Guild Wars 2 Weekly /r/GuildWars2 Question Thread - July 03, 2021 |
- Weekly /r/GuildWars2 Question Thread - July 03, 2021
- Hey Arenanet, can you bring back Josh too? Need more JP's.
- The Hardstuck Community Response Party Will Be LIVE In One Hour Of This Posts Creation!
- Five years ago Colin said Bye on reddit. Hopefully he says Hi as well.
- NPC and character dialogues are what makes LWS 3 way more fun
- On the DirectX 11 announcement
- A Norn For Each Spirit
- I think it's a spear. Chars just don't hold daggers like the art work shows.
- Them: it’s a dagger or spear; Me with 500iq:
- The Weekly Map Recap Special - Path of Fire Primer
- Who is the Choo Choo guy and why is everyone hyped about him?
- The Return of the Johandsome
- Am I the only one who sees Colin's return as a BAD thing?
| Weekly /r/GuildWars2 Question Thread - July 03, 2021 Posted: 03 Jul 2021 06:00 AM PDT This thread is dedicated to questions that you've never really felt the need to start a thread for, but would still like to see answered/discussed. Resources: Please also consider sorting the comments in this thread by "new" so that the newest comments are at the top, since those are most likely to still need answers. [link] [comments] | ||
| Hey Arenanet, can you bring back Josh too? Need more JP's. Posted: 03 Jul 2021 10:23 AM PDT | ||
| The Hardstuck Community Response Party Will Be LIVE In One Hour Of This Posts Creation! Posted: 03 Jul 2021 07:07 AM PDT PREPARE TO RESPOND!Do not miss the Dragon Response Mission tournament with over 25.000 in-game gold, gems, a physical trophy and for the first time the NOW CONFIRMED IN-GAME TITLE: COMMUNITY HERO! The event will take place at 3 PM UTC (5 PM CEST) and giveaways will be ran throughout the tournament so you really don't wanna miss this one! Watch the trailer now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLtB_m5-d7o Link to livestream: https://www.twitch.tv/plenyx [link] [comments] | ||
| Five years ago Colin said Bye on reddit. Hopefully he says Hi as well. Posted: 03 Jul 2021 09:01 AM PDT | ||
| NPC and character dialogues are what makes LWS 3 way more fun Posted: 03 Jul 2021 12:53 PM PDT
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| On the DirectX 11 announcement Posted: 03 Jul 2021 04:49 AM PDT So after seeing a lot of talk about the DX11 announcement, I noticed a lot of misinformation and misconceptions — as is usually the case when it comes to GW2's performance, the engine, versions of DirectX, and related topics. Let me try to clear up some things. First, some general facts unrelated to the DX11 announcement specifically but relevant to the topic:
I touched on this with point 1 above, but let's look at what the issue with DirectX 9 really is. Simply put, graphics APIs like DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan provide a set of commands that developers can use to control the GPU in a standardized, structured way, with built-in abstractions for common use-cases. Before a frame is rendered, a game engine will do a lot of processing to set up the data that needs to be rendered. This part is multi-threaded even in DX9, no worries there. However, sending the actual rendering commands from the CPU to the GPU, knows as draw calls, is notoriously a single-threaded endeavour in DX9 and all older graphics APIs. Now, for most games this was historically not an issue. But MMOs and some other genres like RTS universally suffer from this limitation due to the relatively high amount of things to draw. Each model on your screen adds a whole bunch of draw calls, depending on the complexity and detail of the model, and any special effects. In other words, the number of draw calls scales roughly linearly with the number of characters in view in an MMO. This is why the 'Character Model Limit' affects performance so heavily (and 'Character Model Quality' too, but a little less). Touching on point 3 above: other MMOs suffer from this all the same, but GW2 has a relatively high baseline for settings that impact this. BDO, for example, has a notoriously low draw distance — effectively locking you into a lower value of GW2's 'Character Model Limit' setting. At least in GW2 you have the choice to take the performance hit for seeing people around you at greater distances. DirectX 11Many people allude to DX11's 'multi-threaded' nature. Even the official announcement does:
This is very misleading. As I mentioned before, DirectX 9 already supports multi-threading for most of the work that is done before sending the draw calls — but more importantly, DX11 does not address the draw calls issue properly! It adds support for multi-threaded command lists (batched draw calls), but does so poorly. We can see this is the many MMOs that have added support for DX11 in addition to 9 and/or 10: the performance improvements in crowds were minimal at best — and sometimes it got worse due to the utilisation of other new effects that DX11 introduced that have a cost. But a picture is worth a thousand words, so look at these draw calls benchmarks and shudder. ("DX11ST is DX11's single-threaded command list mode, "MT" is the multi-threaded variant.) Those benchmarks also shows why we need to move to DX12 or Vulkan if we really want to do something about the poor performance in crowds. And make no mistake: DirectX 12 is a completely different beast from all previous versions. DX12 and Vulkan are low-level APIs, requiring an entirely different approach to building the engine. There is no upgrade path from DX9, via DX11, to DX12. If the goal is to go to DX12, for actual performance improvements down the line, spending any amount of time on a DX11 implementation is a complete waste of time. Also note how much effort it took Blizzard — with their infinite funds — to get a decent DX12 implementation. In other words: realise that the goal of ANet is not DX12, that DX11 will not bring the improvements we need or want, and that this whole announcement is a carrot for the uninformed. Bread and circuses — Enjoy :) [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 03 Jul 2021 12:00 AM PDT
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| I think it's a spear. Chars just don't hold daggers like the art work shows. Posted: 03 Jul 2021 01:09 PM PDT
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| Them: it’s a dagger or spear; Me with 500iq: Posted: 02 Jul 2021 06:48 PM PDT | ||
| The Weekly Map Recap Special - Path of Fire Primer Posted: 03 Jul 2021 10:56 AM PDT Welcome to the Weekly Map Recap, a series where we look back at one map in the game each week. We'll look with a critical eye at how each map represents its theme, proves faithful to its lore, and implements its design. We'll see how effective its gameplay is, whether the art holds up, and the forecast for the map's long term retention. With 52 maps to date, it'll be quite the journey! Today's a bit different. Before we dive into each Path of Fire map individually, we're going to take a broad overview of their shared context and design elements. Links to the previous entries in a reply at the bottom! Path of Fire PrimerOkay, time for PoF map design. We get our third 'paradigm shift' - with the implementation of mounts, map design had to change accordingly. The maps are larger, but a little more sparse. More open, but with secrets based on access to mounts rather than natural exploration. They've got meta events, but they're much closer to vanilla design structures than those of HoT. In many ways, Path of Fire maps represent a completely opposite, but equally valid, philosophy on where to take vanilla GW2 map design. Where HoT maps emphasize enclosed labyrinthine spaces, PoF embraces open horizons. Where HoT has dense enemy placements and unsoloable hero challenges, PoF can be tackled fairly easily alone for the most part. Where HoT demands large chunks of your time to make real progress or acquire rewards, PoF can be done at your own pace. This is all in direct response to widespread criticism of Heart of Thorns from early in that expansion's life, before the major updates that increased rewards, added content, and brought it more in line with where it is today. One of the big things that we've got to talk about is reward structures. This is maybe the biggest problem with PoF map design, and that's something that's going to plague every map we discuss until LWS4. Reward structures in PoF are convoluted and actively decrease the retention of the maps in question. Different 'currencies' - and here I'm using a broad definition of the term - we have in PoF include:
Each of these is used in different ways. Some rewards are purchased from a vendor. Some are purchased from a vendor only after unlocking an achievement. Some are earned through an achievement. Some are craftable after the recipe drops. Some are craftable only after completing an achievement. Some are simply rare drops with no other unlock method. The most important bit? None of them are map specific. What this means is that the question becomes less about 'what unique rewards does this map offer?' and more 'what is the fastest way to earn the currency I need for this PoF reward?' This means that suboptimal methods of earning those currencies - like treasure hunting kits - are never, ever used. I have never used a treasure hunting kit. They are essentially trash items that I cannot sell. Further, without accessible unique rewards for each map, the PoF maps are competing more directly with the HoT maps and LW maps which have much more 'farmable' metas and currencies. This is compounded by the fact that, with a design ethos that is closer to vanilla maps than HoT, these rewards are not really designed to be farmable in the same way. They are designed to supplement your personal exploration experience. This changes the whole tone of our conversation regarding these maps - because they've never received a rewards overhaul in the same way that the HoT maps did. It means that the long-term prospects for retention on these maps - aside from acquiring mounts, especially the griffin, skyscale, and