Optimization 2020

[Astralporing.1957]

@Scoobaniec.9561 said:Just a reminder that some games have an option to switch between different dx versions. Like POE which was released year later by (at the time) a indie company. How come small company could keep improving the game, performance and so on yet AAA title is stuck with dx9 in 2020, in fact 2021 (4 months away)?

Perhaps it was exactly because it was indie company (and the engine was simpler, and thus easier to rework). Who knows.

And switching between different dx versions may be indeed possible, but it would not be the dx version that would leave older rig players in the dust. It would be higher hardware requirements that would go along with the necessary rework.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:I'm sure they can't "spare" any resources to do a job similar to the one a simple modder is doing. Not like Anet doesn't already have an engine team (consisting of multiple people if I may add) right? They don't need to hire anyone or "allocate resources", they already have the resources, they are just misusing them.You don't know whether they are misusing them, because you don't know what exactly they are working on. Hint: we do know they actually are working on engine optimization since even before HoT. There were many cases in the past when they have informed us about the result of that work even. It's just that "dx rework" sounds more impressive (even if we don;t know if it would actually have any better results than what they chose to work on).

So, considering that you are not (as far as i know) someone that has

• experience in working on a game engine
• knowledge of GW2 engine
• knowledge of what GW2 engine devs were actually working on, and why
• knowledge of the effort required to do what they did vs the effort required to do a dx rework
• knowledge of what their work did for the game vs what the dx rework would doI'd say that you really should not immediately start accusing them of misusing the resources. Not unless you have some inside knowledge you haven't shared with us.

Optimization problems do not have to be caused by lack of competence of their developers. Nor do they need to be a result of a planned management policy. It can be as easily a result of something so simple as a lack of resources to do a major engine revamp project (and thus being limited only to making changes by the way of constant, but individually small tweaks). So far it seems it is exactly how their engine team operates - they do make changes, it's just that those are relatively small when taken individually, and thus don;t have comparable PR to something like dx rework. Even if those changes together might have had a comparable effect (which they might have - we don't really know).

Ironically, saying all that, i need to admit that i do actually agree with you about misusing the resources and problems being caused at management level. It's just i am quite sure we're not talking about the same things here.

If anyone remembers, when we saw the game during its first open beta events, it was completely unoptimized and was running practically purely on CPU. We've been told then that the engine optimization was something they left for last step before launch. And, during the last beta, they mentioned they were starting to work on it. Then, few days later, we were informed that the launch is what? Two weeks away? (i don't remember exactly, but it was something like that).

The game got rushed to launch early (possibly due to certain pandas), and, as such, they had to play catch up with engine optimization on a game that was already running. And it was something that took them a lot of time - they were still doing it when HoT came.

With HoT they did some upgrading to the engine - upgrading that almost certainly needed its own optimization. Then HoT was released before they finished doing all the stuff. Remember, how initially first raid wing and all gen 2 legendaries were supposed to be released alongside the expansion, but ultimately got delayed? I wouldn't be surprised if the engine optimization for HoT was also supposed to be done as the last step - and suffered for that.

Then we got repeat of this with PoF.

Imo, part of the problem we're dealing with now is the consequence of that initial early game launch (that made it so the engine, even in its orginal, old version, was never really optimized in the first place). The second part is probably because at no point in the game's history they had both time and resources to do a more major engine revamp project. All they could do is make small fixes and hope it will hold. Or, to be more precise, at the point when they had those resources, they decided to sink them into non-gw2related projects that ultimately capsized.

All this definitely can be called a misuse of resources, and something caused by management decisions. Still, i'm quite sure it was not the same kind of "misuse" and "orders from above" you had in mind.

[eyelogix.1654]

Implementing a new game engine would take time and cost a lot of moneyI would love to see it, but a dev has already said NO, it ain't gonna happen.

