due to significant differences in processor architecture.

>

> Also, your problems are not universal. The 64bit client works very nicely for me, much better than the 32 bit one, ignoring some graphical glitches which don't impact gameplay.

Worth mentioning that the 64-bit client works wonderfully for me, but it absolutely is possible to get 64-bit Wine working on macOS.

So basically you are right that there are differences in how macOS deals with CPU registers on x64 compared to how Windows does, but as it turns out simply ignoring the problem works rather well. In addition, Wine on macOS now uses a pre-loader which allows it to work around the issue.

So if you do feel like running the Windows version of Guild Wars 2 on macOS via 64-bit Wine, you absolutely can. Though that said, I wouldn't recommend it - the native 64-bit client is vastly superior.

I'm running the client just about maxed out on my hackintosh (i7-4790k / GTX 970 with very few issues.

Main ones I've noticed are that ambient occlusion can look a bit off at times (glowing character + lighting on the ground changes as I move the camera) and I get some... interesting graphical bugs (i.e. things flickering white) if I set shaders to high. Otherwise it really runs perfectly - I haven't experienced the crashes etc that other people are experiencing so I guess I should consider myself very lucky. Performance is really rather good - not far off the Windows client at all with the exception of the hitching, particularly when I first open the game.

Really though, I can't tell you just how happy I am with the current state of the Mac client. Even for those who are having issues, it seems to be so much better than the previous 32-bit Cider wrapper. I mean, to give some context to others, prior to this testing client being a thing I'd rather play the game just using Wine, even with the performance hit, before giving up and booting into Windows every now and then. Since this came out I've actually just gone ahead and wiped my Windows SSD which I now use for additional storage for video editing etc.

I must say I often feel that I am alone in genuinely finding that the game runs really well for me on my system. It's not quite up there with the performance of Windows yet but the game is more than playable, so thank you to the wonderful developers at ArenaNet.

> @Mapisto.2154 said:

> Devs should really consider moving to metal/metal2 api if they want the game to be enjoyable on Mac.

It would certainly improve things but the reality is that it's a considerable amount of work. With that said, I have done some quick reading on Metal and I was pleasantly surprised by how it does seem to be straightforward enough to port things to Metal, with the major exception of shader related fun.

With that said, I am not an engine dev and to be perfectly honest with you I'm fairly clueless about OpenGL and Metal in general so I wouldn't be surprised if someone who is experienced with game engine development tells me that I'm entirely wrong about everything.

> @Hifox.9106 said:

> Does the Client use OpenGL Drivers only?

Yes. DirectX doesn't exist for macOS and Guild Wars 2 does not support Metal at this time.

I'm honestly surprised that people have had such a negative experience with the 64-bit Mac client. I certainly wouldn't say that things have been perfect but I honestly pretty much refused to play the game with the 32-bit one, whilst finding the 64-bit client, whilst certainly not perfect, to actually be a pretty big improvement all things considered. Doesn't run as well as Windows but is definitely playable and having seen the patches I'm genuinely optimistic for the future.

> @cuppscakes.3481 said:

> With High Sierra out, is there any chance we'll get to see Metal 2 support for some better performance?

It doesn't support Metal at all so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting. It uses an OpenGL renderer. It's not impossible that they would add Metal support later but the amount of work required is well, not insignificant.

> @Moesmaker.9581 said:

> Let me add some positive news: the new client works flawless for me. No keyboard error, no crashes, just enjoyable gameplay. Period.

>

> (Playing on a brand new mid 2017 iMac though)

A thousand times this. I absolutely love to complain and I admit the performance isn't where I'd like it to be all of the time but for the most part it runs really, really well. I actually stopped playing the game for a while previously because of the issues with the Mac client but with the current one? It's not perfect but it's absolutely playable and for the most part I am very, very happy with how things are going.

I'm actually playing on a hackintosh because I'm mental - i7-4790k / Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / 1TB SSD.

