The game's engine needs updates to modern standards

[Helbjorne.9368]

> @ThomasC.1056 said:

> I'm all for this for a simple reason : I sometimes play GW2 on my gaming laptop that's getting a bit old (poor geezer is now 3 !), and it's heating like a toaster (I can barely keep my hands on the F keys) while I'm playing a game that looks ugly because all of the settings are on low. And even then, I have 27 fps while standing idle in SW. On the very same laptop, I'm also playing TESO, and everything goes smooth and fine, with a graphics setup that I didn't mow too much compared to my regular computer.

>

> And that really is a bad advertisement for the game...

 

Yeah, I hate comparing MMOs, but I was able to run ESO in 4k maxed out with 60+ fps everywhere. In GW2, which isn't nearly as visually impressive, I pull the same fps at 1920x1080. GW2 is definitely the better game (imo), but the graphics and performance are certainly lacking compared to its competitors.

[Crevox.5806]

> @Aenaos.8160 said:

> At 1920x1200,I get better FPS in GW2 than in BDO or ESO.

> I also get better FPS than those games in highly populated areas or during large RvR battles.

> So there goes that.

 

I can't really speak to those, as I don't have enough experience playing either one. It doesn't change the fact that **this** game has huge FPS issues with or without people around. There are certain areas you can stand by yourself and just get 30 FPS with nothing you can do about it. Maintaining 60 when you're not inside of some cave can be difficult. This is also with me cutting back on graphics options (shadows) just so the game engine doesn't cripple itself.

 

> In WoW I get better FPS,but WoW isn't even near the same league with GW2 when it comes to

> triangle count,textures,and particle effects.

 

This isn't true. WoW has had tons of updates over the years and arguably has a much higher detail model structure. The amount of bones used in new player models is ridiculous, and they can produce good quality facial expressions and animations. Textures are hard to say in either way (and are VRAM related anyways, dunno why you would bring it up) and particle effects are not any more detailed in GW2.

 

WoW's FPS in general is much, much higher, and this is NOT because of graphics, but because the Guild Wars 2 engine does a terrible job handling the CPU load. Even the developers themselves admitted that the game has too much going on in the main thread.

 

> The UI features you ask for don't need a engine rework.

> So there goes that as well.

 

I never said it would, but it requires engine updates for many of them to work.

[Caractus.3658]

> @"Airyll.7849" said:

> > @Crevox.5806 said:

> > I don't disagree that GW2 seems to be the dark horse of modern MMORPGs in that it runs, arguably, the worst.

 

ESO is worse. In GW2 the game runs smoothly for me with my fps capped at 60fps and it remains there most of the time. However in a fight like claw of jormag I drop down to 10-12. ESO has constant stutters and the game fps even in a low pop area fluctuates even with equivalent graphic settings.

 

i5-6600

GTX 960 6GB

Run both games off a SSD

 

 

[Lady Lozza.9670]

I'm not having any issues with FPS, but the lag since the servers were moved makes playing on the weekends during US peak almost impossible - particularly WvW where my skills take 2 mins to activate. (That isn't a joke btw, weekend US peak WvW skill activation takes 2 mins.) I am however starting to get odd behaviour in dx9 games as more drivers are moving to support dx11/dx12 in full as more games now release without dx9 support. For those wondering what sort of odd behaviours - my game compulsively switches to windowed mode every now and then when I load into a new map. Alt-tab to another application then back seems to remind it it shouldn't be in windowed mode but it's a pain to deal with.

 

As for the poster above me - I run ESO fine. My FPS is a constant 60 and my connection is better, though I understand the servers are in more or less the same area.

[Mea.5491]

I have the frame limiter set to 30 at the game options. When I change it to "unlimited" it goes up to 120+ but I honestly don't see and feel any difference... So I don't really understand this fps obsession but whatever... During meta events with 70+ people around, I still manage to keep a steady 25-ish fps which is more than enough for me. Oh well, I think I'm weird or something. :)

[OriOri.8724]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> Anet did something a few years ago which increased the load times in order to benefit those having with poorer performing computers. I remember having 5-7 second load times before and now I'm averaging 18ish.

