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Does anyone else feel like this game is still in alpha?


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In these days of early access games it struck me that Guild Wars 2 feels exactly like one of these games that never come out of early access. This game is so poorly optimized its sad, even the gemstore is really poorly optimized even though it feels like this is the feature they put the most of their development time towards. I have been around from the start and i thought that nicknames like "Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars" would fade over time. But i still hear them being used frequently, and i dont disagree with it.

Should Guild Wars 2 be labeled as early access rather than as a finished game?

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It's still missing some key things (Build templates are the prime example) but it's been continuously polished and I'm very happy with how they slowly take player feedback in. Saying a game this big is still in Alpha is pretty far away from the truth but it's your opinion and you're entitled to it, I guess.

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nopeits a good game and its the only game i still play. i'm one of those ppl who have grown out of video games... when i hear about ppl talking about fortnite etc... im just like "rolling my eyes in my head"...but gw2 is interesting to me cuz it keeps evolving and i love having 9 classes with 2 further specializations to play and experiment with

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@"Radiobiology.6185" said:In these days of early access games it struck me that Guild Wars 2 feels exactly like one of these games that never come out of early access. This game is so poorly optimized its sad, even the gemstore is really poorly optimized even though it feels like this is the feature they put the most of their development time towards. I have been around from the start and i thought that nicknames like "Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars" would fade over time. But i still hear them being used frequently, and i dont disagree with it.

Should Guild Wars 2 be labeled as early access rather than as a finished game?

No

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@"Radiobiology.6185" said:In these days of early access games it struck me that Guild Wars 2 feels exactly like one of these games that never come out of early access. This game is so poorly optimized its sad, even the gemstore is really poorly optimized even though it feels like this is the feature they put the most of their development time towards. I have been around from the start and i thought that nicknames like "Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars" would fade over time. But i still hear them being used frequently, and i dont disagree with it.

Should Guild Wars 2 be labeled as early access rather than as a finished game?

GW2 is quite finished, and while it could certainly use some engine updates and take more advantage of multi-core processors than it does, its pretty good, actually. I mean except for situations where it needs to draw a couple hundred players it runs quite smoothly even on my old computer a 2008 Dual Core with 4Gb Ram, and a dying GPU (with low graphics, sure).

But that doesn't mean the game is comparable to early-access games. And the gem store? What's the problem with it?I have to ask, is this your first online game? Are you unaware that with constant updates and development sometimes bugs happen? Sure it might feel similar to those early-access games (especially those that are not really early-access, but just milk the eternal beta phase as an excuse for low standards).

Your issue might be a bad connection, really, which isn't really something Arena Net can do anything about.

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@"Radiobiology.6185" said:"Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars"

I don't know what I'm doing right but I have zero loading and lag issues. Loading times are 4-6 seconds and I'm on HDD, my lag issues and disconnects stopped last year when I switched ISP. Game is smooth like a baby Charr's fur!

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@"Radiobiology.6185" said:In these days of early access games it struck me that Guild Wars 2 feels exactly like one of these games that never come out of early access. This game is so poorly optimized its sad, even the gemstore is really poorly optimized even though it feels like this is the feature they put the most of their development time towards. I have been around from the start and i thought that nicknames like "Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars" would fade over time. But i still hear them being used frequently, and i dont disagree with it.

Should Guild Wars 2 be labeled as early access rather than as a finished game?

It's far, far too late to label it as "early access." At this point, GW2 is simply a poorly optimized game with no concrete direction or comprehensive, fundamental design philosophy.

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@Swagg.9236 said:

@"Radiobiology.6185" said:In these days of early access games it struck me that Guild Wars 2 feels exactly like one of these games that never come out of early access. This game is so poorly optimized its sad, even the gemstore is really poorly optimized even though it feels like this is the feature they put the most of their development time towards. I have been around from the start and i thought that nicknames like "Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars" would fade over time. But i still hear them being used frequently, and i dont disagree with it.

Should Guild Wars 2 be labeled as early access rather than as a finished game?

It's far, far too late to label it as "early access." At this point, GW2 is simply a poorly optimized game with no concrete direction or comprehensive, fundamental design philosophy.

You used big words there. Does it lack design philosophy because its current one doesn't suit you, because it doesn't adhere to something they said in the past that holds no value in an evolving market or because it's objectively devoid of it?

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@"Radiobiology.6185" said:[...] I have been around from the start and i thought that nicknames like "Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars" would fade over time. But i still hear them being used frequently, and i dont disagree with it.

Never heard these terms being used. Just "fashion wars".

Should Guild Wars 2 be labeled as early access rather than as a finished game?No.

