The game's engine needs updates to modern standards

[rapthorne.7345]

@Inguiomerus.1504 said:As someone who is more than "in there" in the game development industry, you don't just "get a new engine and replace the old one", or "update the engine" for that matter. Using a new engine with the same game would be considered a remaster or a full-fledged sequel. Unless Anet has plans for Guild Wars 3 (and for MMO standards, that won't be anytime soon), this is most likely super impossible.

Clearly you're not "in there" very deep, because there are a huge number of MMORPGs that have released engine updates, optimisations and outright overhauls in how things are processed to get better performance.Is it a small undertaking? not at all. But you saying it would essentially involve a re-release of the game is completely inaccurate, unless you mean in the context of moving the game to an entirely different engine, instead of improving the current one (which has been seen to be done in the past, as the developers have repeatedly stated how they developed new engine procedures for both the expansions)

[Shirlias.8104]

@Airyll.7849 said:

@Shirlias.8104 said:I only have ping issues in wvw,but I am fine with fps.

Normally it's good to post your rig specs when you make these kind of responses. I'm "fine" with FPS too insofar as I can play 99.99% of the game at 50+ FPS on max settings at all times, including the use of GemFX because vanilla GW2 is boring as heck to me. But then again, I'm running on a Nvidia GTX 1070 FE with the latest Intel processor and the

only

thing slowing my rig down is the fact I don't currently have an SSD. I should, ultimately, be able to pull more than 50FPS at all times on max settings in an ideal world. The fact I can't, and the fact that GW2 still hogs

so

much CPU compared to other equally expansive games speaks a lot to the optimisation of the game itself.

Just because you're fine with FPS, that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement or that the optimisation is okay.

You are right.It's a 4/5 years old setup:i5-3570 CPU 3.40GHz8gb RamGTX 770Game installed into a 120gb SSD.

All Settings High/Higher, except Character model limit which is Low.Around 35/40 openworld.Spvp 60/100WvW 60/100 ( except when lag occours due to wvwvw encounters, then they drop after the "loading" ).

[Crevox.5806]

WoW added DX11 support far post launch. They just started using deferred rendering and added real MSAA support on top of that, with tons of options. They also implemented a customizable internal resolution scaler and tons of other engine updates to support a 10+ year old game. The game's user interface is extremely customizable with UI mods and has always supported strong UI scaling and a huge amount of options.

FFXIV also added DX11 support after their first expansion. They implemented tons of lighting updates and AO fixes, along with updated water effects and more. The latest expansion has a much higher graphical quality in general, to the point that they had to drop PS3 support because it couldn't keep up. Beyond that, they also implemented UI scaling updates to support 4k resolution and did engine optimizations to make higher resolutions run better.

Despite these things, both games run extremely well and easily maintain far over 60 FPS, with great support for SLI and very good threading optimization.

What has Guild Wars 2 added...? I can't think of anything. It's an older game than FFXIV yet has received less engine upgrades to keep up.

[LUST.2305]

@Crevox.5806 said:WoW added DX11 support far post launch. They just started using deferred rendering and added real MSAA support on top of that, with tons of options. They also implemented a customizable internal resolution scaler and tons of other engine updates to support a 10+ year old game. The game's user interface is extremely customizable with UI mods and has always supported strong UI scaling and a huge amount of options.

FFXIV also added DX11 support after their first expansion. They implemented tons of lighting updates and AO fixes, along with updated water effects and more. The latest expansion has a much higher graphical quality in general, to the point that they had to drop PS3 support because it couldn't keep up. Beyond that, they also implemented UI scaling updates to support 4k resolution and did engine optimizations to make higher resolutions run better.

Despite these things, both games run extremely well and easily maintain far over 60 FPS, with great support for SLI and very good threading optimization.

What has Guild Wars 2 added...? I can't think of anything. It's an older game than FFXIV yet has received less engine upgrades to keep up.

Why are some assuming ArenaNet has done nothing to improve GW2?

I mean...to name a few...

• A 64-bit client
• Revamped, redesigned, and updated UI system for better performance (Achievement Menus, Options, Wardobe, Trading Post, etc.)
• Client side processing
• Server side processing
• Megaservers
• Updated lighting systems
• Updated texture mapping
• Updated map asset loading

If you look through all the patch notes since 2012, you'll see they came a long way.Comparing the "graphical quality" of FFXIV versus GW2 is apples and oranges. Two different styles, two different processes, two different ways of processing detail.