 

@"Ayrilana.1396" That's interesting. Do you happen to have a quote or thread bookmarked that I could read through about this? I want to know what their reasoning was behind such a change.

[Esquilax.3491]

> @"Crevox.5806" said:

> I'm running an i7 4790k and GTX 1080 x2 and the fact I can't maintain 60 FPS in most areas is disappointing, large number of players or not. It's a big difference compared to WoW or FFXIV, which I just sit at a solid 144 FPS even when I'm raiding.

>

> Maintaining 60 should be easy as a bare minimum, but on those games I can go past 100 FPS and even up to 144 even on 4k. This game struggles on 1080p.

 

> @"Crevox.5806" said:

> I'm running an i7 4790k and GTX 1080 x2 and the fact I can't maintain 60 FPS in most areas is disappointing, large number of players or not. It's a big difference compared to WoW or FFXIV, which I just sit at a solid 144 FPS even when I'm raiding.

>

> Maintaining 60 should be easy as a bare minimum, but on those games I can go past 100 FPS and even up to 144 even on 4k. This game struggles on 1080p.

 

Same specs as my machine. running it since June. I use 1440p and high settings (not Ultra).

 

It regularly hovers around 60fps in town and low pop world areas. But as soon as you get a number of players can drop down to 30-40fps. For world bosses and pirate ship battles (WvW) it drops down to even 20-30.

 

Don't get me wrong, It's still a very nice and very playable FPS for high settings but still way below what the machine is capable of. For example in Wow I can maintain 100+ FPS on max draw distance + ultra settings on same resolution.

 

I often wonder if how Anet machines are configured and if they just put up with it, or if they are playing on NASA level quantum computing machines :tongue:

[Grim West.3194]

A graphics update would be great. Probably too costly for them to justify it though. The game still looks a zillion times better than WoW.

[blambidy.3216]

I don’t think the engine needs to new per se to be good with the new computer specs. I think the engine needs to be graphically lowered in bit rate for computers to handle.

 

What I mean is our new computers can actually hand old software performance wise and graphics. I mean pc users still playing counterstrike. Which is ancient of Time when it was released. No where near close to gw2 time of being created. I don’t think we need new because if it’s new. Then I think hardly anyone could handle gw2 with new spec computers. But if arenanet got techs. And cut the video bit rate and the bit rate in the game and etc, then more people would be able to run it smoothly. However the sacrifice of the game looking beautiful would happen. Which is probably why arenanet has done nothing. Iv got an old model from 2014. It runs in low FPS. However it’s still smooth. But the graphics are fine.

 

If they alter the engine I think people would be dissatisfied with the graphics. Then if they make a complete NEW engine that’s a sacrifice multiple people will have a buy a complete new pc just to operate a game which might make people leave. I think that’s why they haven’t done anything. Which I don’t think they need a new engine. I think they need to cut down in how much performance and graphics is needed. However that means the game won’t look the same ever again.

[ReaverKane.7598]

I have to agree with the OP that there are several issues with GW2 performance:

 

You shouldn't have to struggle to get 60FPS on a decent computer. I mean mine's a

i7 4790k, 16Gb Ram, SDD, and a GTX970, and i have to cull players to medium to get steady 60FPS (limited, with everything else set to max), but it drops a ton on world bosses and such, sometimes dipping below 30fps on high density areas.

 

The reason, like OP said, is likely attributed to poor use of multi-thread/multi-core CPUs, one way to deal with that would be to start using DX11 and DX12 compatibility, since those libraries provide a lot of aid in using multi-core CPUS, unlike DX9/10.

