Why is there a copy protection system in the graphics, and is it crippling the game?

[Bluebpy]

There are holes in the story

[miliways]

I have no idea but it's very, very disappointing, there are NO advanced features. All we get is bloom and no anti-aliasing upon release for a game that cost so much to make.

 

WoW's engine makes this look like a joke, there is absolutely nothing modern about this game, except for the release date. There are console games out there that are more advanced and perform better.

 

AntiAliasing is coming in the next patch.

 

 

And wow makes it look like a joke? Seriously? I mean, wow does run very smooth, but wow is SO EXTREMELY low poly. Even when they launched, WoW was behind the times. It looks like Quake 1! They've got some cartoony textures that hide how few polys there are, but damn the game is pretty ugly. SWTOR is 1,000x ahead of WoW graphically.

 

You're acting like gameplay, story, antialisasing, poly count, art style and direction, animations, etc. can all be summed up with one word. They can't. You can't compare two games that directly. Its apples and oranges. WoW is smoother, but looks much worse. TOR has better story, better graphics, but just came out and isn't optimized. There's no objectively "better".

[Tiron_Raptor]

What findings? The ones that don't make any logical sense, are impossible, and that I've debunked? Go read through the thread. I wish OP would quote me on the first page and stop misleading people.

 

I haven't seen you 'debunk' anything yet. All you've done so far is misinterpreted what was claimed in the most absurd way possible and then dismissing it for being absurd.

 

The actual claims being made as part of the theory you haven't substantially touched, and haven't offered a valid explanation as to how it's impossible, since what you're stating is impossible isn't what's being claimed is probably actually happening.

 

You're denying the existence of the moon when I'm just speculating that all the 'seas' locked facing Earth because they imbalance it and make that side 'heavier'.

[nonforma]

I'm just speculating and have no desire to internet argue. Whatever the true problem is I hope they fix it and soon.

[mesha]

TOR has better story

 

Opinion.

[DarthRavnos]

/subscribed

 

One of the better theories I have heard thus far.

[Bluebpy]

AntiAliasing is coming in the next patch.

 

 

And wow makes it look like a joke? Seriously? I mean, wow does run very smooth, but wow is SO EXTREMELY low poly. Even when they launched, WoW was behind the times. It looks like Quake 1! They've got some cartoony textures that hide how few polys there are, but damn the game is pretty ugly. SWTOR is 1,000x ahead of WoW graphically.

 

You're acting like gameplay, story, antialisasing, poly count, art style and direction, animations, etc. can all be summed up with one word. They can't. You can't compare two games that directly. Its apples and oranges. WoW is smoother, but looks much worse. TOR has better story, better graphics, but just came out and isn't optimized. There's no objectively "better".

 

Yet wow has options for high res textures, 64 bit client, tons of advanced options that make it look decent.

 

Its just sad that there is NOTHING to up the graphics in this game and god knows how long till something comes by.

[MurphyNox]

There are holes in the story

 

Of course there are, the game is not one giant damn cut-scene Bioware, you can't go and put that in the options. When people click on High textures they expect High textures, not just slapping them in the cut-scenes and calling it a day.

 

I dread to think how long this would take to sort out when there are more problems with the overall performance than there was in some of the Beta builds. Thank god I didn't resubscribe.

 

What a joke.

[Delinger]

If this theory turns out to be true, BW better have some good flame-proof suits.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Nope, they could always just encrypt all the files with the same key, and then send you that one key. It would take literally a few BYTES to transfer, and then your machine could do the decryption. Maybe you should do some research on how computer encryption works?

 

This wouldn't provide any real security, because all you'd have to do is intercept the decryption key once via packet sniffing. You'd need to find some way to change the key regularly that didn't result in keys being sent to or stored on the client system. This would require re-encrypting the whole thing every time the key changed. I can kinda think of a way you could do this, but it'd still be open to attack during the windows between changeovers, and it'd be hugely complicated and resource intensive to implement.

 

It'd make much more sense to just have it built into the decryption system directly: you could still get at it, but instead of just intercepting a packet, you'd have to crack open the executable itself. Bit harder. Still get broken eventually.