[Crevox.5806]

@LUST.7241 said:

@Crevox.5806 said:WoW added DX11 support far post launch. They just started using deferred rendering and added real MSAA support on top of that, with tons of options. They also implemented a customizable internal resolution scaler and tons of other engine updates to support a 10+ year old game. The game's user interface is extremely customizable with UI mods and has always supported strong UI scaling and a huge amount of options.

FFXIV also added DX11 support after their first expansion. They implemented tons of lighting updates and AO fixes, along with updated water effects and more. The latest expansion has a much higher graphical quality in general, to the point that they had to drop PS3 support because it couldn't keep up. Beyond that, they also implemented UI scaling updates to support 4k resolution and did engine optimizations to make higher resolutions run better.

Despite these things, both games run extremely well and easily maintain far over 60 FPS, with great support for SLI and very good threading optimization.

What has Guild Wars 2 added...? I can't think of anything. It's an older game than FFXIV yet has received less engine upgrades to keep up.

I mean...to name a few...

• A
  64-bit client
• Revamped, redesigned, and updated UI system for better performance (Achievement Menus, Options, Wardobe, Trading Post, etc.)
• Client side processing
• Server side processing
• Megaservers

64 bit client I will admit, along with megaservers. The rest are just general game updates that happen to any game. Every MMORPG updates their UI elements with patches, there's nothing impressive to say about that, or updates their "client/server side processing."

Guild Wars 2 launched with a lot less than other MMOs, and has done very little to update to catch up, let alone reach modern standards. The fact that there is no way to dynamically control display of particles in an MMORPG is crazy. I could say the same thing about a lot of the missing features.

I did my first raid last night and the enemy is just surrounded by an extreme light show of particles (both on the ground and attached to him), yet somehow the designers expect you to look out for tiny blue circles in the midst of it (or you die instantly). It's definitely doable, but it's silly that this is not seen as an issue that can be improved upon over the last how many years of this content being available.

[OriOri.8724]

The game's performance has its problems yes, though I think you are making them out to be bigger than they really are in all honesty. My laptop isn't that great (5 years old now, 8GB ram, no GPU), but it runs the game absolutely fine for the most part. Performance could be better yes, but I also know that my setup isn't all that good anymore, especially compared to modern gaming rigs.

Last I heard from the devs on it (a comment on Reddit a while ago now), the performance problems in this game stem from the fact that the main thread was doing too much of the work, so the main thread (which is CPU bound, so no GPU will help that out. Something I think a lot of people ignore or just don't know when they bring up their GPUs as if that should make a difference) is the bottleneck most of the time. They said, at the time, that they were working on moving more stuff off the main thread onto other threads, but that's a huge project and takes a while to do well. I don't know how much progress, if any, was made in that regard since that comment was made though.

Personally, I think GW2 already has plenty of content, and wouldn't mind a 6-9 month content drought if that meant that ANet spent that time working on updating the engine and improving performance of the game in general. However, I also know that I am in the far minority in this regard, so I hope it doesn't happen. I think the best process (and one I think ANet is taking) is to ship each expansion with parts of the engine rewritten. It takes significantly longer to do, but allows them to update their engine without either hiring a whole new team to do it, or suffering from a content drought.

[Greyrebel.7492]

if anet wants to Attract new players to this game they should rework the old engine and upgrade it

[maddoctor.2738]

@Crevox.5806 said:-The game generally has low FPS, especially in any crowded area. It's difficult to maintain 60 FPS in many areas, let alone push to 144. If you enter combat with multiple players, good luck. I'm not going to claim I know the reasoning (cough poor multithreading and GPU utilization), but really this is a huge issue. As an example of poor optimization, I have two GTX 1080s and I have to play the game on low shadows because the game's FPS drops a ton the instant I put it any higher, yet ambient occlusion and supersampling don't even budge it (???). This is even true with no players around. The game also has frame pacing issues and frequent micro-stutters, especially on UI updates.

Ambient Occlusion and Supersampling are mostly done by the GPU so your GTX 1080s are handling that nicely, therefore you get no performance drop. Shadows, although rendered on the GPU they do require CPU assistance and can be a major CPU bottleneck. This happens to a lot of games out there with Shadows.In order to optimize the game and run it better you need to identify which graphic options are being processed by the CPU and which by the GPU, lowering the CPU settings and increasing the GPU settings is the best way to get optimal performance if you have a monster GPU.