[Solvar.7953]

There is likely not return on investment for an engine rewrite. If you could definitively say (not sure how you could) that an engine rewrite would result in 2x the money coming in that it cost to do, you can bet they would rewrite the engineInstead, players probably fall into one of these categories:

• Currently active players, who buy gems. A very small amount of these may stop playing because of the engine, but most likely the engine would be a contributing factor, not the only factor.
• Active players who don't buy much. Maybe a new engine would inspire them to buy stuff. Only real case I could see for that is the cosmetics with an improved engine are sufficiently better than players would want them, when they don't now.
• Prospective players (F2P accounts). Some number may try the game, and decide they don't want pay many for a game that performs poorly, but this is probably a small number.

The only real hope for a payback is that the engine (and likely textures to go with it) are so much better that it blows the socks off and creates a new buzz for the game. But pulling that off would seem like a real longshot.

[Joote.4081]

And I keep saying the same. This game is stuck in the past and it shouldn't be as it's very popular. Graphics in particular need work and optimization. No point continuing to build on shaky foundations.The graphic style is fine it's how they are displaying it that's the problem. And what is that horrible bloom, glow, shine thing in the game that bleaches out stuff?I mean it benefits the dev's if the game looks and runs good, it draws in the crowds,. As it stands, people might take one look at it and think 'yuk' to bloody archaic.

I think Ill give this DX12 wrapper thing a go.

[Redfeather.6401]

I hate to say this...

But Elder Scrolls Online has been reworking it's code with the intent of lasting another ten years or more. WoW did it too. FFXII reworked itself as well.I currently get double the framerate in eso than I do in guild wars 2. And eso's performance update plan is not even done.If Guild Wars 2 doesn't get the same treatment it is going to stand out more each quarter in comparison to those other games.

[Joote.4081]

@Redfeather.6401 said:I hate to say this...

But Elder Scrolls Online has been reworking it's code with the intent of lasting another ten years or more. WoW did it too. FFXII reworked itself as well.I currently get double the framerate in eso than I do in guild wars 2. And eso's performance update cadence is not even done.If Guild Wars 2 doesn't get the same treatment it is going to stand out more each quarter in comparison to those other games.

Yep. If they updated the graphics and performance which must be easy as the DX12 mod already does this, then the game would probably draw in 10 times the player base. As it is most people will load up GW3, take one look at it and uninstall without even trying it out.The game has everything most players want, everything is in place and it's a massive game, but this keeping the graphics back in the 18th centaury isn't going to cut it.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Joote.4081" said:Yep. If they updated the graphics and performance which must be easy as the DX12 mod already does thisIt doesn't. First, it does not update the graphics in any way. Second, the performance improvements are a bit of a mixed bag - the improvements are on a case-by case basis, and are very dependant on your system (on some rigs it can actually result in worse performance). Third, it is not stable enough - even now, after many, many updates, it still very much can make your game crash (or result in glitchy display). And that is a massive demerit - something that may be tolerated in a third party program, but is completely unacceptable in an official product.

then the game would probably draw in 10 times the player base.

I honestly doubt that. For most players graphics engine is far on the list of deciding factors for MMORPG. It's almost never something that makes or breaks a game, unless it is in a far, far worse state than it is in GW2.

As it is most people will load up GW3, take one look at it and uninstall without even trying it out.The game has everything most players want, everything is in place and it's a massive game, but this keeping the graphics back in the 18th centaury isn't going to cut it.Actually, as far as the graphics go, in an MMORPG market it still looks quite good. And engine efficiency is not something that one will see after "taking one look", unless they are playing on a potato, in which case it will be the same for every other MMORPG with decent graphics.

[Redfeather.6401]

Astralporing, I come back to this game maybe a few times a year and every time I install and log into gw2 the framerate experience is enough to kill my interest. You are fooling yourself if you believe poor performance doesn't affect player population.

Just to give example. In divinity's reach at lunar new year I was getting 20 fps with lowest character limit and quality. I had to use the dx12 dll wrapper to get 25-31 fps. I go back to elder scrolls online and a town of 30 people will not lower my fps below 50 fps and there is no character culling needed thanks to their character drawing now using multi-cores in one of their performance updates. It is such a huge quality of experience difference that it seriously affects my enjoyment.

