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Playmaker.9062

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  1. That's rough, sorry to hear that. Hopefully you can get through the whole mission alright if you decide to have a go at it again! I remember a few months back when the game crashed occasionally halfway through the final cutscene of the Dragon's Stand meta, and losing out on the rewards due to the inability to rejoin the map. Lots of pain for sure.
  2. That's a really good point. I did notice the responsiveness of the mouse while running around the HoT maps for a few minutes.
  3. Introduction I'm a huge fan of the game so I decided to go on an adventure to inspect what the fuss is going on around Tyria. Here are my PC specs: i5-9400 CPU @ 2.90GHz Nvidia RTX 2060, 6GB GDDR6 16GB ram @ 2666MHz OS: Windows 10 Although I don't have the best computer in the world, this game still runs well (especially being 9 years old already)! Disclaimer This is my first time using the forums so I apologize ahead of time if I'm posting in the wrong place. Anyway, I've only been playing the DX11 beta for a few days so I'm sure that this post will only cover a few select things about its new features. I also just want to add that I'm no tech-jargon god, so please bear my misuse of terminology throughout the review. Warning: tis' gon' be a long read, buckle up! Review 1. Environment First and foremost, I decided to sightsee in the older vanilla maps to observe any graphical changes since the newer maps seem to have better graphical fidelity anyway. I will be using both Lion's Arch, Divinity's Reach, and Queensdale (yes, I'm part of the female human master race). For the most part, I didn't observe any huge changes to the graphics, although I find that the majority of the environment looks slightly crispier and colorful when using DX11. By no means is the comparison between DX9 and DX11 "night and day", which is to be expected. By the lobster structure in Lion's Arch: (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/xalw7M7.jpg - As you can see, this wall looks perfectly normal. The engineers, construction workers, and carpenters did their job! (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/hWKu3CC.jpg - Can't say the same for this one. It seems that Lion's Arch is celebrating Halloween early this year. I reckon that this anomaly produced by the DX11 could also be found in many other areas of Tyria, but I've yet to spot more. Maybe this wall is the only one out there, who knows? If you have any observations similar to this, feel free to share them! Cool aquarium located at the top-floor hallway of Divinity's Reach: (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/7g8Ifur.jpg (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/TL83w6W.jpg As previously mentioned, there is almost no graphical change to see here. I do have to say that the DX11 version just looks slightly better, but that's up for debate. Lake Delavan in Queensdale: (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/313gajq.jpg (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/gJ9KlSG.jpg Again, there are barely any graphical differences to point out. On that note, the water quality looks about the same as well. While DX11 is mainly an engine upgrade, it came with a few texture anomalies (such as the one in Lion's Arch) while also making the game look slightly crispier. 2. Rendering This section could probably fall under the Environment section but decided to just make it its own. Plus, it lengthens my review and makes it look a little more official. From what I noticed, the draw distance, rendering time of objects, and shadows are almost identical in the two engines. The Caudecus's Manor revisited in the mission Confessor's End (of Episode 4 of Living World Season 3): (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/vJ6njCw.jpg - Here's a box! (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/6uGBho4.jpg - This screenshot shows the max draw distance from that box with the utilization of the Shield 5 skill. (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/jzZ4kUn.jpg - Here's the same box. (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/HkMDMDR.jpg - Similarly, it shows the max draw distance from that box. In terms of draw distance, nothing has changed between the two engines. I also noticed that the two engines renders the box virtually in the same amount of time when walking up to 'em. Queen Jennah's throne room in Divinity's Reach: (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/nUiuBIB.jpg - In this image, we can see that the shadow being rendered is jagged. These jagged edges are definitely pointier than my great sword (New weapon type confirmed?). (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/W4TdEBA.jpg - Similar to the DX9 version, the jagged edges of the shadow still exists. There's not much of an observation going on for this particular comparison. For the most part, there is almost no difference in terms of the rendering, rendering distance, and rendering time of objects and shadows between the two engines. Maybe I should have just omitted this section, but I just thought it was interesting enough to share. 3. Performance In this section, I'm briefly going to go over the FPS and the general performance my potato was churning out. For testing purposes, I limited my frame rate to 60 and I am using a hardware monitoring application called "Open Hardware Monitor" (which can be downloaded here: https://openhardwaremonitor.org/). By the bank and Mystic Forge in Lion's Arch: (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/ZJGZHIu.jpg - With DX9, I'm getting roughly around half of the desired 60 FPS. (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/V2nDQoM.jpg - There is a slight 5~9 frame improvement with the DX11 version of the game. (Open Hardware Monitor) https://i.imgur.com/pFltVhQ.png - This image corresponds to the two images posted above for a side-by-side performance comparison. I though about testing my FPS and performance in WvW, especially in huge zergs, but considering how fast those move, it would be pretty difficult to replicate the same conditions (staying in the same spot, number of players can fluctuate vastly compared to cities where most AFK, etc.) of which I can screenshot my performance monitoring software for both engines. Plus, I would probably be eating dirt in my screenshots considering I only really use my Mesmer shield 5. Although moving from DX9 to DX11 will probably not fix frame drops in areas with a huge pool of players in the near future, it does lessen the stress on computers and provide slight performance improvement. As we see on the hardware monitor, there is about a whopping 20% drop on the GPU load and about a 10% drop on the CPU load. For the most part, I think my computer will be happy with the investment that is DX11. 4. Quality of Life With DX11, I find that the game start-up and instance loading is considerably faster. There is also a less chance of the game crashing at launch which is a reoccurring problem with DX9. Another feature that DX11 brings to the table is the ability to tab out of the game (full-screened) without minimizing the entire game to the taskbar monster. Tabbing out full-screened: (DX9) https://i.imgur.com/CGwW19F.png - The taskbar monster appears! (DX11) https://i.imgur.com/BtLp9T7.png - I can tab out and open multiple programs without losing Guild Wars 2 to the taskbar monster. I just thought that this was an interesting feature to bring up especially since I only game on one monitor. Aside from delivering slight improvements to the game, DX11 also provides a few quality of life changes. Conclusion In the end, for a beta version of the DX11, I think that there is a lot of potential that this engine could bring. I'm sure there are a lot more going on with the implementation of DX11 into the game, but this is just what I have experienced throughout the several days I have been using it. I could see Arenanet taking the direction of improving the graphics considering that DX11 already aids in the performance of the game on modern computers. Although fellow gamers can have different experiences based on their PC specs, I think that DX11 is a good implementation overall. Sure, there are obviously still some quirks with the current implementation of the DX11, but Guild Wars 2's future looks very promising with the implementation of DX11 and the upcoming End of Dragons expansion. Thanks for your time! TL;DR: DX11 beta = good, but we still have a long road up ahead.
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