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Feedback: Guild Wars 2 Mac 64-Bit Client


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Hi guys!

I have been using the GW2 Mac OS Client on and off. There has been a severe performance hit from Path of Fire launch to the release of the last few LW episodes. That being said I think there are a few things you can do to improve performance whilst using the existing Mac OS Client.

This is off the top of my head and you will need to google the rest of the steps.

  1. Lock the DPS count and use vsync to 'cap' the frames being rendered, on a small screeen I can make do with 30fps cap.
  2. Reduce shadows to none or the lowest setting.
  3. Reduce the model count.
  4. Reduce model quality.
  5. Reduce textures.
  6. Reduce most post processing.

** Special command, try to launch the GW2 Mac OS client from the command line (Terminal) with the -forwardrenderer prompt.

With all the above optimizations you should be able to have 19-20 fps in core Tyria (On a Macbook Air 2018 or similar machine) and 10-15 fps in HoT maps. This is only for solo play and not for metas. The problem with the existing GW2 client is that it is not using metal and the performance is atrocious. I have since moved on to using a Windows machine to play GW2.

Cheer!

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  • 2 months later...
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Despite Mac marketshare increasing each year, it's clear that ArenaNet doesn't care about Mac users. When was the last time they even bothered to reply to anyone here? They just don't care.

Every other game I can think of has already switched to native Metal rendering and runs beautifully, while GW2 is embarrassingly bad. I've never seen a game company that values their players less.

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@sunrun.4521 said:Despite Mac marketshare increasing each year, it's clear that ArenaNet doesn't care about Mac users. When was the last time they even bothered to reply to anyone here? They just don't care.

Every other game I can think of has already switched to native Metal rendering and runs beautifully, while GW2 is embarrassingly bad. I've never seen a game company that values their players less.

It's a situation that Mac users have no control over. What you can control is, choosing to run dual boot with Windows to play GW2. Not ideal, but an option that works.

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I just upgraded to Big Sur and now GW2 has issues..I can log in, then after clicking play I get a black character selection screen, the mouse icon changes as you move around the screen and changes to hand where your character normally is. If I force quit, restart the Mac it runs correctly once, if I quit the game and restart GW2 it's back to the black screen again.

I suspect it's the egpu I'm using as if I deselect 'prefer egpu' from the launcher it seems to behave. Does anyone have any ideas?! It's pretty unplayable without egpu so putting up with rebooting the Mac each time I want to play. It ran fine no problem on Catalina.

Model Name: Mac mini 2018Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Core i5Processor Speed: 3 GHzMemory: 32 GBwith Blackmagic Radeon Pro 850egpu

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Dear ArenaNet, I am the owner of a 64-bit Mac computer late 2015 with the latest version of OSX Catalina installed and running. I have spent 70 euros on your ultimate bundle therefore paying my support to your company in order to be able to play GW2. The market on Mac computers is increasing constantly because OpenGL is becoming a remnant of the past like Flash. Please consider continuing your support for Mac users and also consider using the Metal API to increase the performance of your game clients. Don't do the mistake to stop supporting one platform to favour the other as this is not a good business choice, it would be like cutting one limb off just because you do most of your work with one side of your body. I hope you will do serious commitments into improving the game performance for Mac users.

Regards

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  • 2 weeks later...

It works on M1s using Rosetta translation built into macOS Big Sur, according to https://applesilicongames.com

Of course performance would be better if they recompiled it (as it would if they did a proper Metal port... it'd be killer, as demonstrated by other games), but given their complete lack of interest in Mac users I doubt that's going to happen any time soon.

(edit: typo)

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  • 1 month later...

Terrible terrible news! The main thing Anet is happy to send a refunds - which means they will not go back to any kind of Mac client in a future. I don't believe multi million company clearly knows all of us use their native client now and they are happy to just block us playing the game.

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Mac is already considered third class citizen when it comes to gaming due to Apple's vision of Mac being closed ecosystem, they invest in homebrew tech without attempts to make it word beyond Mac (for example Metal). They go towards locking system like phones do, but on PC. When you go for corporate operating system you are limited by their decisions, present or future - that's why I prefer linux which is secured for eternity by being community-based with very high programmer's interest.