beetle - are generally pretty poor. There are other elements that are really key to thinking about Path of Fire maps. DifficultyOn the whole, Path of Fire maps are designed to be 'soloable'. This means that, while there are some difficulty spikes, they are relatively easy. It's a little bit of a strange move for a major expansion and, as we already discussed, feels reactionary to criticisms of Heart of Thorns' difficulty. Another way to look at it is that these maps feel like a compromise between Vanilla and HoT difficulty levels - a way of teaching players to 'get good' without breaking them. If that's the goal, I suppose it's done well - but it is clear that the metas on these maps did not satisfy those folks looking for the next Triple Trouble or Chak Gerent. To a certain extent, that's totally okay; it may be that the goal here was to add to the game significantly without invalidating the Heart of Thorns maps, and that was definitely accomplished. ExplorationPath of Fire maps have fantastic exploration elements. So long as you don't expect to be well rewarded for your effort in gold per hour, the actual puzzles and secret areas involved are tons of fun. It feels like this aspect was the core design aspect that the team wanted to emphasize with this expansion, and they succeeded. There are still occasionally events, small areas, or puzzles that will surprise me or that I've forgotten whenever I play on Path of Fire maps. MovementThis is really key. One of the things that Path of Fire does in spades is play with the simple joy of movement on mounts. It's a ton of fun to run around in a raptor race, or solve a puzzle from jackal-back. But I'm unsure how to quantify that in our map analysis. Especially now that mounts are rideable anywhere in the game, it's easy to forget just how much that movement was a core component of the PoF maps' appeal. The developers did an excellent job ensuring that mounts (until you get to the griffin or skyscale) do not invalidate content on these maps; you can still be dismounted in many areas, and the map design actively engages your mount abilities rather than allowing you to simply afk while running on your mount. Meta EventsOverall, Path of Fire has poor metas. Before they were tuned up in an update, but even now, these metas are designed surprisingly poorly, with bad rewards and strange design choices. They are often the wrong kind of difficult, lacking interesting mechanics or having time pressure with large health bars. They tend to be smaller, and some do not have unique boss monsters. Many of these metas can be difficult to find; if you don't know where Serpent's Ire is, it can be quite a challenge to locate your first time through Domain of Vabbi. Without a strong increase in the incentive for these events, it's unlikely that they will retain many players moving forward in the game's life, especially after the next expansion launches. ------- Are Path of Fire maps 'good'? It really depends on what kind of player you are. On a personal level, I love these maps. They offer exactly the kind of solo or duo exploration experience that is a natural evolution of the vanilla map design. That said, I find myself playing on them less than Heart of Thorns, LWS4, or IBS maps. The incentive simply isn't there to return; while I had some of the most fun I've had in the game doing the initial exploration and completion of these maps, they're not built to encourage retention. Many who were looking for the next tough open world meta maps will be disappointed here - but those that are looking for a fresh take on the 'classic' Guild Wars 2 experience will be right at home. ------ That's all, folks! What do you think of today's map? Any fond memories, or strong complaints? How well do you think Path of Fire stands up in comparison to the other content chunks? Next week, we'll be taking a look at Crystal Oasis. [link] [comments] | ||
| Who is the Choo Choo guy and why is everyone hyped about him? Posted: 03 Jul 2021 08:24 AM PDT | ||
| Posted: 02 Jul 2021 06:44 PM PDT
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| Am I the only one who sees Colin's return as a BAD thing? Posted: 03 Jul 2021 01:24 PM PDT Let's be really honest- the grass wasn't greener. HOTS was a DISASTER on launch, and there were soooo many promised features that just were not delivered. https://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-2-players-rightly-upset-by-heart-of-thorns-pre-purchase-scheme/ There is also the track record of undelivered promises, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/938738-guild-wars-2/67218150 including leaving GW2 to join Crucible, which crashed and burned. Change and communication are great, but I'd rather have a new person who actually has a track record of delivering for game projects, without the facade, smoke and mirrors, and inconsistency. Guild Wars needs that from a Director, not only for the players, but to survive as an IP. [link] [comments] |
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