Fellthar
-
Posts
394 -
Joined
Content Type
Forums
Blogs
Events
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Posts posted by Fellthar
-
-
One note about LotRO that I think people have suggested eroneously, their combat is smooth. It has a completely DIFFERENT feel than other MMOs, but different doesn't need to be bad.
In fact the original LotRO combat system was the best MMO experience I've had with regard to combat. Ever. CLEAR AND FAR AND AWAY the best.
It's gotten sloppy in later versions as they've tweaked this and that due to math issues that arose when they increased the level cap, but that's not interface that's just balance issues.
I was a founding member of LOTRO and in the beta, offered the lifetime sub and turned it down. My experience with their combat and general feel of connection with the character was completely different on release from what you described. It always felt sloppy (admittedly I did not care for their ability queue system even at first - got a little better when they allowed you to display what was in the queue in later versions). Also, their was something about how your character always felt like he was moving through thick milk... the animations were very poor, and slow. Even running felt like you were not quite touching the ground. The best way I can describe it is sort of like playing Fallout 3 or Oblivion in 3rd person view. Your character sort of hovers above the ground just a tad. Not the same, but similar in feeling.
That didn't stop me from enjoying it for a few months on release, and coming back last year for a 6 month jaunt as well. LOTRO is a good game, but it never really felt smooth to me.
-
No problem. We are hoping that the ambiguous "quality of life" fixes they state in the blog pertain to what we rant about since we believe they would not outright say they were wrong and let us know clipping animations is the next step.
We don't mean to bash BioWare when saying that but it is hard not to when even their statement regarding matters, this one especially, seems purposely ambiguous as they will never completely blame themselves. This is a discouraging trait we wish BioWare would inherit from Blizzard (admitting they made a mistake and give us details as to what they are doing).
I agree, I would like to see the nitty gritty details be a little more forthcoming out of Bioware. The only reason I can see for them to withhold stuff would have to be because they haven't figured it all out yet, and they don't want to provide the user base with ammo against them (sort of what seemed to happen with the hi-res textures thread/issue). However, their silence is equally damaging, probably more, so they might as well just appease those who want it and provide a clear cut idea of what they are doing on a regular basis. They might take some flak for saying they have not figured it all out yet, but we would respect them for it a lot more in the long run.
-
In your opinion.
And yes I have.
Have you played LoTRO or WAR at high levels?
What I'm saying is, all that needs to be pointed out is that people are not having fun with these issues. WoW's success has much, much more behind it than just a simple combat system that's responsive. Because as I've pointed out, other MMOs with far superior combat never got 12 million subscribers.
I don't think I can think of an mmo with superior combat responsiveness and fluidity over WoW. I'm not defending WoW, I'm very bored of it now, but it is very fluid. It's something that you notice even when just walking around, and allows for precision in intense situations. You feel very connected to your character. This does not make me want to go back and play WoW though, as it really is a big grind fest otherwise, even moreso than many other mmo's.
-
If I recall, Stargate Worlds used UT for the client side. And you should be able to see that when... well never. Unless someone resurrects the fail that was Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.
In beta, I couldn't even start the client for about a month because the display was so glitched it was unplayable. Not to mention the fact that it tended to reset my computer.
From what people were saying back then, it wasn't a good choice because it is inherently a client-side technology, and doesn't really help to implement the server. But I really don't know what I'm talking about, so I'll just throw that out there.
FYI, SGW was using two engines, UT for the client and BigWorld for the server. People were saying that was crazy (including the authors of BigWorld).
Hero Engine was really chosen because of its backend capabilities in server clustering and such. It does the server side really well. The client side, well that still has some tweaking to go.
-
Basically the next patch simply fixes the frustrating aspect of abilities saying they are ready to be pressed and when you press them they don't go through because according to BioWare the ability shouldn't be shown as ready and this creates the feeling of lacking control. They also said that they fixed an issue where all abilities including instant abilities that did not go off before now will go off.
But the statements that are concerning us are the ones about the factors they believe are causing the issues. They believe it is a result of specific factors including PC performance, internet connection, amount of people in the area, location (certain planets) and other things. They stated they are working on fixes regarding that but our argument is that it stems way further than that. That even though those factors may make it WORSE, the issue still prevails at 15ms, instanced areas with just you and a mob. We are arguing it has to do with the way the client communicated with the server and that even pressing a key and getting simple error text seems slightly delayed. This is all a result of a poorly designed priority system.
