BioWare: "most" people aren't having SWTOR performance issues

[Gargion]

Performance issues exist. They could do well to refine their graphics and world performance a bit more. But that said, they are correct in saying that most people have no issues.

 

This game has over a million players. Even if most of the forum is full of people complaining about performance issues, which it isn't, that forum population is merely a fraction of the total player base.

 

So yes, most of their players are either not having issues, or not reporting having issues.

 

Agreed. I think that BioWare needs to address this issue. There are definitely performance issues here. However, that being said. A lot of people can still play the game fine, and so I can understand Bioware putting this slightly on the back burner, but I feel it needs to be addressed. One problem that most people on this forum have is a lack of patience.

 

The game is still new, and a lot needs to be done. Me personally, I'm loving the game with the exception of the performance issues I'm having. However, players like myself--whom's main work/play computer barely meets the minimum system requirements--expect to be able to actually play the ENTIRE game when they meet the game's system requirements. This means being able to play the game without noticeable fps lag.

 

THAT BEING SAID, I realize that this game is an MMO, and FPS in an MMO can fluctuate dramatically as a result of the number of players, abilities, effects, etc. However, when releasing a game, especially an MMO, QA should test the game with the lowest specs, and I am of the opinion that a company (I have no clue who's fault it is, EA or Bioware) should not put a game on the market with Minimum System Requirements required to run the game smoothly (In this case meaning no FPS lag in a solo area WITHOUT other players.)

 

I appreciate everything that Bioware is doing with this game, and I hope they keep the patches coming.

 

Going back to what I was saying earlier though:

 

A statement to everyone on the forum regarding patience. You don't have to pay the sub. and wait for the game to be fixed. If you don't want to play the game as it currently is, cancel your sub. and wait it out.

 

This is what I plan to do.

 

I'm still enjoying the game even though I have FPS lag almost everywhere, and I hope that no one will misconstrue this as a bash post. I am simply posting to make sure that Bioware is aware that people with lower-end systems ARE having a problem, which they have already acknowledged, and to convey the notion that they the low-end players need to be sated to a certain degree, because the product was marketed to be playable on their machine.

[Baaddare]

well first things first. taking BW's numbers thats about 50k people per 1million having issues. So i would agree that it is a small number overall so there is nothign wrong with what they are saying. Then if you have 50k with an issue you will see alot of trheads and posts on it in the forums which could make it seem like alot of people are having a problem when they are not. As BW has stated it is hard with any MMO to get it right out of the box because there are so many different factors between people having different rigs to ISP to local all of which could effect performance. Take graphic cards two people could be have 560 Ti's with the exact same drivers but one is made by sparkle and another by evga. The evga could be running with 50fps and the sparkle could be at 30. This coudl be based just on how those two designed and built their cards the evga could have a built in heatsink and dual fans while they other has just one fan. Which coudl cause a lower frame rate due to heat

 

Now to those QQ that if people are seeing 40-50 fps and are happy that something is wrong with those people. The human eye and brain can only handle 40-50 so there is no reason that they should not be content with that frame rate.

[Frenzyguy]

i7

8gb ram

Radeon 6990

 

so uh... yeah.

 

How do you get such low fps, I was in teh fleet on iron citadel running around 50-70 fps on an I5 2500k with a 6950 (OC higher then a 6970 ) with 8gb of ram.....I wonder what is making you crash guys, me its perfect here and we both have good systems. And crossfire isnt working in the game so far, so maybe dual gpu got it hard too ? go figure :S

Edited January 11, 2012 by Frenzyguy
spelling

[Vulgarr]

"Ohlen said these problems were often related to gamers with low-end PCs."

 

i believe its mostly this or people with the right equipment, but wrong settings. like running the game on an unstable overclocked gpu or cpu.

 

 

people expect it to run like wow, on a 8 year old laptop on low settings getting 30fps.

 

not going to happen.

[Gorgewall]

The game runs poorly for some people that should be able to handle it because it's new, unoptimized, and there isn't much driver support for it yet. This has been the case for every big game that's come out recently, and to just name a few:

 

Arkham City: big performance issues for plenty of people who greatly exceed the specs at launch. Some optimization patches, some drivers, fixed!

 

Skyrim: big performance issues for plenty of people who greatly exceed the specs at launch. Some optimization patches, some drivers, fixed!

 

Battlefield 3: big performance issues for plenty of people who greatly exceed the specs at launch. Some optimization patches, some drivers, fixed!