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GW2 is probably one of the smoothest MMOs that exist so no. If you played in the early days, there is a huge difference. Remember WvW before they did culling optimisation? Yeah it was totally fun engaging in a 100 man battle where 60 of them was invisible. Scouting and saying yeah that zerg is just 10 people only to have 50 suddenly pop into existance on top of you. Thats just one example out of hundreds.

Is it perfect? No game is, unfortunetly. There are still issues. Some unnoticeable, some a little annoying (glider netcode fix for WvW would be nice, its been half a year now :/). But even today you can clearly see the dedication Anet still puts into the game on fixing and improving stuff. That doesnt make it an alpha. It just make it a game with better support than most.

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I'm not sure how much experience you have with MMOs OP, but Guild Wars 2 is a finished product and has been for a very long time. Sometimes MMOs are build on an engine that five years later seems like it's not running as fast as it could. That's true of a lot of MMOs. Doesn't mean the game is in alpha or beta, it means the system itself is strained. Happens to lots of games.

Same thing with features. This game is feature rich, particularly when it comes to QoL features. It doesn't have build templates, that's true, but that was never a priority for the company, they said so more than once. On the other hand, they introduce mounts that are probably the best in the industry, they introduced a fantastic scaling dynamic event system, they introduced a great wardrobe, they introduce a great combat system that most games can't emulate.

I think some people have unrealistic expectations.

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The only loading delay I have noticed in many years playing was the recent issue with Sandswept Isles, but that got fixed pretty quickly. I now have a 200Mbps fiber connection, but I was fine on my old 4Mbps copper link too. The biggest performance benefit can be obtained by installing GW2 on an SSD drive if you haven't already.

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@Kzlbob.8104 said:Snopes.

You has a potato PC? Or hamster powered internet? Honest question.

I admit, I laughed hard at this because I used to have both. I lived in BFE with spotty dial-up and a computer I got in 2012. I swear sometimes I heard that hamster say some very inappropriate things about elderberries and my mother.

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The problem is that many problems that existed during the open beta still exist today. For this reason GW2 feels to me like it's still in Beta and never matured from that state. One thing you've already mentioned are build templates. GW1 had them and most players who transitioned from GW1 expected that feature to be in the game at launch or shortly after. Skills like ride the lightning still don't reliably hit their target, shadow steps are obstructed for no apparent reason, projectiles "vanish" mid-air... Content-wise the game also feels like it's still in Beta. In DR is an NPC informing you about a tavern-brawl mini game that has yet to be implemented, shooting booth and polymock arena are places that were reserved for specific content that never came. The world is full of portals that are locked behind closed doors or are simply unreachable, hinting at future content for almost 6 years now. Many old maps feature sloppily placed assets clipping through each other or repeating dozens of times that give off a feeling of being placeholders until the customized models are done. The personal story has so many loose ends that have yet to be picked up, that all but the most lore-fanatic players have forgotten about them.

There are many many more things that make GW2 feel like it isn't quite finished yet. The problem is that I've gotten too used to them to remember or even recognize them now.

GW2 feels like the construction site that the city started with a scheduled timeframe of half a year, but ran out of money and now living on a construction site is the new "normal".

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I'm not trying to White Knight here but this game while not the best runs smoother than most MMOs, continually adds features as well.

Regarding optimization most clients any MMO I've played run on one core and then you have to contend with things like your ISP and the servers the game runs on. So unless you have more money than Scrooge McDuck like Blizzard that invested in state of the art in house servers you will always run into problems.

You want some examples of games that need better performance look no further than Black Desert, or ESO if your in the open world with a bunch of people around, any Standing Stone Game (Turbine); then you'll have something to talk about there.

While I'd like to see GW2 support Multicore more they have limited resources that they pour into cranking out content; you want an example of what happens when a company lays off of content to redo their engine with a moderate sized staff look no further than Trion, they rebuilt Rift to run on Multi Core while the content dried up which they tried to mask in Star Fall by letting the Grind Monster and it's cousin RNG run rampant while funneling people into the cash shop (the ones not smart enough to get off that sinking ship).

Long story short, get some perspective this is one of the good MMOs, there are maybe 5 good ones left if that.

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@"Radiobiology.6185" said:In these days of early access games it struck me that Guild Wars 2 feels exactly like one of these games that never come out of early access. This game is so poorly optimized its sad, even the gemstore is really poorly optimized even though it feels like this is the feature they put the most of their development time towards. I have been around from the start and i thought that nicknames like "Loading Wars" and "Lag Wars" would fade over time. But i still hear them being used frequently, and i dont disagree with it.

Should Guild Wars 2 be labeled as early access rather than as a finished game?

My dude, if you believe that you are able to create a "more finished" game, please be my guest. If you think other games are "more complete" and don't enjoy how GW2 functions on an older PC, by all means, look at other titles.It's certainly easy to critique when you don't make better content yourself and without drawing any comparisons with what you consider as "better" MMOs.