[Joote.4081]

Dx12 wrapper is in and framerate soared from 45 on the highest settings to my native 100. The graphics are better. My dpi seems to be behaving much better, textures are cleaner and clearer, mouse seems to be more responsive, and that horrible glow on everything has gone, thank goodness.
Come on A-net. Brings us into the 21 century.

[Amka.8069]

its so hopeless....it took them 4-5 years to implement the puny FoV changes... by now its just better to give up and carry on to other games and products, as this company is evidently incapable of delivering any technological improvements to save their lives.by the looks of it, the course is set to unwaveringly waste time and resources on dull "sToRy TeLliNg" and express their own feelings and takes on social values than delivering a properly functioning consumer oriented product.the ineptitude of Anet's "culture" was also shown in the catastrophic failures of Amazon Games were all the "tAlEnT" went to be placed in senior positions and roles. even with abundant time and resources they ended up with two stillborn products and one more in the final phase of being born dead too.one must question the events and transitions that happened within the company around the time when GW1 EotN was in production and the decisions that were made back then.it is regrettable, that the ideas and philosophy of the founding members and leaders were only enough to spark a tiny light during the first 3 titles of the franchise and was not carried on due to lack of leadership and mindful governing of the company.

[dandamanno.4136]

@Joote.4081 said:Dx12 wrapper is in and framerate soared from 45 on the highest settings to my native 100. The graphics are better. My dpi seems to be behaving much better, textures are cleaner and clearer, mouse seems to be more responsive, and that horrible glow on everything has gone, thank goodness.

Come on A-net. Brings us into the 21 century.

It works for many people, myself included. The wrapper has a cost that will affect everyone by a certain amount at all times. But if your system can take advantage of the DX12 benefits then in high draw scenarios you will overcome that wrapper cost easily.

Generally, the scenarios where the DX12 will have the biggest impact are the ones where you actually need the biggest impact, such as large number of players on screen, etc... Having a cost of a couple FPS in low usage scenarios hardly matters since you are probably not struggling for frames in those scenarios anyway.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Joote.4081 said:Yep. If they updated the graphics and performance which must be easy as the DX12 mod already does thisIt doesn't. First, it does

not

update the graphics in any way. Second, the performance improvements are a bit of a mixed bag - the improvements are on a case-by case basis, and are very dependant on your system (on some rigs it can actually result in

worse

performance). Third, it is not stable enough - even now, after many, many updates, it still very much can

make your game crash

(or result in glitchy display). And that is a massive demerit - something that may be tolerated in a third party program, but is completely unacceptable in an official product.

Using the d912pxy for the last 6 months I can honestly say I havent had any crashing issues at all. Certainly possible, but seeing as how you can try it out then uninstall it if it causes problems it's worth a look. As for the visual glitches, those have all pretty much been worked out now. The only visual issues I see now are the conflict it has with GW2radial which causes a flicker when I hold the mount select key until I release it. Not a big deal for most people considering that is an optional addon itself.

Also, just like when the 64-bit client was introduced, if ANET did implement a DX12 build, they would run it concurrently with a DX9 client for a good long while. I mean even LotRO has a DX9, DX10 and DX11 client all at the same time. If you want to talk about a company with few resources to spare...

[Stormcrow.7513]

I love GW2 I really do, but I am starting to notice the bad textures and horrible fps, even with a new rig.

GW2 can look spectacular but you need injectors.

Let's hope EOD will have some performance and textural enhancements

[maddoctor.2738]

@Stormcrow.7513 said:I love GW2 I really do, but I am starting to notice the bad textures and horrible fps, even with a new rig.

GW2 can look spectacular but you need injectors.

Let's hope EOD will have some performance and textural enhancements

I'm sure EOD, just like the previous expansions, will have a much higher graphic/texture quality than the core game, but I doubt they will make any kind of change to the core game. As for performance, we'll see if there is anything new on that front.