 

 

The PC gaming scene has so many parts and software/hardware configurations that it's quite impossible to make sure everything works 100% before launch. There's just no way to test for every possible configuration, and beta pools are only so large. It takes time to get everything working correctly, and sometimes that means people that aren't part of the game development company (like the GPU manufacturers) have to come out with updates, too.

 

This is all normal.

 

Just because you don't have issues with the game with a spec-meeting rig doesn't mean people who blow your computer out of the water can't have issues with it, too. However, the other side of that coin is that just because you have issues with the game while exceeding the minimum specs doesn't mean that a great many people, or even the vast and overwhelming majority of people, don't.

 

There's nothing deceptive about a claim of 95% of people don't have issues. The game has two million subscribers last I checked. That's 1,900,000 people whose computers can handle this, and just 100,000 who are having some issue--not necessarily one that prevents them from playing entirely, but any sort of slowdown that is annoying. That's not bad for launch month.

 

 

Someone above said he can understand why this stuff would be "on the back burner." It's not. Performance and playability issues are always the #1 priority, because they prevent people from playing the game as intended. However! Just because you don't see fixes for these things come out every other day doesn't mean they aren't being worked on. This is a process. It takes as long as it takes. Complaining about it further and constantly demanding an "addressing" of the issue does not speed this process up in the slightest. The causes of these peformance issues are many and nebulous, and it takes time both to narrow them down, patch them, and ensure they will not ruin the performance for others in the process. It's time-consuming. Even if BioWare doesn't remind you every time a thread pops up that they're working on it, they are, because no game company this size doesn't--if you think otherwise, go sit in the corner with the other tinfoil-wearing conspiracy loons.

 

Everyone has to understand that optimizations take time and may not be entirely in BioWare's control. The volume of posts you see on the forums are not indicative of the overall performance of the game; you're falling prey to confirmation bias because you will subconsciously ignore the posts that say "I don't have this issue," and you never even see the posts from thousands of others who have no problems whatsoever and thus have no reason to even visit the forums.

 

Go download some beta drivers for your cards, especially if you have ATI. That's been a big help for a great many people. Otherwise, just wait for patches, as stability and performance improve over time.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Gorgewall

[Shillen]

I just find it laughable that they think everyone with performance issues posts about them on the forums or submits tickets. I'd say the vast majority of people with performance issues do not do any such thing.

 

Especially when they don't answer any tickets, they just close them and send you a message. People are already disillusioned with the ticket system and therefore do not even bother putting one in when they have legitimate issues.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Shillen

[Saber_Six]

Read the full article here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-10-bioware-most-people-arent-having-swtor-performance-issues

 

Perfectly shows how detached BioWare is from its community and confirms my decision not to continue playing this technological POS.

 

Game running fine here. Put me in the "most" that are not having problems.

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-875K Lynnfield 2.93GHz LGA 1156

MOBO: EVGA P55 SLI

MEM: 2GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 x4 (8GB total)

Video: 2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1GB (1371-AR)

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

PSU: Corsair CMPSU-950TX

CPU FAN: Corsair Hydro H50

CASE: XCLIO Windtunnel Full Tower

MONITOR: 2 x Samsung XL2370 23" 1920x1080 LED/LCD

SOUND: Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer

HDD1: WD VelociRaptor SATA Hard Drive 300GB

HHD2: WD Caviar Black 1TB

[Gargion]

The game runs poorly for some people that should be able to handle it because it's new, unoptimized, and there isn't much driver support for it yet. This has been the case for every big game that's come out recently, and to just name a few:

 

Arkham City: big performance issues for plenty of people who greatly exceed the specs at launch. Some optimization patches, some drivers, fixed!

 

Skyrim: big performance issues for plenty of people who greatly exceed the specs at launch. Some optimization patches, some drivers, fixed!

 

Battlefield 3: big performance issues for plenty of people who greatly exceed the specs at launch. Some optimization patches, some drivers, fixed!

 

 

The PC gaming scene has so many parts and software/hardware configurations that it's quite impossible to make sure everything works 100% before launch. There's just no way to test for every possible configuration, and beta pools are only so large. It takes time to get everything working correctly, and sometimes that means people that aren't part of the game development company (like the GPU manufacturers) have to come out with updates, too.

 

This is all normal.

 

Just because you don't have issues with the game with a spec-meeting rig doesn't mean people who blow your computer out of the water can't have issues with it, too. However, the other side of that coin is that just because you have issues with the game while exceeding the minimum specs doesn't mean that a great many people, or even the vast and overwhelming majority of people, don't.