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I just would know about the timing.Will it be a black out or a gradual loss of interactivity?Knowing this will change a lot my current strategy to enjoy the game till the end.On January the 19th I converted most of my gold into gems, so if things will go on smoothly for a while, at least I will be able to buy things at the TP, just for fun.This uncertainty is however taking away the pleasure of play.

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I find this news appalling. Stopping support only because there's not going to be an OpenGL support and switching to new faster CPU architecture? Rubbish. If Blizzard can update all of their games to use Metal, so can GW2. Blizzard even updated WoW (a game from 2004) from 32bit -> 64bit THEN to ARM 64bit and to use newer GPU API's then damn, so can GW2. In the end, I think the reason being is that the GW2 engine is just too heavy and somehow difficult to fix/edit/change/whatever.

I'm sorry for this rant but I really so love GW2 on my Macbook pro and iMac (when I get time to play it).

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Ive played GW2 since November of 2012 on a Mac... Seeing ups and downs with the support of the mac client but always hopeful and thankful for the support that arenanet gave us gamers that were on Mac OS. So they made new computers with new processors... I get that can be complicated but if ANet made an actual effort to make it compatible, the reward would be huge. Such a shame that they are so willing to cut off a part of their fanbase, based on what system we use, especially after all these years. If its no longer going to be supported, I guess that's just fewer players for them (especially with an expansion coming out soon)

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@Sparkleuk.8690 said:I find this news appalling. Stopping support only because there's not going to be an OpenGL support and switching to new faster CPU architecture? Rubbish. If Blizzard can update all of their games to use Metal, so can GW2. Blizzard even updated WoW (a game from 2004) from 32bit -> 64bit THEN to ARM 64bit and to use newer GPU API's then kitten, so can GW2. In the end, I think the reason being is that the GW2 engine is just too heavy and somehow difficult to fix/edit/change/whatever.

Did you even consider that ActivisionBlizzard has the money and manpower to do so, while Arenanet likely does not have it?By all appearances, Arenanet barely has enough money and manpower to keep the game running with the bare minimum of updates and making an expansion.

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Though we all know how strong the believe in their god, no, Mac is, its beloved users tend to disregard some minor facts. Yes, the new CPU is kinda nice, a good SoC for a tablet or an entry level notebook. But playing a 3D-game takes some more power that the Apple GPU don't really have. Yes, it's faster than an Intel based built-in iCore-GPU. But that is not really worth mentioning. The M1 8-Core GPU is not exchangeable, it's fixed and is as fast as a low end new mobile discrete GPU by AMD or NVidia. Running this Apple-GPU with non optimized and deprecated OpenGL-code on a completely new platform - well, you really need to love your Mac to willingly do so. But, looking from the other side, a publisher needs to be sure to give customers a good product - which is quite hard on a Mac without building a new client from scratch. Comparing the comic-style WoW with GW2 is not really useful either, WoW is available on the iPhone for quite some time.So, well, be happy with your fresh and new M1-SoC, but do not expect many game publishers jumping on the Metal & Mx-train. Emulations and Bootcamp is also impossible, stopping the Mac-client is a kinda sad but logical thing to do. Players with an Intel-Mac can still make a Windows- or Linux-partition (Linux Mint & Lutris is fine if the hardware is supported).

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@Sparkleuk.8690 said:I find this news appalling. Stopping support only because there's not going to be an OpenGL support and switching to new faster CPU architecture? Rubbish. If Blizzard can update all of their games to use Metal, so can GW2. Blizzard even updated WoW (a game from 2004) from 32bit -> 64bit THEN to ARM 64bit and to use newer GPU API's then kitten, so can GW2. In the end, I think the reason being is that the GW2 engine is just too heavy and somehow difficult to fix/edit/change/whatever.

I'm sorry for this rant but I really so love GW2 on my Macbook pro and iMac (when I get time to play it).

The GW2 engine has been neglected for so long, this end of support is a result of that. They had 2 years to prepare for a replacemente to OpenGL.

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The one thing I find the most ironic is Anet's use of the error message we Mac users got " used" to seeing every update to tell us they were ditching us. I have been trying the game out on Nvidia for when it goes dark here. All I can say is that the next expansion better be mindblowing to keep me as any kind of customer after 6 years. All those shared inventory slots & bank increases & bag character increases & permanent logging/foraging tools, world boss portal etc gonna be of no use.https://i.imgflip.com/4vgwfo.jpg

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