[Erzian.5218]

Especially for laptop users, better GPU utilization would be great as current gen laptop GPUs are much closer to their desktop variants than CPUs.Taking Lions Arch as an example, a GTX 1070 is seemingly bored (less than 50% max load, even the max Q version) while the frame rates in high/max settings barely get above 40 fps. That is kind of disappointing. :anguished:

[Wolfheart.7483]

I think a big part of the issue here is this:WoW is subscription based. They have a steadier flow of income to support engine updates. Granted, people could cancel their subscription at any time but it's still a more reliable source of steady funds than the Gem store. With the number of subscriptions they have, overall, they can still bank on a huge amount of money coming in every month.

FFXIV is made by Square-Enix who make tons of other games, so the company as a whole has a lot more money to invest in updates should they choose to. The subscription piece also applies for them, as well.

Those are the 2 biggest examples of MMOs with better optimization in their engine. I think a big part of this is financial viability. The time, money, etc. it would take to overhaul the engine probably isn't warranted at this point in the games life cycle. Also, if updating the engine costs too much money at this point, that could have financial repercussions for future expansions or, eventually, Guild Wars 3.

[GSNairb.1456]

I don't understand why you are complaining that your dual 1080 setup isn't working. Many games don't support SLI, GW2 happens to be one of them. Asking for SLI support is fine, but complaining that your dual GPU setup doesn't work is pointless when it is known its not supported.

As many people have said, having a good processor is what gets you the most performance gain (assuming your GPU can handle whatever settings you want). With my current set up the worst i have gotten has been 40-45 fps in WvW during 3 way fights with the majority of people on each server over SM castle. The vast majority of time its 75-95, and during intense things (outside of massive WvW fights) i rarely dip below 60.

I agree that with the beast of computers some people are running the game should run better than it does, but for the most part playing at 60fps avg or higher is perfectly fine. I should also note im playing at 1440p and i have a very modest OC on my CPU (3.6 GHz). I have everything set to max.

Intel - Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core ProcessorCorsair - H105 73.0 CFM Liquid CPU CoolerMSI - X99A Raider ATX LGA2011-3 MotherboardG.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 MemorySamsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State DriveMSI - GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video CardFractal Design - Define S ATX Mid Tower CaseEVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

EDIT: One thing i didn't think about is how your internet connection can screw things up. Im not 100% sure how much (if anything) it does, but i know that after switching from the 50mb speeds to 200 mb speeds i have noticed a lot less fps issues (again, i could be imagining things, but that is the only thing i can think of)

[Lowlights.7021]

i play on a 4790k/970/16gb and large crowds absolutely destroy it

updating the engine to support dx12 would probably be the best "single" update they could make, simply for the much better multicore rendering support

hopefully it happens eventually

[Helbjorne.9368]

@Wolfheart.7483 said:I think a big part of the issue here is this:WoW is subscription based. They have a steadier flow of income to support engine updates. Granted, people could cancel their subscription at any time but it's still a more reliable source of steady funds than the Gem store. With the number of subscriptions they have, overall, they can still bank on a huge amount of money coming in every month.

FFXIV is made by Square-Enix who make tons of other games, so the company as a whole has a lot more money to invest in updates should they choose to. The subscription piece also applies for them, as well.

Those are the 2 biggest examples of MMOs with better optimization in their engine. I think a big part of this is financial viability. The time, money, etc. it would take to overhaul the engine probably isn't warranted at this point in the games life cycle. Also, if updating the engine costs too much money at this point, that could have financial repercussions for future expansions or, eventually, Guild Wars 3.

To be fair, I would gladly pay a subscription fee if it meant paying for consistent updates. I do my part and spend a fair amount monthly in the Gem store, but as you stated, it's not exactly a reliable or predictable income source for ArenaNet. They could implement what other games have done, such as ESO and BDO by making the subscription optional, with little bonuses as a thank you for supporting the company, such as an extra bank tab, extra bag slot, maybe a month Gem stipend, etc.

[Zedek.8932]

Excelsior.