 

There's nothing deceptive about a claim of 95% of people don't have issues. The game has two million subscribers last I checked. That's 1,900,000 people whose computers can handle this, and just 100,000 who are having some issue--not necessarily one that prevents them from playing entirely, but any sort of slowdown that is annoying. That's not bad for launch month.

 

 

Everyone has to understand that optimizations take time and may not be entirely in BioWare's control. The volume of posts you see on the forums are not indicative of the overall performance of the game; you're falling prey to confirmation bias because you will subconsciously ignore the posts that say "I don't have this issue," and you never even see the posts from thousands of others who have no problems whatsoever and thus have no reason to even visit the forums.

 

Go download some beta drivers for your cards, especially if you have ATI. That's been a big help for a great many people. Otherwise, just wait for patches, as stability and performance improve over time.

 

I agree. And Like the Psychology term. : )

[Keihryon]

At First, I saw a lot of people posting i5 2500k or something similar, with the K on the end.

When I was browsing for an upgrade, the only noticeable spec difference I saw between the K series and not, was the K series has a GPU built in to the CPU. I may be remembering it wrong, but it seems like that is what the design specs were intimating.

 

If I am correct, maybe how the K series is designed might be "a" problem.

If I am wrong about the K series design. Ah well, it was worth a shot.

[Frenzyguy]

At First, I saw a lot of people posting i5 2500k or something similar, with the K on the end.

When I was browsing for an upgrade, the only noticeable spec difference I saw between the K series and not, was the K series has a GPU built in to the CPU. I may be remembering it wrong, but it seems like that is what the design specs were intimating.

 

If I am correct, maybe how the K series is designed might be "a" problem.

If I am wrong about the K series design. Ah well, it was worth a shot.

 

K series are unlocked thus offering full Overclocking option, i have one of these baby and its running good here @4.5GHz, you should have paid 10 more bucks, slap it a new cooler and get the true powa of an i5

[Khazartaru]

please fix performance issues its not normal the fps drop in the republic fleet even if there are tons of people, as i have also a big fps drop around the ord mantell base camp and there arent too many people now, curiously the fps increases a lot when you exit the republic base of the ord mantell map. Edited January 11, 2012 by Khazartaru

[aghyarian]

Bull crap Ohlen. I've lost track of the numbers of players with extremely high-end machines complaining about exactly the problem described in the article.

 

So Bioware's stance is simply going to be to deny the issue exists and foist it off on "low-end machines?" My i7 with 12 gigs of RAM and HD6970 would like a word with you, Mr. Ohlen.

 

Oh guys look out, we have a tough guy who doesn't know how to buy parts for his computer!

12 gigs of RAM? Really? Unless you render multiple high def orchestras at once, you don't need 12 gigs of RAM.

 

I have Phenom II x6 3.2 GHZ and 2x 6870s on Crossfire...on a 16x and a 4x slot...and i get 60fps extremely consistently...the lowest i've seen was 45 FPS in a zone with a lot of particles on Korriban.

[Gargion]

please fix performance issues its not normal the fps drop in the republic fleet even if there are tons of people, as i have also a big fps drop around the ord mantell base camp and there arent too many people now, curiously the fps increases a lot when you exit the republic base of the ord mantell map.

 

This type of FPS drop IS normal. It's caused by a high player/ or object population.

 

Happens in other MMOs too. This isn't what We're talking about.

 

The Ord Mantell issue, IDK. I Haven't been there. But Fleet is Understandable.

 

Hate to bring up WoW, but Dalaran did this ALL the time.

[Frenzyguy]

This type of FPS drop IS normal. It's caused by a high player/ or object population.

 

Happens in other MMOs too. This isn't what We're talking about.

 

The Ord Mantell issue, IDK. I Haven't been there. But Fleet is Understandable.

 

Hate to bring up WoW, but Dalaran did this ALL the time.

 

org and sw are like this too

[Keihryon]

K series are unlocked thus offering full Overclocking option, i have one of these baby and its running good here @4.5GHz, you should have paid 10 more bucks, slap it a new cooler and get the true powa of an i5

 

I went with AMD, 100 bucks cheaper and still get 90-110 fps. Not overclocked, though it and the mobo I bought are designed for it, I don't like over taxing systems to squeeze out marginal performance increases

[Xugos]

Oh guys look out, we have a tough guy who doesn't know how to buy parts for his computer!