[nonforma]

Of course there are, the game is not one giant damn cut-scene Bioware, you can't go and put that in the options. When people click on High textures they expect High textures, not just slapping them in the cut-scenes and calling it a day.

 

I dread to think how long this would take to sort out when there are more problems with the overall performance than there was in some of the Beta builds. Thank god I didn't resubscribe.

 

What a joke.

 

Basically how I feel. Given how they danced around giving the official response, they know this is an issue that will lose subscriptions. I'm starting to be annoyed that these are called developer posts when they're really just PR posts. A lack of communication between different teams is clearly an issue, one that comes about with outsourcing and EA's development practices.

[GHeissi]

I'm just speculating and have no desire to internet argue. Whatever the true problem is I hope they fix it and soon.

 

That's right. People just make claims and assumptions (based on other peoples claims). Of course the quality of their sources are terrible, but this is the way public forums work.

 

I just hate it when people want to point out that their oppinion is far superior than other's.

Edited January 11, 2012 by GHeissi

[Tiron_Raptor]

Basically how I feel. Given how they danced around giving the official response, they know this is an issue that will lose subscriptions. I'm starting to be annoyed that these are called developer posts when they're really just PR posts. A lack of communication between different teams is clearly an issue, one that comes about with outsourcing and EA's development practices.

 

To be honest I've seen it first hand: even with 1GB of VRAM and 8GB of system RAM, trying to load all the characters on Carrick station caused a massive amount of hard drive grinding and a huge slowdown. And I think I had high res forced at the time too. If the textures were already in the memory it wouldn't be a problem, but that's going to take a lot of work, and possibly a 64 bit client, to achieve.

[Chaffery]

If this theory turns out to be true, BW better have some good flame-proof suits.

Actually they do have already, haven't seen many games, witch allow so much critics on forums.

And I will give my respect for that. Truth is always better than pretended "pink dream".

Only thing what is needed to be done is speak truth, not feed garbage to peoples.

It is mistake think that only clueless computer users playing this game, many players have very good IT engineering skills and long term experience.

[MurphyNox]

AntiAliasing is coming in the next patch.

 

 

And wow makes it look like a joke? Seriously? I mean, wow does run very smooth, but wow is SO EXTREMELY low poly. Even when they launched, WoW was behind the times. It looks like Quake 1! They've got some cartoony textures that hide how few polys there are, but damn the game is pretty ugly. SWTOR is 1,000x ahead of WoW graphically.

 

You're acting like gameplay, story, antialisasing, poly count, art style and direction, animations, etc. can all be summed up with one word. They can't. You can't compare two games that directly. Its apples and oranges. WoW is smoother, but looks much worse. TOR has better story, better graphics, but just came out and isn't optimized. There's no objectively "better".

 

Please don't compare the games and then tell me that I can't.

 

TOR's graphics are terrible compared to WoW's.

Tesselation, advanced shadows (that aren't just blocks of shadow), the textures are much better, the game has actual anti-aliasing. TOR is just so technologically inferior when it comes to graphics.

 

We make advancements in this industry, we don't suddenly stop in one place. You can't just go "ohhhh but WoW has been released for aaaages, give it time, it's not like this game has been created 6 years after"

 

Why do TERA, Blade&Soul and Guild Wars 2 look so fantastic if there has to be a long wait?

[Badbal]

Again, they are working with a 3rd party engine, the Hero Engine, so this makes everything harder.

 

In Game rendering is done by Bioware's own code.

Hero Engine is nothing but a glorified World Editor in regards to SWTOR.

[Vaxmand]

Interesting read, I hope Bioware responds with a full explanation. Low framerate is ruining my SWTOR experience and, quite frankly, will make me unsubscribe if not addressed.

[Merwanor]

If it is true, then this is one of the biggest development fails in recent memory... Copy protection on a online game... now that is new to me.

[nonforma]

If it is true, then this is one of the biggest development fails in recent memory... Copy protection on a online game... now that is new to me.

 

Sadly I wouldn't be surprised at all if they attempted to use this form of copy protection despite such huge drawbacks.