 

Another issue is in the Graphics menu, especially the post-processing options. Those three levels encompass too many changes to be kept as it is. I mean i might want the medium level of bloom, keep the high level screen tint, and not want any of the outlines. But i have to keep to the pre-destined bundle.

GemFX and SweetFX are not an option any more, because after PoF they added a lot of post to the new maps that simply clashes with the old ones, if you have post-injectors for old maps and you go to a PoF one, you'll most likely end up with overblown values because the new maps already have heavier post.

 

I disagree with Health bars, i mean you don't have to select a person to heal them. So it's not too hard to use the raid window or party window.

If anything GW2 has too much screen clutter in raids, not too little.

 

That brings me to a big issue. A lot, if not all, people that raid usually do so while limiting their graphics. I mean "blues" on VG are hard to pick out with post-processing off, and limited effects (whatever the option was called). With max graphs those are downright impossible to pick out visually. And the issue is that the sound queue can also be easily swallowed by in-game sounds, especially because there are a few other SFX that sound similar to it.

 

TLDR:

Anet could improve A LOT on performance and performance options:

Split the Post-processing option into more than a 3 value drop-down.

Work to add DX11/12 compatibility.

Improve on visual clutter of effects, or at least have a way to prioritize them so that players don't have to limit their experience to be able to play effectively.

 

[Noa.7490]

I do seem to recall something about an Nvidia guy who said the company offered their help to Anet but that Anet politely told them to take a hike.

[SilverSeva.5372]

> @"Grim West.3194" said:

> A graphics update would be great. Probably too costly for them to justify it though. The game still looks a zillion times better than WoW.

 

In my opinion, WoW looks way better than GW2 right now...

[Obtena.7952]

What are people willing to pay for a new engine? For me, I'm willing to pay zero for it because it's not necessary for me to enjoy the game on my 'moderately old' machine. I suspect the case for most other players is similar. There simply isn't a business case to upgrade it.

 

> @"Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485" said:

> Remember.... Anet wants as many people as possible to buy the game, so catering to as many people as possible is important to them

 

This is a really important point; Anet is not serving it's community by upgrading engine. There are not many people that will view this as a benefit to them, EVEN if they get some improvement to performance. It will cost and that cost will fall on the players. IMO, the risk to Anet for upgrading the engine is too high.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Eme.2018" said:

> > @LUST.7241 said:

> > Newer GW2 content runs better than the older content (go to newer maps and you'll see). Plus, there are a lot of settings you can tweak that can get this game running 60fps+. There's a of little details happening at your screen at once that isn't just covered by flashy and overly processed skill effects like other games have. There's also a matter of the engine other games run and the level they use it.

>

> No way dude. The vanilla maps are fine. Heart of Thorns and season 3 maps are a mess. **The only map running smoothly is Bitterfrost Frontier.**

Not during blizzard. That's also a big performance hit.

 

> @"SilverSeva.5372" said:

> > @"Grim West.3194" said:

> > A graphics update would be great. Probably too costly for them to justify it though. The game still looks a zillion times better than WoW.

>

> In my opinion, WoW looks way better than GW2 right now...

How WoW looks is one of the reasons why i'm _not_ playing it now.

 

 

[Dante.1763]

> @"SilverSeva.5372" said:

> > @"Grim West.3194" said:

> > A graphics update would be great. Probably too costly for them to justify it though. The game still looks a zillion times better than WoW.

>

> In my opinion, WoW looks way better than GW2 right now...

 

Err..Sorry but WoW reminds in appearances so much of PS2 era games that even if i wanted to i wouldnt play it simply due to its aged look.

[Solvar.7953]

Like most features, this is hard to measure. There are probably some people that try the free trial, find that due to settings, cpu they have, and so forth, that performance is poor, and decide not to buy the game. But some of those may not buy the game even if it performed well (they may not like it, etc). So Anet can't just look at number of free accounts that stop playing within a week and say that was poor performance.

For any active players, the value gain is minimal - unless someone stops playing due to poor performance, there is no loss either. My presumption here is that active players also do spend money on gems periodically.