This also results in experienced players understand why WoW feels so fluid and inexperienced/casual feeling as if they lack control and get frustrated. Although, frustration is not limited to casual as I tend to come close to breaking everything around me, lol.
I hope this helps explain things. Feel free to ask any other questions. I want everyone to be educated on this manner.
Thanks, I appreciate this. I will watch more of the OP's videos as well. It does help to clarify this for me. I'm basically a player, and not into the logistics of how things work. However, it is important to me that they do fix this issue because it affects my ability in game (I'm a tank and timing is very important), and I really wanted to know how in sync Bioware is with the issue.
It sounds to me like they are making some progress, but they may still be missing the big underlying problem, from what you described. I certainly get that sensation of lack of control sometimes, particularly when my character animates an ability but the ability does not go off (Like Force Choke or defensive cooldowns). Do we know if that is related to the change that is incoming for abilities that are not actually related, or is that something different? There is a lot of other ability timing issues I would like to see corrected (as soon as they can), but that is certainly a big big one for me.
Thanks again for the information. Let's hope Bioware can sort this out quickly.
-
OP's post is several years too late.
-
You mean 6th thread of the same topic re-created because of the sheer amount of unanimous decisions that this is the, if not one of the, most important aspect of TOR's success and the reason why the most successful MMO in history is currently our market leader? And the way TOR can become such a title and maintain an incredible experience we believe it can be and hope/waited for?
Anyone who does not agree with every point this thread strives to make is either inexperienced, trolling or lacks the mental resource to objectively asses a vital situation and help overcome persisting tribulations.
Based on your previous posts, you are all of those things.
I don't personally subscribe to the way you are speaking to others in this particular post.
However, I generally agree with what you said.
This issue is important, without a doubt, to the success of this game as a main stream title.
Can someone fill me in (in summary form?) on how the announced changes by Bioware regarding the ability delay in the next patch and beyond stack up to the problem, and will this be enough to solve the issue or have they not found the true source yet? There is too much information in these threads to digest if you have not been following it all along (I have not), but I am curious how things stand right now?
-
Well if it was said by BioWare then it must be true!
Let's all jump on the conspiracy bandwagon! It's leaving now, huuuurrrrrry!!!
-
You have that backwards, its ATI cards that seem to be having a problem with the game.
I have seen a bunch of reports that ATI users do have issues with this game. I've also noticed a lot of threads around the forums with users complaining about bad framerates that own the GTX 580. I see people mention that card probably more often than any other. Perhaps there is an issue with driver support for that nvidia card in particular?
I own a Radeon 6970 and I don't have any issues with the game (nothing I consider an issue anyway). My cpu is an i5 2500k. Game runs very well, 100+ fps in most places on all high settings with AA on and Full Shadows on, and 30-40 fps on the fleet (same settings) with 200 or so people there.
I do get a drop every now and again to 20 fps for a second or two while the game is loading a lot of new people into view. I have 8 Gigs of ram @ 1600 Mhz (stock), and a OCZ Agility 3 SSD where I run TOR from, so I don't think it is an issue with load speed. I have run it off my Raid 0 array (2 WD Blacks) as well, and it doesn't make any difference.
I have noticed in the morning when I play and there is only 50 people on the fleet, the fps on the fleet is around 80-90 fps. In the evening when there is 200+, that is when things start to drop to 30-40.
I will say this though: I used to have my Radeon 6970 running in a system with a Core 2 e6750 @ 2.67 Ghz, and the game performed very very poorly on the fleet. I was using my Raid 0 setup on that system, but the ram was only DDR2 @ 800 Mhz. It was fine out in the worlds, 100+ fps in most places the same as now with the new cpu, but when I went to the fleet, I was seeing maybe tops 10 fps, and often lower, with dips as low as 5 fps when loading people into view. The new cpu and ram opened up a lot of performance for me when tons of other people are around. This is not advice though, just a recanting of my experiences since I wanted to upgrade my pc anyway.
With regards to the cpu of the OP, my wife runs the game with a Phenom X6 1065t, and she gets pretty decent performance (for her video card which is a Radeon 6770). The fleet usually stays around 20-30 fps, hovering around 20 fps when lots of people are around. She gets better frame rates out in the worlds.
-
Eh... no...
WoW travel times were much quicker than SWTOR's. But this is opinion, and apparantly shared with the OP. 2>1?
Except for ports, they are not. But think whatever you want, I could care less honestly. I'm out, later.
-
With regards to the OP: WoW travel times (excluding ports) were long and redundant. Waiting long periods for the boat/air ship (seems like forever when you just stand there on a dock waiting)... long and slow flight paths. Flying to Tanaris from Org... sooooo boring.