> @Mahkno.7593 said:

> mac users should get a discount on PoF or a gift of gems as an apology for the broken client :+1:

In fairness it's no secret that the Mac client is very much a work in progress. I'm optimistic that it'll improve with time (and the client seems to be steadily improving already), and in all fairness, nobody buys a Mac expecting excellent gaming performance.

With that said, I likely won't buy PoF until performance improves or until I can be bothered to dual boot Windows (I stopped recently because I decided I'd rather just have the extra disk space). The performance is pretty poor already in HoT areas - I dread to think what the PoF zones will do to the Mac client.

A part of me wants to joke about you not knowing how good you have things - as someone who has played Guild Wars 2 since launch honestly, the situation is a million times better now with the native testing client than it once was, having the choice of Wine where the performance was subpar or the official Cider port which had poor quality audio, didn't support windowed fullscreen mode (fullscreen mode would turn your other monitors black - as someone with 3 monitors this was upsetting) and simply didn't look nearly as nice graphically as what we have now.

Can you run memtest? With what you've said I genuinely suspect that what you're describing is due to a hardware issue with your computer.

> @Necromus.9276 said:

> Is there ever going to be a native macOS client that does not use WINE to run the game? I'm finding that I have to run on the lowest graphics setting just to keep the game from crashing. My Mac can more than handle the higher settings for the graphics, but it seems the Windows environment translator can't handle the demand.

The 64-bit client does not use WINE. It is a native Mac client. The low performance is a combination of things, namely the fact that the Mac client still has issues that are actively being investigated and the fact that OpenGL unfortunately has less than stellar performance on macOS. Metal in theory could improve performance a fair bit (particularly where shader compilation is a factor) but it would involve pretty much rewriting the entire renderer which I can't imagine ArenaNet are in any rush to do because it'd be a huge amount of work.

Be patient - it will improve.

> @Xstein.2187 said:

> So, I'm kinda confused. If the 64 bit client isn't up to par by the time of PoF, will we still be able to re download the 32 bit client to use with PoF?

The answer is most likely no and as I understand it people running Windows won't be able to play Guild Wars 2 using the 32-bit client either, as PoF requires more memory than a 32-bit client could address due to the improved graphics in the PoF zones. Regardless I think it's unlikely that the Cider based client would perform particularly well in the PoF zones anyway.

> @"Killer Rhino.6794" said:

> Performance-wise, the 64-bit client is worse than the 32-bit client. I have both clients installed, and I achieve barely 15FPS with the 64-bit client. In contrast, I get avg. 42FPS on the 32-bit client (in busier areas, it's almost always near 30FPS).

I *suspect* that these issues are at least in part down to the disk IO issue that is currently present in the 64-bit client and which ArenaNet are investigating. There's a good chance that once this is resolved it will improve dramatically. I suspect this in part because, in my desktop and my MacBook Pro (both of which have SSDs) the performance is quite a lot better than what you describe.

> @argyler.2503 said:

> With macOS High Sierra (10.13) coming out on Sept. 25th, I was curious, has the 64-bit client been tested with the new OS version?

In fairness, even if it hasn't I'd still be reasonably confident that it should work without any major issues. The biggest changes on a technical level are the introduction of the APFS filesystem (which is a bit more low level than what should affect Guild Wars 2) and Metal 2 (but Guild Wars 2 uses OpenGL).

That said, my understanding is that the beta of High Sierra is available to those who want it so I'm sure there's someone here who has tested with it and can confirm whether or not we can expect anything to break.

> @"Jon Olson.8439" said:

> > @MaxOS.7531 said:

> > any update on the issue that the client reads a ton of data from the hard drive?

>

> Not at this time. We are still investigating it.

Good to hear. I hate to complain but looking at activity monitor the amount of data the client reads is absolutely insane and makes me genuinely concerned about what it's doing to my poor SSD.

That said, I will say that the performance of the Mac client has absolutely been improving lately, which is wonderful.