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Lol no.

You do know that everyone have different taste?

GW2 is one of few MMOs that has really fast loading times, the difference is that GW2 world is built with different zones where loading is required while moving between them, but as it is loading loading time is at most up to 6 seconds for me and usually it loads in around 3 seconds.I have never heard the terms 'loading wars' or 'lag wars' not even from people who complains about it here on the forums.

An MMO is really never finished so it will always be a game in development and if it wasn't it wouldn't be a very good mmo. As a player who has been playing GW2 since start I know how different alpha gw2 is compared to what it is now.

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When making a point like this it's important to consider what's missing/unfinished vs. what you would like to see added. For example saying the game is still in alpha/beta because it doesn't have build templates would only make sense if Arenanet had said the finished game would have build templates. They didn't and in fact have said the opposite numerous times - that they know players want them but are not planning to add them. So it'd be like saying it was in beta until PoF because it didn't have mounts or is still in beta because it doesn't have fishing. That's a feature some players might want but it's not something Anet ever intended to add so the game isn't unfinished until it's added, it's just not been made in the way you would like.

Things like lag and loading times are more debatable because I'm sure all developers would love to make a game with zero lag and instant loading, but that's probably impossible so they will have decided what is considered acceptable loading times and worked to that instead, so I think it's still unfair to say the game is unfinished because it sometimes runs more slowly than you would like.

Especially for an online PC game where so many things are out of their control. If someone says the game runs really slowly it could be because of the age of their computer or because it's a bare bones machine really only intended for email and Office programs (like this kitten one which keeps freezing when I'm just typing), because they've got 5,000 things running in the background, because they've got 1 thing which is a resource hog running, because they're in the middle of no where trying to use their mobile phone as a router, because their cheap ISP is throttling their service, because someone is working on the line down their street, because there's a problem with any of the dozens of connections between them and the server, a physical problem with the server or it might, if it's none of those things be one of about 10 million things within the game's code which could be causing problems. In other words it's not easy to even work out what the problem is, especially if it's one person saying they sometimes get lag.

If lots of people have the same problem it might be easier. For example at one point hundreds of players suddenly started reporting severe lag and disconnects at the same time. It turned out it was all people in the UK who use BT broadband (one of the countries biggest suppliers). Even then Anet couldn't fix it because the problem was someone at BT had decided the ports (?) used by the game weren't used for anything important and could be throttled (even though their contracts say they don't do that to their customers) and no one would notice. Person clearly wasn't a gamer because apparently it affected a lot of games and after numerous phone calls/emails from customers and games companies to complain it did get sorted. But Anet themselves couldn't do anything and if BT had decided not to change it the same thing would be going on now.

And on top of all that you have to consider that in this case 'the game' is not one entity. When there was a problem with Sandwsept Isles which caused lag it's not because they never bothered to finish making the base game. It's because that bit was only about a week old so not all the bugs had been found and fixed.

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There were moments I jokingly called GW2 the longest open beta in the world. But that is mostly because of the bugs and exploits available at releases of new addons/features/LS chapters. I am still not very happy how things make it through the testing, but I got used to it over the years. And we are all encouraged to report every of our findings to exploits@arena.net or write tickets. Of course it is not our job to judge which threat is big and which is small, but serious problems get solved quickly.

However laggs and loading times? Really? Instead of jumping on the "stop using a potato-pc"-train, here are a few things that might work:

  • Game Boosters: Those are special programs with one purpose only, optimizing resources for gameplay. Some have a special gaming mode, which feed all possible resources to the game and lower e.g. performance of your OS. These tools also focus on tray programs and background-processes and give suggestions about resource-eaters which can be closed/disabled. The performance gain is not that great, but depending on the age of your computer and the time since the last rebuild of your OS, it can bring a good change to your system. Just google for "game booster", there are also good free-ware products.
  • OS Boosters: Similar to the above mentioned Game Boosters, those are designed to balance resources for your system. Those also have a feature to detect software which only eats resources and block them permanently, some programs cannot be disabled the usual way. They can speed up the boot time of your computer and probably the launch time of games, depending on the stuff that is already installed on your computer. The older your system is, the greater the impact will be. Just google for "speed up windows [version]"
  • Cache Folder: C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Temp and delete the "gw2cache-..." once in a while. I made a shortcut to that folder on my desktop and delete it once per week. The longer the cache remains untouched, the more your loading times suffer.

I do not know anything about your personal level of skill or experience, so please do not see this as an insult to your knowledge/intelligence.

[Edit] There are two maps with special lagg/connection issues I am aware of: Sirens Landing (LS3) and Sandswept Isles (LS4). Those behave different from all other maps. Sirens Landing was fixed a while ago, but Sandsept Isles still force my cpu fan to nearly fly away. The issue is known and they work on it.

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