SWTOR is much faster to get around. You have quick travel within the planets that can get you to any outpost every 30 mins (much much better than hearth to only one pre-selected place). You also have an on demand space ship to get to any planet (zone) in a few short moments, and then the flight paths are extremely short (compared to WoW's lengthy flight times). Honestly, the travel times are the least of my worries in TOR.
Also, get a security key, or free security authenticator for your phone, and you can fast travel to the fleet every hour.
-
Is this a common issue? as far as I can tell most people except the OP are not having any problems since the patch. Driver failure is a really scary thing, it can mean your card is getting severely damaged.
I wouldn't think the card is getting damaged. Nvidia is pretty good at putting safeguards in place (except under overclocking).
It is pretty common for as a game changes, for the driver support from either ATI or Nvidia to lag behind. This patch introduced AA into SWTOR, and Nvidia does handle AA differently than ATI, which is why it could not be forced on as easily for Nvidia users prior to the patch. They may need to update their driver to handle something in the engine.
Just speculation, and yes, it is a pretty common thing, and often only affects the architecture of specific cards.
-
So, nobody can explain while after trying multiple drivers since the patch my graphics card continues to have nvidia driver failure errors while playing swtor and with no other game? This is a brand new sandybridge i7 build, 45C tops temp, and a gtx 580.
Poor driver support from Nvidia for SWTOR?
-
I work a firm of roughly 1000 users. On any given day, there is an average (loosely speaking here) of 2 hardware failures across all users. This is with hardware that ranges in age, across several offices. The users typically assume it is because of the latest change we (IT) made.
How does this translate to the number of users SWTOR has? I am not saying what the patch did or did not do here, it's just that likely with the number of users SWTOR has, a certain percentage was likely to have issues of a hardware nature on the day of the patch anyway, and a number of those users would probably assume it was the patch that caused it.
-
I'd like to introduce you to release Starcraft 2
It was an unlocked framerate cap on a menu that caused cards to be pushed to their max and overheat eventually (on select cards, as the press releases said, likely overclocked or unstable cards). Technically, a card should not burn out after hours of usage at max performance (burn in tests are for this purpose, particularly for experienced individuals to test the stability of their video cards when oc'd).
I think Blizzard might have been being nice (oxy-moron?) by not blaming the overclocking stability of its users cards. If you OC and know what you are doing, you already know how far your system can be pushed. If you OC and don't know what you are doing, your system is probably burning out as we speak
It should be noted that video cards can safely reach very high temperatures, upwards of 100 degrees celcius. My card with stock cooling not OC'd only reaches maybe 60 degress celcius when playing TOR. I could OC it if I wanted to, but it's a 6970 and outclasses the game anyway, so why bother. Keep your card under 80 degrees with ocing and a burn in test and you should be fine.
-
GTX 570 (2 of them). Game runs for two hours. The highest temp: 47 C.
Get some decent cooling or a better card. Quit perpetuating a myth.
Truth.
Also, it is against the ToS for the forums to perpetuate lies (considered trolling), so it is likely if mods notice this thread the OP will be actioned against if they decide that he was willingly spreading mis-information.
-
Games can enable and disable driver-level features, such as anti-aliasing and vertical sync.
If you think AA and vsync are the driver level features anyone is talking about here, you do not know much about video cards.
They are talking about performance tuning for clock frequencies, ram frequencies, and other such hardware controls. AA and vsync are software controls, nothing more, and cannot damage your card (unless you have a bad card, or poorly oc'd).
Games cannot change the core clock speed or memory speed of your card (without interfacing directly with the card, which makes 0 sense from a programming standpoint when the driver is designed for that purpose).
Drivers control both software and hardware. The hardware side is where the damage can happen. The hardware side is also outside the realm of where a game can touch (except where indicated above).
-
I don't see how SWTOR could damage a video card, since the game does not interface directly with the video card. The driver interfaces with it, and the game cannot tell the card to do something outside of what the driver stipulates (the user can alter what the driver stipulates and do damage however).
The game can push the card to its limits, however, and this is normal behavior. In fact, it is considered optimal if your gpu is running at 99-100% utilization, as this will give you the best fps you can achieve on your computer.
It is possible the game was not pushing the cards very hard before (TOR is very cpu limited), and perhaps 1.1 introduced something that began to push the cards hard (AA anyone?) and therefore started getting the cards up high in utilization (which translates to heat). In this case, a card that is OC'd or has some other issue might fail. A card that has no issue will do just fine. This type of failure is not the games fault in any way.
