The Mac OS X Client's absymal performance is a joke.

[Galadrium]

SE's mistake here was believing the marketing hype of the company they outsourced it to, who clearly promised far more than they could deliver.

. I would agree, and if a company does decide to outsource then it's all about managing your suppliers.

[Bishop81]

So CatWho, you seem to have a clue... what can Transgaming actually do to fix this mess if anything?

Nothing.

SE is the only one that can fix this. It is however a lot of work - got to write the client and an whole new renderer in OpenGL.

[Catwho]

So CatWho, you seem to have a clue... what can Transgaming actually do to fix this mess if anything?

I'm not sure there is anything that could be done to make Mac perform as well as PC short of a native OpenGL client. However, it depends on whether SE has lawyered up over this or not. If they're threatening to sue Transgaming for breech of contract for failure to deliver a quality product, Transgaming could:
- 1. Rent an Apple-employed emulation specialist to optimize the existing client (expensive)
- 2. Scrap the current emulator and try a different one (also expensive)
- 3. Hunt down bugs on their own to try to get minor performance gains (cheap but unlikely to help)
- 4. Give up and refund SE their money for failure to deliver a quality product (expensive and they lose face, but SE is free to pursue other options)

Emulators are not inherently bad, but they really should be used to run older software on modern hardware, not modern software on other modern operating systems.

[LuminaLumi]

The GW2 Mac client is also Cider, and it's been in "beta" phase for 3 years now. At least you don't have to pay separately for it, which in my mind is the real issue here; I understand paying separately for Playstation versions due to Sony licensing and so, but not for paying separately for PC and Mac. Now maybe if it was a native and well running game...

[sarahnight]

The GW2 Mac client is also Cider, and it's been in "beta" phase for 3 years now. At least you don't have to pay separately for it, which in my mind is the real issue here; I understand paying separately for Playstation versions due to Sony licensing and so, but not for paying separately for PC and Mac. Now maybe if it was a native and well running game...

You know when you put it that way, one can't help but see this as a greedy money grab... I suppose it would have worked, IF the client had been anywhere near as playable as the GW one. If you reread Yoshida's statement it has all the earmarks of someone caught with their hand in the virtual cookie jar... hehe.

[Blayde]

You know when you put it that way, one can't help but see this as a greedy money grab... I suppose it would have worked, IF the client had been anywhere near as playable as the GW one. If you reread Yoshida's statement it has all the earmarks of someone caught with their hand in the virtual cookie jar... hehe.

Yoshida's statement was a load of bullshit. I like the guy, but I was honestly surprised and did not expect that disrespectful nonsense from him. "Sorry we are too lazy to make a real client, just buy a $10k computer so that it will run at 20fps when its not crashing"

[sarahnight]

Sort of relevant... Shadow of Mordor was just released for Mac and Linux... you all keep saying Macs are not for gaming, but there are some fantastic AAA games for Mac. Just makes the wrapper for FFXIV look all the more lazy and pathetic.

[sarahnight]

Played for a couple of hours on the Mac again last night. Windowed mode seems to be the most stable while full screen is beautiful when it works and spasm inducing when it does not. Seeing the game in gorgeous 2560x1440 on a 27 inch iMac is really something, you feel a definite sense of immersion in the world with that much screen in your face. I guess people on projectors and big big screen TVs feel this wonder. Windowed mode works but breaks that immersive feel somewhat... maybe if you cleaned all the files off the desktop and made the background picture less busy. I was getting 54 fps full screen in dungeons, and no problems. But go into a town or village and it drops to under 20, and then really odd artifacts. Grids of empty buttons over the whole half of the screen, text field corrupt into special ascii character codes. Flip to back to Windowed and all of that magically clears up. If they could only fix full screen to be more solid all the time... /sigh

[Galadrium]

Sarahnight I am curious to what you have your graphics setting at. I've been playing in windowed mode as well and have graphics settings turned way down to help with FPS issues. But I noticed I don't see any Limit Break animations now---like when I've used my AST's LB3 "Stars of the Heavens" LB. I'd love to at least bump it up to see some more effects while not crippling my FPS.

PS. Running MacBook Pro Retina

[sarahnight]

Noticed something odd today... buttons stop responding to clicks. Tried to send mail and it stopped working, from then on couldn't even logout. The game refused to acknowledge my clicks on dialogs. I could still open and close inventory, move things around, select things in the environment, but dialog boxes in the UI just stopped working. Anyone else getting this now? Look i know they're not selling the Mac client anymore... but if you are going to disable it, please let us know... thanks!