I am in the same boat. The funny thing however is, that I often run other CPU-intensive tasks while playing GW2: Video rendering etc.My Ryzen 1700X's last few cores are idling (exaggeration) due to bad multithreading and my GTX1080 is already chilling at roughly 50% but I still get FPS problems on Full HD often. I am on 1080p because I am currently still running on a FullHD monitor and since I enjoy the crisp look, I don't even have the biggest FPS sink enabled - Anti Alias is off..

The ressources are clearly there and available, but the engine, well....

So instead of wishing the game would run as expected, I take it as it is and demux entire Youtube playlist meanwhile. That's like tackling the problem from behind.^^

When playing GW2, the first cores of course, revved-up. 1-3 are running on max TDP clocks. 4-5 are like "on stand-by" and 6-8 are literally sleeping...http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170914/oznnpcmn.jpg

During gameplay, the last core is often just idling...(http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170914/59eted58.jpg)

The GPU is also at only 50% of the load...http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170914/agqifh2u.jpg

It's shocking that a program can struggle so much. Yes, I know, for pure gaming an Octacore is yet too early because of intel's monopolist game, but only GW2 has this high amount of reserves..

Board: MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon AM4CPU: AMD Ryzen 1700X (Octacore)RAM: 2x8 GByte Corsair @ 2400 MHzGPU: Gainward Phoenix GTX1080

[Terra.9506]

only improve performance alone appreciate me enough...

[Wolfheart.7483]

@Helbjorne.9368 said:

@Wolfheart.7483 said:I think a big part of the issue here is this:WoW is subscription based. They have a steadier flow of income to support engine updates. Granted, people could cancel their subscription at any time but it's still a more reliable source of steady funds than the Gem store. With the number of subscriptions they have, overall, they can still bank on a huge amount of money coming in every month.

FFXIV is made by Square-Enix who make tons of other games, so the company as a whole has a lot more money to invest in updates should they choose to. The subscription piece also applies for them, as well.

Those are the 2 biggest examples of MMOs with better optimization in their engine. I think a big part of this is financial viability. The time, money, etc. it would take to overhaul the engine probably isn't warranted at this point in the games life cycle. Also, if updating the engine costs too much money at this point, that could have financial repercussions for future expansions or, eventually, Guild Wars 3.

To be fair, I would gladly pay a subscription fee if it meant paying for consistent updates. I do my part and spend a fair amount monthly in the Gem store, but as you stated, it's not exactly a reliable or predictable income source for ArenaNet. They could implement what other games have done, such as ESO and BDO by making the subscription optional, with little bonuses as a thank you for supporting the company, such as an extra bank tab, extra bag slot, maybe a month Gem stipend, etc.

I, too, have spent more than my fair share over the years. I would welcome an optional sub, as well.

[MedievalThings.5417]

GW2 is entirely single core. The rest of the computer is almost irrelevant if you don't have a really good cpu, and even then, the game is only using one core.If you overlook all of the server side lag (wvw lag, ability lag), the performance is bottlenecked in the cpu.

[Zok.4956]

Another diskussion about game performance: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/1011/so-its-about-time-this-question-was-asked

[Grenther.6853]

As someone who's working in software development (software engineer) and has experience with game development; I'd like to point out that it's not the game engine that needs to be remade, as multiple people here try to say.A game engine has multiple parts. The graphics engine is one of those, in case Arenanet has made their engine logically you could replace the graphics engine without impacting a lot of the other components in the game. Sure it's a lot of work, but nowhere near as much as creating a new engine.Rewriting the graphics engine will give gw2 the possibility to use more efficient ways of rendering and nice extras such as tessellation, more modern godrays and other lighting effects. Overall make it more modern.I can only hope they'll try to do something big with the performance and possibly even better graphics soon. The expansion should've brought in some extra money, let's hope they spend it well.

[Zok.4956]

@Wolfheart.7483 said:I think a big part of the issue here is this:WoW is subscription based. They have a steadier flow of income to support engine updates. Granted, people could cancel their subscription at any time but it's still a more reliable source of steady funds than the Gem store. With the number of subscriptions they have, overall, they can still bank on a huge amount of money coming in every month.

FFXIV is made by Square-Enix who make tons of other games, so the company as a whole has a lot more money to invest in updates should they choose to. The subscription piece also applies for them, as well.

Those are the 2 biggest examples of MMOs with better optimization in their engine. I think a big part of this is financial viability. The time, money, etc. it would take to overhaul the engine probably isn't warranted at this point in the games life cycle. Also, if updating the engine costs too much money at this point, that could have financial repercussions for future expansions or, eventually, Guild Wars 3.

