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Can't run GW2 well? Nividia GEForce Now works great for me.


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I wanted to share just in case anyone else was in a similar situation.

I am returning to Guild Wars 2 from a two to three year hiatus. I told my GF (who I was not dating when I played before) about GW2 and how I've been getting the itch to play again. She's not really a gamer but she wanted to watch me create a new character. As I was creating my character she sat and watched initially but kept making suggestions on what colors to make the armor, hairstyles, face options, etc. I could see her getting invested so I just backed up and said "Why don't you make a character for yourself instead?". And boom. The trap was set. Two hours later she was hooked and running around Queensdale shooting up bandits.

So she wanted to play together. But we had a problem. I only have one gaming capable computer and there wasn't room/ budget enough for another one. Especially because she probably only wants to play GW2.... for now haha.

Now we have plenty of laptops lying around for nongaming use. I use a Thinkpad X220 as a daily driver and she has an Lenovo Ideapad that she uses for school. Neither of these run GW2 well. With some research, I found Ge Force now! and boom it was perfect for our use case. It streamed the game from Nvidia's servers.

She was spoiled by my gaming set up. In her words: " I like the clicky keyboard (Cherry Mx Reds) and gigantic screen (34 inch ultrawide). Can I play on yours?" Hahahaha. She may not be a gamer but that comment could of fooled me. So I shared for the sake of guild wars 2 I shared my gaming set up and settled down to play using GEForce Now on my thinkpad.

Holy poo. It works great for me! Now I'm not saying its better than my gaming set up. No way. But it's doable for the few hours a week we set aside to play together. The screen is small 1366 by 768 (which I actually don't mind since I do work on it everyday), but using GE Force Now I can crank the graphics up to max! It doesn't look too bad! and its not as laggy as I thought it would be. I was initially worried about bandwidth but there are tons of options to control bandwidth. I think mine uses about 4 gb an hour. At the lowest setting, I could run it at 2 Gb an hour. Thats about the same I would get from using netflix or youtube. So pretty happy with it! It saved me hundreds of dollars on a whole second gaming set up for just one game. It is available for free but I actually loved it so much I went ahead and joined the 5 dollar a month Founder membership. Worth it. Especially for quality Guild Wars 2 Duo time with the lady friend.

TLDR: If you need to run GW2 on less than acceptable machines, try out GEforce now. It's pretty sweet. Thank you ArenaNet for letting Nividia make your game available for streaming.

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@Smattyshmin.7586 said:I wanted to share just in case anyone else was in a similar situation.TLDR: If you need to run GW2 on less than acceptable machines, try out GEforce now. It's pretty sweet. Thank you ArenaNet for letting Nividia make your game available for streaming.

@maddoctor.2738 said:I tried Guild Wars 2 on GeForce Now myself and it does work very well. Now if someone wants to pay or not is another story, but at 5$ a month it is way less expensive than getting a comparable gaming rig

curious. since gw2 is an online game, where the original setup is:[user's PC] ⇒ [internet Provider] ⇒ [Game Server]and you go to a setup looking like:[user's PC] ⇒ [internet Provider] ⇒ [Nvidia's Servers/Stream Server] ⇒ [Game Server]

my concern is, for GW2 specifically, how's the latency? are your pings the same with or without the streaming service? is there input lag?

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@Astyrah.4015 said:

@Smattyshmin.7586 said:I wanted to share just in case anyone else was in a similar situation.TLDR: If you need to run GW2 on less than acceptable machines, try out GEforce now. It's pretty sweet. Thank you ArenaNet for letting Nividia make your game available for streaming.

@maddoctor.2738 said:I tried Guild Wars 2 on GeForce Now myself and it does work very well. Now if someone wants to pay or not is another story, but at 5$ a month it is way less expensive than getting a comparable gaming rig

curious. since gw2 is an online game, where the original setup is:[user's PC] ⇒ [internet Provider] ⇒ [Game Server]and you go to a setup looking like:[user's PC] ⇒ [internet Provider] ⇒ [Nvidia's Servers/Stream Server] ⇒ [Game Server]

my concern is, for GW2 specifically, how's the latency? are your pings the same with or without the streaming service? is there input lag?

