-Perfs

For those of you who don't know, you can edit your Guild Wars shortcut by right-click and Properties and adding -perfs to the end of the "target" bar.

I have a question about the in-game UI. I know that triangles is the amount of triangles being rendered. FPS is...frames per second.

But what is Bytes/Sec?

Is it ping...as in more is bad?

Or is it bandwidth...as in more is good?

The first sentence was just to tell people if they don't know what I'm talking about.

No, I'm not talking about the lightning bar. I'm talking about using -perfs to see FPS. Next to it says Bytes/Sec. I want to know what the Bytes/Sec is.

I'll be nice about this. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then perhaps you should try what my post said.

The bytes/second represents the amount of data transfer between you and the server. There's a little bit when, say, you're in a town, and there aren't many other people around you, you're lagging, or you're alone out in the winderness. There should be a lot when you're in, say, a 5-way HoH map.

Thank you Asplode. Everyone else, stop posting if you can't even understand the question.

Just as an example on dial-up with the reliability of my connection with ANets servers I usually have a transfer rate of 500 - 700 bytes/sec. The minimum I can have without getting mop skipping (you know when the mops jump around the radar) is around 250 bytes/sec. At this point you aren't just experiencing a slow connection, but what is slowing your connection is probably severe packet loss. This is data loss between you and ANets servers.

You know you have true 'lag' or what is freeze lag when you hit numbers that go below 100 bytes/sec. What usually happens is that you will notice you are stuck or slow down to a stop. Look at your 'perf' bar and watch the bytes/sec drop to 0. Now you are stuck in lag. When the numbers hit consistantly about 200 you know you can move on as the connection is back.

If you are on a high speed line then you should consistantly have numbers that are higher(like in the kbytes/sec). If you have a very reliable connection and have low numbers or you are freezing a lot, then you can ping the server or traceroute and ping the closest server. NCSoft doesn't normally let you ping their servers directly. This way you can tell where the packet loss or latency is coming from. There are also third party utilities that are more informative than the basic ping plotter that comes with Windows.

Considering the detail of this game it surprises me how well I can normally play on dial-up. In my opinion the bandwidth requirement of this game is fairly small. I think ANet deserves a lot of credit. I hope that helps some.

Bandwith is the limit of information a server can transfer. Try to get as much as you can get for as little of money (for webhosting). Ping is the miliseconds it takes between your computer and the server to communicate. (e.g 100 ping = 100 ms) You can try it out by pinging websites from cmd. Go to:

START > RUN > (Type) CMD

then:

ping <website name>

I have a ping of 38 between GWGuru.com and my computer Hope my information is correct and useful.

<useless information>
I have 244 (I'm in Sweden).
</useless information>

This is incorrect. Just because a faster line is capable of much more speed, Guild Wars doesn't utilize the extra bandwidth until it needs to.

If I'm out in an area by myself, it hovers around ~200 bytes/sec. If I'm in, say, Dist 1 of LA, it jumps up to well over 1.5k/sec. I have cable, just for reference.

It's not -perfs, it's just -perf. Any additional characters after -perf are ignored, so you could also write -performance or -perforation or -perfluorinated. Or -perfs, it's up to you