"Rift" is another example. When the game was in its 5th year (last year) and was already switched from a subscription based model to F2P they optimized it for true multicore-support and they stated that because of this the game performance increased 25% - 50%.

They did not had the funding or subscriptions of WoW but thought the money/dev-time spent was a good investment for the game and saw a business case for this.

[rapthorne.7345]

@Ubi.4136 said:GW2 is entirely single core. The rest of the computer is almost irrelevant if you don't have a really good cpu, and even then, the game is only using one core.If you overlook all of the server side lag (wvw lag, ability lag), the performance is bottlenecked in the cpu.

my 6 core 12 thread ryzen 5 with GW2 running all threads at 100% begs to differ.

GW2's performance and optimisation is definitely a problem, but saying it only runs on one core is just plain wrong

[Fermi.2409]

@rapthorne.7345 said:

@Ubi.4136 said:GW2 is entirely single core. The rest of the computer is almost irrelevant if you don't have a really good cpu, and even then, the game is only using one core.If you overlook all of the server side lag (wvw lag, ability lag), the performance is bottlenecked in the cpu.

my 6 core 12 thread ryzen 5 with GW2 running all threads at 100% begs to differ.

GW2's performance and optimisation is definitely a problem, but saying it only runs on one core is just plain wrong

There is a 0% chance that GW2 is pushing you to run at 100% on all threads. Hell, even my 3770k is generally in the 50-60s% range and that has 4 less threads

[rapthorne.7345]

@Fermi.2409 said:

@rapthorne.7345 said:

@Ubi.4136 said:GW2 is entirely single core. The rest of the computer is almost irrelevant if you don't have a really good cpu, and even then, the game is only using one core.If you overlook all of the server side lag (wvw lag, ability lag), the performance is bottlenecked in the cpu.

my 6 core 12 thread ryzen 5 with GW2 running all threads at 100% begs to differ.

GW2's performance and optimisation is definitely a problem, but saying it only runs on one core is just plain wrong

There is a 0% chance that GW2 is pushing you to run at 100% on all threads. kitten, even my 3770k is generally in the 50-60s% range and that has 4 less threads

I find it incredibly bizarre myself, but I get 100% cpu utilisation on GW2, despite not getting great performance

[maddoctor.2738]

@Ubi.4136 said:GW2 is entirely single core. The rest of the computer is almost irrelevant if you don't have a really good cpu, and even then, the game is only using one core.If you overlook all of the server side lag (wvw lag, ability lag), the performance is bottlenecked in the cpu.

This is wrong. Although one thread will get more load than others the game uses all cores of your PC. Despite what some say, if you had a single core CPU at @25GHz, you'd get far worse fps drops than now.

[DeviantShark.6548]

@Crevox.5806 said:I have two GTX 1080s and I have to play the game on low shadows because the game's FPS drops a ton the instant I put it any higher, yet ambient occlusion and supersampling don't even budge it (???).

With one GTX 1080 I have yet to experience those difficulties. Without players around this game goes well beyond 100fps. AO and SS usually don't budge it because the GPU easily handles that.

@Crevox.5806 said:Loading times can get very long. This is especially true if you decide to load into an area with a large number of players. I got the free 2 week pass to Mistlock Sanctuary and I stopped using it because the load time to get in there was way longer than Lion's Arch.

True, then again, loading GW2 from an SSD increases loadingspeed significantly. And for that manner, GTA V has a more modern engine but loading screens... dude, gw2 is a blessing if you compare those games.

With health bars and UI scaling I do agree. Health bars can and should be implemented. There were 3rd party apps which did that significanly better than gw2 did. However, GW2s UI is - as far as I know - not vectorbased. Which makes scaling incredibly hard.

But in opposition to what some fellow players suggest here, a content drought in order to get another engine to work would be a pretty stupid thing to do. That would lose them a lot of players, especially veteran ones which generate a significant part of gw2's revenue. It could be a side project of one team for a long time and be developped parallel, but then again, this is hard to accomplish as they would have to adjust to every other update again and vice versa. Summarizing, I would say we all wish for GW2 to be completely modernized, but we all have to realize that this would be a new game. Maybe GW3 might bring us exactly that in a fewhundred years :)