However, performance also depends on lot of given hardware - I just recently updated my computer, and not surprisingly, performance is much much better, to the point I don't really have any complaints (even in a big zerg at istan great hall, never dropped below 30 fps running pretty much highest graphics setting @ 4k resolution).

 

[Astyrah.4015]

would love an option for directx11 at the very least, so newer computers would get better optimisation and then keep directx9 for legacy reasons.

 

i don't even want them to create new assets, they can keep all the data as it is, just want an updated renderer so people with the hardware could utilise the new tech and squeeze in more performance, while people with older hardware retain their peak.

 

it's more of a performance/compatibility update than a graphical one

[Ayrilana.1396]

>I feel like I may be able to clear up some things here.

 

>>GW2 stays on DX9 and 32bit client which kinda.. lags a lot, and sometimes even crashes on huge battles/worldbosses (i see you Tequatl).

 

>For the vast majority of players, the lag is unrelated to both of these.

 

>All software have a thing called threads. You can think of each thread as a highway lane: They run in parallel, and they each perform different tasks simultaneously. They are what applications use to scale with multiple cores on CPUs, as each thread can only run on one CPU core at a time.

 

>Each application has a thread known as the main thread. For games that thread is usually the thread that's in the driver's seat of the frame. It determines what to process and when on a higher level, such as "process OS messages", "update the game state", "process animations", "send state to the render thread", etc. All the different things that go into a game frame. The majority of game engines do some of these on a different thread, but in many cases the main thread still determines when it should happen.

 

>So since threads are useful for scaling things, you'd think that you could simply create more threads and get more work done. But while it's true that you have more computing power with more threads, threads also have downsides. For one, you cannot modify data in memory while another thread is reading that same data. In order to do this one thread has to wait for the other to stop using the data, meaning work is done in serial even if the code itself is running on multiple threads. To make matters worse, the OS is not guaranteed to put a thread back to work the very moment the other thread has finished. It can actually take a long-ish time (long being a very relative term). Due to this, software engineers are forced to properly design their applications to work well in parallel. Doing this after the fact is usually on the range of non-trivial to very hard.

 

>Which brings us to GW2. GW2 does a lot of processing, and much of it is done on the main thread. That is also where its bottleneck tends to be: The main thread. There are conscious efforts in moving things off the main thread and onto other threads (every now and then a patch goes out that does just this), but due to how multi-threading works it's a non-trivial thing that take a lot of effort to do. In a perfect world, we could say "Hey main thread, give the other threads some stuff to do if you're too busy", but sadly this is not that world.

 

>As for DX9 and 32bit: **Moving off of DX9 wouldn't buy us a whole lot performance wise,** as all interaction with DirectX is happening on the render thread, which is generally not the bottleneck. Moving from 32-bit to 64-bit also does not really buy us a lot performance-wise. There are some optimizations the compiler is able to do with 64-bit that it can't do otherwise, but the actual FPS gain is minimal at best.

 

>And about crashing on Tequatl: Here's one case where a 64-bit client could actually help. Many of the crashes happening on Tequatl (which are still quite few, mind you) are cause of memory fragmentation. The bigger memory address space of 64-bit apps could help prevent that. This becomes more of a problem the longer you keep your client running.

 

>>I have intel i3, my friend got i7, which is waaaaaaaaaaaay better than mine. Guess who get more screen spikes? i7. Yes.

 

>Without knowing more of your systems (and what software is running simultaneously to GW2) I really can't even guess the cause of this. All things equal it should not be the case (though I'm not saying that it isn't).

 

>>Oh, and also i heard that GW2 tends to use CPU, not GPU. What the..? :x

 

>The CPU and GPU are good at different things. There's no such thing going on as us using the CPU rather than the GPU. We use both, for the different things they're good at. In simple terms, the GPU just happens to finish its work before the CPU does, causing it to wait for the CPU to catch up.