There is some input lag introduced by GeForce Now, it depends heavily on your connection with the NVIDIA service. I've tried only two mmorpgs using GeForce Now, Black Desert and Guild Wars 2, in BDO I could barely notice the Input Lag, but in GW2 it's more pronounced, maybe because of the recent server instability. Because BDO is much more action oriented than GW2, so having no input lag there, but having some in GW2, makes no sense from a technical standpoint.

On the plus side I can say that running GW2 with absolutely everything on max settings does have its charm

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@Astyrah.4015 said:my concern is, for GW2 specifically, how's the latency? are your pings the same with or without the streaming service? is there input lag?

Since I forgot to add this: the ping reported in the game settings (latency between NVIDIA Server and Guild Wars 2) is as low as 13 and goes upwards to 27, so I'd say 20 on average. GeForce Now has a server in Frankfurt (EU Central 3) and Guild Wars 2 EU data center is in Frankfurt, so I guess that 20 average ping is normal.

And the input lag is mostly on the mouse when turning the camera, the lag from pressing buttons and skills isn't very noticeable. I'm not sure why it feels so jarring at 80 fps (with everything on max) and 20 ping when turning the camera around with the mouse.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:-snip-

oh i can live with that kind of input lag if it's just camera rotation. what i was more concerned of was movement/dodging and skill presses. guess i have to try it out sometime to really find out.

and thank you for the info btw! playing gw2 at max settings with consistent 80+ fps sounds like a pipedream so i have to see it for myself :)

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For PvE GF Now might work, but competive gaming via a streaming service won't be a good experience.

All the streaming services (yes: no exception! no matter what latency the service presents you in-app) have additional latency of at least 100 milliseconds to your general latency, so you end up with 150 to 300ms depending from where you are and how good your PC is. That's unplayable at higher skill level encounters.

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@KrHome.1920 said:There are also a lot of people that say they have no input lag, when they play with 60Hz + VSync and the inevitably resulting 150 to 200 ms of input latency. These are the same people that will never get good in a competitive game.

Yeah. I will admit. It wasn't as smooth an experience for me on Counterstrike. So no. I wouldn't recommend for hardcore competitors. Or twitch response games. But if you are that hardcore, most would have purchased an acceptable gaming rig. Some people just need something to run. I did. So it was acceptable to me.

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@anduriell.6280 said:i tried Gforce now and the fps tanks to single digits in highly populated areas. Which resolution are you runing? And settings ?

On my thinkpad, I only need it to run at 1366 by 768. I set bitrate to auto. I actually don't mind setting it to 30 hz refresh rate (I'm just playing some chill PVE story content and map completion). And I do turn down the number of allowed characters at high resolution to low. I never cared to see sparkles and blind my eyes from random characters in populated areas. I just want to see my character and my party's characters.

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  • 5 months later...

Hello there :)I'm planning buying a mac and unfortunately, the only game I'm playing is GW2...I'm ok to use GeForce Now and have try (free FGN account) on my girl friend's mac mini. But even i have a really good connexion, i dont feel it confortable (good graphic, good speed) . Does the hardware using GFN count ? Does GW2 woks at his best on GFN ? How can i do it for the best ? Does the gaming quality depend of arena or nvidia ?Thanks for helping and feedback ^^

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@Kaalcifer.8249 said:Hello there :)I'm planning buying a mac and unfortunately, the only game I'm playing is GW2...I'm ok to use GeForce Now and have try (free FGN account) on my girl friend's mac mini. But even i have a really good connexion, i dont feel it confortable (good graphic, good speed) . Does the hardware using GFN count ? Does GW2 woks at his best on GFN ? How can i do it for the best ? Does the gaming quality depend of arena or nvidia ?Thanks for helping and feedback ^^

Then turn around and buy a pc instead mate.

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