[Jonlinar]

This wouldn't provide any real security, because all you'd have to do is intercept the decryption key once via packet sniffing. You'd need to find some way to change the key regularly that didn't result in keys being sent to or stored on the client system. This would require re-encrypting the whole thing every time the key changed. I can kinda think of a way you could do this, but it'd still be open to attack during the windows between changeovers, and it'd be hugely complicated and resource intensive to implement.

 

It'd make much more sense to just have it built into the decryption system directly: you could still get at it, but instead of just intercepting a packet, you'd have to crack open the executable itself. Bit harder. Still get broken eventually.

 

Actually it's very easy, from a procedural perspective. You attach a debugger and watch what is being stored in memory. Essentially, whenever a comparison is done with data, that data is stored in memory and you can look at that data with a debugger. You then watch this entire process and game it a bit like provoking specific actions and seeing what happens to learn how it works. Using this, it's only a matter of time to figure out things like descryption keys because somewhere there is a line of code that says "does this passed in key equal the real key" and that's where the real key is stored in memory somewhere and you see it using a tool like this. That's why, ultimately, DRM is a joke. It's only a matter of time before someone finds the address where an application stores its key.

[Baracca]

I just picked up a Radeon 7970. Can't wait to install it after work Should be interesting to see just how much performance I get.... or not

[Tiron_Raptor]

OP Modified: Additional text added:

 

"it has been stated further on, but not confirmed, that the 'RemoteRenderer' is just part of the normal rendering system, and may be a renaming of or replacement for an original Hero Engine Component: The name may just be a coincidence. Hard data needed."

[electronicvomit]

Thats it I'm calling George Lucas! I cant play warzones because of copy protection issues?! Whata joke.

[miliways]

I haven't seen you 'debunk' anything yet. All you've done so far is misinterpreted what was claimed in the most absurd way possible and then dismissing it for being absurd.

 

The actual claims being made as part of the theory you haven't substantially touched, and haven't offered a valid explanation as to how it's impossible, since what you're stating is impossible isn't what's being claimed is probably actually happening.

 

You're denying the existence of the moon when I'm just speculating that all the 'seas' locked facing Earth because they imbalance it and make that side 'heavier'.

 

If what you suggested was at all the case, there'd be a performance difference for me connecting to US vs EU servers. There isn't.

 

If what you suggested was at all the case, people with 20mbs connections would have better performance than people with 1mbs connections. They don't.

 

Transferring animations or textures in real-time to EVERY game user is physically impossible. They do not have the computers neccesary to handle that amount of bandwidth, not even google does.

 

They could do what Gaikai and OnLive does, which is to render everything and stream the video, but the fact that I can turn on AntiAliasing in the graphics control manager proves that local rendering is being done.

 

You can watch a youtube video of somebody playing a game, and turning on force AA will not effect the video. AA requires depth data. But you force AA on, and SWTOR is AA'd. Ergo, it must be rendering locally.

 

You suggested that maybe just character models or animations are being streamed. Again, they don't have the number of servers necessarily to pull something like that off. Google doesn't. That is just SO MUCH traffic, think about it. 350,000 concurrent users downloading, say even 1 megabyte of data per second.

 

Then there's the fact that during gameplay, your transfer is usually in the kb/s range, not hte mb/s range, which the game would require for Gaikai / OnLive style play, MUCH LESS actually streaming models and animations or textures which would require upwards of 16MB/s to even get close to realistic (still not going to happen, animations are even bigger than textures).

 

You can verify these things yourself.

 

All of these points have been made at least 3 times, by myself, in addition to others.

 

And now Bioware has come out and admitted what is going on, addressed the issue, and nowhere was any sort of streaming or local server or decryption or bandwidth or server issue mentioned. We have a perfectly, 100% logical explanation for why high resolution textures are not available.

 

 

PLEASE MODIFY YOUR ORIGINAL POST.

THESE ARE NOT THE DROIDS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.

[miliways]

In Game rendering is done by Bioware's own code.

Hero Engine is nothing but a glorified World Editor in regards to SWTOR.

 

That may be true, but [citation required] ?