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Hello,

I'm guessing that you are running Guild Wars 2 from Steam correct?
I had this exact same problem when updating to Mint 16.

Try disabling the In-Game Community overly in Steam.
This overlay has caused a lot of problems crashing games and causing the keyboard to fail.
I have a feeling this is your problem.

When I updated to Mint 16 I started testing games and found that my steam games would either crash at launch, or play until I clicked the screen or touch the keyboard. Then it would crash.

No, I'm not running Guild Wars 2 from Steam. It's not an overlay problem. Nothing from PoL will start. I was able to get Guild Wars 2 running in regular WINE, so I think it's problem with PoL

Ok, it might be a good idea to uninstall PlayOnLinux and re-install again.
Maybe it has something to do with Python?

What version of PlayOnLinux are you using?
Also, its a good idea to install Wine first, then install PlayOnLinux.
If you do it the other way around, it could cause problems.

I uninstalled PlayOnLinux and deleted the .playonlinux folder and files. Reinstalled and nothing works still.

Are you able to run any "native" Linux games?
I noticed some Alsa errors, "couldn't fine library"
Are you using a 64-bit Linux?

Currently there is an issue with PulseAudio 5.0 in Arch. Downgrading these packages to the specified version seems to help for everyone affected:

pulseaudio 4.0-6
libpulse 4.0-6
lib32-libpulse 4.0-6

I do not think this is a specific issue with only PoL, as Timidity and Munt no longer work to provide sound for old DosBox games either. There is a bug report opened for the Arch package but it has not been confirmed by the packager yet.

People have reported that using "system" as wine version in PoL seems to let it work, but all other wine versions will not work. Forum topic on Arch forums

It would be more helpful if you could post a comment on the bug report, explaining your issue. Bug report is here

Posting on the bug report would make the package maintainer aware that it is affecting a larger number of people, and please specify that playing games this way is not using any AUR packages.

Edit: fixed some typos

Edited by Daerandin

Thanks Daerandin. I forgot to downgrad lib32-libpulse last time I tried to downgrade stuff to fix it.

Yes, Thanks Daerandin! Your intimate knowledge is Arch is very helpful!

Give me another year with Arch and I'll accept that I have intimate knowledge of it. For now I'm just good at paying attention to the forums.

soulhuntor, glad things work out for you now. This could all be an upstream issue in Pulse, in which case it might become more widely known once other distros take it in use. Since so few seem to be bothered by this issue, judging by forum comments and hardly any comments on the bug report, it might not get any particular attention yet unless someone figures out what the problem is exactly.

For now I've just added those three packages to the 'IgnorePkg' line in /etc/pacman.conf so I can keep updating my system.

Do you know if this is a problem with Pulse that they need to fix? or is this something wrong with PlayOnLinux that the PoL devs need to look into?

Pulseaudio has never been supported (http://www.playonmac.com/en/issue-4103.html)

Arch comes with Alsa by default, and have configuration for working with Alsa. Things were working perfectly prior to PulseAudio 5.0 so I am leaning towards thinking there are changes in Pulseaudio that makes things more difficult now.

I will look into how to configure my system to rely more directly on Alsa. The Arch wiki have some information, but I also recall another article about stopping Pulse from grabbing hardware. I will try some different configs and hopefully find one that work well. If I come across a good solution I will post it here.

I have come up with a quick and dirty fix just which will let you use PlayOnLinux without needing to downgrade Pulseaudio. If you are content to keep Pulseaudio 4.0-6 and simply not upgrade the related packages then things will work. However I wanted to use the newest version so I made a very quick fix.

I do not have .asoundrc in my home directory, if you have then you should comment out everything else in it, or just make a backup so you can start with a blank file. You could also make these changes in /etc/asound.conf but that requires you to make the changes as root.

.asoundrc

pcm.!default {
   type plug
   slave.pcm {
     @func getenv
     vars [ ALSAPCM ]
     default "hw: DEVICE_NAME"
   }
 }

The DEVICE_NAME is the device you want our output to, such as USB headset or the like. Find the name from:

aplay -l

Like I said, this is just a quick fix that will let you play games in PlayOnLinux with Pulseaudio 5.0. When you are done, the ideal situation is to revert these changes. I have simply created a script that toggles these changes when I run the script so I can easily switch into "PoL" mode and then back when I am done.

The bug report in Arch has been changed to assigned now, so I assume they are looking into this now. Pulseaudio version 4.0 worked great so I would definitely call this a regression in version 5.0

Edit: I added a space after the colon in the code since it created a smiley, there should be no spaces in your .asoundrc after the hw:

Edited by Daerandin

Apparently its not only a bug in Arch, I have a lot of Pulseaudio problems in Mint 16 based on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucey

I must have done something wrong because its not working. I'm specifically testing this with Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force because I've had some "lag" issues and really seems to involve sound.

I have the .asoundrc directory in home
So I created a default file and added your script.
I restarted Mint 16 and at first STVEF seemed better and without audio problems. After playing for about 10 minutes the symptoms came back. Seems very similar to the "buffer runderrun" problems I've experienced with Pulseaudio previously.

I could try making the change in asound.conf
what do you think?

.asoundrc should be a file, not a directory.

If you already had such a file, make sure you just comment out everything else in it, or move the file to a different place and create a new blank file.

Your problem might be the reboot. I don't know Mint, but there is a chance Mint might tamper with such a file. The changes will take effect when you start a new application, meaning there is no need to restart your system or even Pulseaudio as the new .asounrc make sure you are not using Pulse.

.asoundrc actually overrides /etc/asound.conf for your user. So if you have .asoundrc in your home folder, then any changes to /etc/asound.conf will have no effect.

If you don't get it working, make the changes to your .asoundrc, then post how the file looks.

Oh, it makes sense now. I thought it was a directory.
So where do I put .asoundrc?

.asoundrc goes directly in your home folder.

Somehow I knew you were going to say that... trying it now