Performance suggestions for devs

[Miporin.3529]

Hello, playing this game since day-1 launch back in 2012, i noticed over the years that performance decrease drastically, expecially in the new maps and even using modern hardware. Doing some tests i noticed that one of the major causes are draw distance and the GUI.

In some early 2012 maps, where there are less polygons and more fogs, fps indeed boost, GUI also impact heavy the fps, expecially the group interface on the left when you join a large commander raid, infact hiding it with ctrl+h increase a lot the performance, you immediately feel the smoothness even in crowd areas.Hiding some parts of the GUI don't have any effect because, they are only hide not removed, so these new options are useless, just for screen cleaning.

Indeed another factor is people on the screen, but moving the slider to reduce people and armor quality result in monsters and expecially bosses to disappear too, so keeping these values to medium (or low maximum) is mandatory.

My suggestion for devs is simple:

1) Add in the graphic settings a slider to reduce drastically the DRAW DISTANCE of the landscape, or in alternative add a FOG slider to further lower polygons of far objects and background elements. LOD don't impact much fps.

2) Rewrite the GUI and made it more simple, light and less demanding, expecially the group window. When i'm doing metas and some bosses, join a large group commander with 30+ people decrease my fps by a huge 5-6 fps margin. The loss in performance is heavy.

Also please, let all the GUI elements to be movable and resizable, let us decide to hide conditions and boons but leave on the screen the CC bar of monsters, and so on. Make it more light, more customizable.

Said so, i think these 2 parts of the game, draw diastance and GUI, can really improve a lot the performance of the game without sacrificing NPC and other playersto disappear, and make it more enjoyable expecially for people without a super modern pc.

My 2 cents as a old player, thanks you.

[elrin.4750]

gw2 client has an old engine, probably tweaked and retweaked. core tyria maps have great performance, because they kept it simple and the engine is capable of handling those maps very well. unfortunately, the news maps have become complex with complex assets and map design.

here is the problem: ANET KEEPS CREATING ASSETS AND MAP DESIGN THE ENGINE CANNOT HANDLE.

i think the map designers, modelers, artist, whoever needs to be reminded: "hey guys.. remember we have a very old engine. keeps the map simple and keep the polygon count down.." :)

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I think the designers, etc. are very aware of the limitations/restrictions (as evidenced in the latest Guild Chat, for example).

[Miporin.3529]

@"elrin.4750" said:gw2 client has an old engine, probably tweaked and retweaked. core tyria maps have great performance, because they kept it simple and the engine is capable of handling those maps very well. unfortunately, the news maps have become complex with complex assets and map design.

here is the problem: ANET KEEPS CREATING ASSETS AND MAP DESIGN THE ENGINE CANNOT HANDLE.

i think the map designers, modelers, artist, whoever needs to be reminded: "hey guys.. remember we have a very old engine. keeps the map simple and keep the polygon count down.." :)

Yes, i'm aware of such issues, but since they can't change much about the old engine, they can bypass such issues with more options to reduce the load of the cpu, draw distance is a huge factor for fps, having a slider to increase the fog or reduce the distance of the landscape can improve the performance since less polygons are loaded.

The GUI is another thing that need a tweak since is heavy and bad optimized, i lose about 10 fps when the party bar is filled with people for metas, this is something that should never happens, we need more options to make the whole GUI more simple and light.

These are things that devs can easily do without modify the core of the engine, expceially they can help during the meta events when a lot of people gather in the same area without sacrificing the number of model on the screen (that unfortunately have the side effect to hide the monsters and bossess too).