-
I agree. Obviously the game is in it's infancy and a lot of improvements are needed.
I do wonder though... I mean obviously there was a meeting at Bioware at some stage where someone suggested that trash packs be spread out and consist of multiple ranged mobs, then everyone agreed, but not one person thought about how annoying that would be for tank specs without any method of maintaining threat? Really?
It does seem a bit suspect when you put it that way. I wonder if Bioware will clarify the tanking issue sometime in the near future.
-
I see, you are confused then because it doesn't mean what you think it means anywhere, and I'm not American either.
What it means is you should bring the player you want, not the class you want. In other words, the class you are shouldn't matter. That is what the words in the saying mean. There is no interpretation necessary. It simply means, bring the player, not the class.
The WoW designers used this saying when they overhauled all their classes talent trees and buffs to make them more equal and to make sure that multiple classes could cover buffs which previously only one class could bring. Hence fulfilling the saying to bring the player and not the class. They didn't want you to be forced to bring a Paladin, just because you need Kings, for instance.
The saying is not WoW's though, it has been used by MMOs since they started as a mantra which should be followed. It is not being followed here, however.
To Bioware's credit, I don't think they are not following it deliberately. I think they want the tanks to be balanced from what I have seen, but I think they just haven't got it right yet. I hope they will correct that sooner rather than later.
-
I don't know if I'm comfortably with the whole philosophy of 'The Tanks only need to tank the elite mobs'. It seems kind of redundant.
This may be my WoW background talking, but the tank's job has always been to take all the hate while the dps focus on kill orders and CC.
I don't know about you guys, but being a tank, I get a personal thrill out of having all the mobs on the room on me and taking it to the face (that's what she said) like I'm superman. I equate it to DPS getting massive crits or healers keeping up ppl that should have otherwise died.
Not tanking them looks messy and bad on my behalf. Leaving them for the DPS to take also has ended poorly for me as well, especially when they all decide to turn to a healer and punch him in the face.
I just feel like my contribution to the raid is minimal if I can't do what I'm brought to the raid for - like other tanking classes can...
Making sure the glass cannons don't break and letting the enemy's futile attempts at damaging us break against my armour.
I have to agree here, as a tank I want ALL the mobs hitting me. For me, it defines my role, and I like it that way.
That being said, I used to play EQ where CC was critical, and tanks could not tank all the mobs at once. I am not sure if they are trying to lean a little more that way. Personally, I am spoiled by the WoW philosophy like you (don't get me wrong, I don't want this game to replicate WoW though...), and I don't want to have to use CC unless it is needed to stop certain key abilities or to control special pulls. I don't like it every pull... but that is just a pacing thing for me.
-
I know, that's exactly what I have been saying.
Like I said, you insulted me and then agreed with me. In fact, you continue to do it. You don't read very well, do you?
Maybe I should explain something to you; "Bring the player, not the class" means that people should be judged on their individual skill, not what class they play. At the moment Jugg tanks are being denied from groups simply because they are Jugg tanks, this means that "Bring the player, not the class" is not working because the player is completely irrelevant and people are only focusing on the class.
Your both just trying to say that Jugg's need work, and they should be on even grounds with other tanks, but currently are not (I think I interpreted it right?). Now just hug it out
-
Tanks are not supposed to Gather every single mob in the pack at times. Sometimes you need to choose between CC and having your DPS focus down the strongs while you yourself focus solely on keeping the attention of the elite/champion/bosses in the instance. As an Assassin tank, I too had this question, but quickly found that I can simply not survive if I want to aggro everything in the room. The only way I can personally survive the onslaught of damage is by poping defensive cooldowns, so yeah.
I know next to nothing about assassin tanks and powertech tanks, but my question is, survival not withstanding, are assassin tanks capable of gathering everthing in the room like that somehow even with seperate groups of ranged enemies (in a normal group setting of course)? I know my jugg cannot do this, whether he can survive or not I'm not really sure because I never get to do that really, but like I said, I know little of the other tanks, so feel free to fill me in.
Also, depending on what the other tanks can do, I might be rolling one of them as well. Not giving up my jugg, but I am certainly curious here.
-
You edited the rest of your post in, after I had replied. I know, because I quoted your post...
Lol are you him? I'm just kidding, but you both just said the same thing in subsequent posts about each other.
Ability Delay -- Character Responsiveness (This will make or break SW:TOR)
in General Discussion
Posted
That actually confused me a lot at first, but it all makes so much more sense now