12 gigs of RAM? Really? Unless you render multiple high def orchestras at once, you don't need 12 gigs of RAM.

 

I have Phenom II x6 3.2 GHZ and 2x 6870s on Crossfire...on a 16x and a 4x slot...and i get 60fps extremely consistently...the lowest i've seen was 45 FPS in a zone with a lot of particles on Korriban.

 

Go end-game raiding or don't spew your non-sense. I run 2x 580 GTX, i7 @ 4.1 ghz, and 12 gb of DDR3 RAM, and I dip as low as 25-30 fps in Warzones, raids, Ilum, and other areas, such as Republic fleet.

[Arandmoor]

Bull crap Ohlen. I've lost track of the numbers of players with extremely high-end machines complaining about exactly the problem described in the article.

 

So Bioware's stance is simply going to be to deny the issue exists and foist it off on "low-end machines?" My i7 with 12 gigs of RAM and HD6970 would like a word with you, Mr. Ohlen.

 

I have a high end machine.

 

I don't have these problems.

 

I'll trust Bioware over a silent majority any time.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Arandmoor

[Xugos]

This type of FPS drop IS normal. It's caused by a high player/ or object population.

 

Happens in other MMOs too. This isn't what We're talking about.

 

The Ord Mantell issue, IDK. I Haven't been there. But Fleet is Understandable.

 

Hate to bring up WoW, but Dalaran did this ALL the time.

 

Dalaran had 10x as many people as Republic fleet in a SMALLER area. I also ran Dalaran on 60+ fps constantly, but not the case for this game.

 

No excuse.

[Frenzyguy]

I went with AMD, 100 bucks cheaper and still get 90-110 fps. Not overclocked, though it and the mobo I bought are designed for it, I don't like over taxing systems to squeeze out marginal performance increases

 

Its not taxing the system if the system is not workign like a mad men.

[Soulaufein]

This statement is offensive to my decently rigged PC and to many many players. The FPS I get in WZs is simply unnatural, and like me many many others.

 

Mr.Ohlen, stop talking and start working on fixing the terribly inconsistente engine you got. Start working on it like, yesterday.

[Frenzyguy]

I have a high end machine.

 

I don't have these problems.

 

I'll trust Bioware over a silent majority any time.

 

I am with you amen

[jarjarloves]

This statement is offensive to my decently rigged PC and to many many players. The FPS I get in WZs is simply unnatural, and like me many many others.

 

Mr.Ohlen, stop talking and start working on fixing the terribly inconsistente engine you got. Start working on it like, yesterday.

 

for the freaking miliionth time HE IS NOT SAYING YOU ARE NOT HAVING A PROBLEM OR THAT YOUR COMPUTER SUCKS

 

 

He is saying the majority of the people who are having problems have low end systems

 

HE ALSO SAID THEY ARE WORKING ON FIXING THE PROBLEM

 

They have an entire team dedicated to performance

[Copeeland]

Subscription canceled.

[DannyInternets]

for the freaking miliionth time HE IS NOT SAYING YOU ARE NOT HAVING A PROBLEM OR THAT YOUR COMPUTER SUCKS

 

 

He is saying the majority of the people who are having problems have low end systems

 

HE ALSO SAID THEY ARE WORKING ON FIXING THE PROBLEM

 

They have an entire team dedicated to performance

 

For the millionth time, he hasn't acknowledged the huge number of people with high-end systems that are having performance problems. Yeah, we know, words are hard.

[lucasomega]

Sure, what Ohlen said was perfectly accurate, but it doesn't address the people who have high-end rigs and still have performance issues. I've ran this on three different systems now and while it runs the best on my newest rig (core i5 @ 4.0ghz, 16gb ram, 2x6770hd in xfire), it's still no where near the performance it should be. I still have to turn off shadows and lower some other settings to get consistent performance, even in little to no population areas.

 

I'm not saying the game is unplayable. I'm not saying it isn't enjoyable. I'm merely saying there are definite issues with the graphics/client. BioWare has been changing graphic settings since launch trying to alleviate the situation (no high res textures...the high settings actually don't change anything at the moment, AA still isn't working, player character modeling is always low res when out of a conversation/cutscene regardless of settings). Whatever is going on, I hope they figure it out soon.

 

Kudos to those who are having zero issues. I'm glad it's working perfectly for you, but for some people it isn't and there's no reason fighting them in defense of BioWare (unless they are just being rude, then by all means do!)... Just be happy it works for you, and hope that it gets fixed for those of us who have capable rigs and good internet providers.