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

[Skovick]

I don't think this is the issue to some peoples performance issues. If it was, I think more people with mid systems would be having issues. Also why would they degrade the image quality when you could just send lower quality textures in the first place and save itself that process of degrading.

[Mandrax]

Most people don´t do tough things , where the response and seconds counts .

When you try to solo a champion or do heroic 2-4 solo . response time is what keeps you alive or dead meat .

 

Now most people don´t even care they lag in Operations or Flashpoints .

Or that they don´t even notice there heals or damage dissapearing .

They just don´t care let alone interrupt something , most people complain there is a lag issue when they are forced to interrupt .

 

Let see week 3 and a half , there should be tons of 50 around nowadays .

Guess what most of my 50 friend list are offline ... even on peak hours .

Sure we can all reroll a alt , and play trough 8 stories and then quit .

But while knowing the system , this issue hampers gameplay especially frantic gameplay at the endgame .

 

Let see Black Talon normal mode , almost no lag no problems , Hard mode freaking hell lag >.< interrupt has to be done with perfection or else it won´t connect .

Hit enrage timer too often on bosses .

 

No wonder they don´t give combat text window , now I also know why , cause onscreen data and server data don´t match or are sync properly .

 

Well, I DO care and I can say that the only issue that I get is the ability delay. I don't experience many of the other issues that people have been discussing on these boards. You can't just say that people aren't experiencing these issues because they just aren't looking for them, or they just don't care. I don't believe that to be true.

 

Anyway, there are other threads for discussion of those points, so I think we need to stick with this particular issue in this thread rather than bringing in the other performance problems and moving away from the question that the OP is asking.

 

The reason I am urging caution on this particular theory is because it's a complex one, and at this point we don't even know if they are remote rendering or not. Let's find out if they are in fact doing this, then we can speculate on whether it's the root of all the performance problems that people are concerned about.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Mandrax

[Ailirah]

What the OP suggests is a rather intresting concept and makes sadly a lot of sense. But then, what makes sense to me not is this:

 

People at Bioware etc cannot be stupid and not predict that someone would find out about this and raise the issue. So - did they try to hide it and its not hidden enough, or the Devs just did not care about the whole absurdidy of taking copy right issues so seriosly?

 

On the other hand, the devs promised an explanation on the high rez textures - so maybe lets wait and see what they say? Maybe this will actually admit to this and explain how or why it can or cannot be changed/fixed.

[Frooby]

Bottom of the second page:

 

Thank you for pointing that out.

 

I notice the language is "could" and not "is". Which tells me no one has actually done it yet, only that it's possible, but you'll notice he mentions the very limitations and problems I listed.

 

None of which, graphicaly, are present in SWTOR, although some of the bandwidth issues are.

 

Again, think of the effort needed to do this, knowing full well, they would have these issues.

 

I continue to believe they aren't using this method of copy protection. Becuse a) it is too technicaly challenging and b) a simple model from an MMO would take 2 days max to recreate from scratch using 3ds max. So they aren't really achieving anything.

[aimbotcfg]

Personally, I've always felt that if running at max load causes you to overheat and thermal trip, it's a sign that your cooling can't dissipate the heat the part is putting out, and needs to be augmented somehow.

 

Running hot is one thing, thermal tripping, assuming it's not like 90 degrees in your room or something, shouldn't EVER happen as a result of load. The only time I've ever thermal tripped a system, it was because I forgot to plug the CPU fan back in. Bloody ADHD...

 

Similarly with laptops and throttling, not that the manufacturers care.

 

High spec shuttle. It gets hot, as I've already said. However its never got THIS hot and its been running things that should put far more demand on the processor than SWTOR. A secondary background rendering process could go some way to explain this.

[myrmexaw]

I don't think this is the issue to some peoples performance issues. If it was, I think more people with mid systems would be having issues. Also why would they degrade the image quality when you could just send lower quality textures in the first place and save itself that process of degrading.

 

the conspiracy being that people with low end computer don't need as much authorization than someone with a good computer with everything maxxed ... Yea sound mad , but that's what happens when noone receive any real information and then it goes into a giant snowball and wreck the christma's town down the hill

[Karrayabe]

Well bye bye SW:TOR i had enough of this.

 

Um, you know nothing has been proven right?

[Damioc]

Come on bioware we all want a answer to this!... (Im going to go and play this awesome game thats going to ruin wow now its called SWTOR honestly most of all these problems people post are THERE own issue wether internet or computer probs you cant blame it on bioware)

 

THANK YOU BIOWARE FOR THIS GAME WE WOULDNT OF HAD WITHOUT YOU!

 

seriously bioware gave us a gift lets be careful not to spit in there face....

[Unpleasant]

This sounds far-fetched. It's much more likely to be incompetence causing problems rather than malevolence.

[Elgarr]

I'll reiterate AGAIN that this is just speculation. and then go off to edit the front post to make that clearer.

 

Tiron I can understand your concerns, well if I was the one who potentially brought down a game if the information I found was true. You can't worry, yes it's a theory at present, but the more people look at it, the more plausible it becomes.

 

I would be happy to stay if they fixed it, but fired that idiot in charge oh and issued an appology.

 

I wont ask the fanboys to appologise or anything, as I know they would have been mislead and the force wasn't very strong with them like others who always doubted BW and their ability.

 

Let's see what BW has to say, especially Mr 95%.

 

Like I said before in posts, if e game fails, I won't lose my job, those in charge will

[Defyant]

/subscribed

[Thomanson]

Bumping/Bookmarking for later clarification (hopefully)

[myslead]

Loud noises !

[Abruptum]

Come on bioware we all want a answer to this!... (Im going to go and play this awesome game thats going to ruin wow now its called SWTOR honestly most of all these problems people post are THERE own issue wether internet or computer probs you cant blame it on bioware)

 

THANK YOU BIOWARE FOR THIS GAME WE WOULDNT OF HAD WITHOUT YOU!

 

seriously bioware gave us a gift lets be careful not to spit in there face....

 

Oh boy, here comes the white-knighting.

 

"honestly most of all these problems people post are THERE own issue wether internet or computer probs you cant blame it on bioware" - absolute tripe. There's no denying this game has some serious performance issues on many systems, and it's either ATI/NVIDIA's drivers or Bioware's coding at fault.

[drbaltazar]

What the OP suggests is a rather intresting concept and makes sadly a lot of sense. But then, what makes sense to me not is this:

 

People at Bioware etc cannot be stupid and not predict that someone would find out about this and raise the issue. So - did they try to hide it and its not hidden enough, or the Devs just did not care about the whole absurdidy of taking copy right issues so seriosly?

 

On the other hand, the devs promised an explanation on the high rez textures - so maybe lets wait and see what they say? Maybe this will actually admit to this and explain how or why it can or cannot be changed/fixed.

 

ability delay is adjustable in game ,0,250,500 (ms)etc

[Granrick]

... but the more people look at it, the more plausible it becomes...

 

Unless you're getting into some kind of metaphysical philosophy about reality, I don't think that's true

 

I think i know what you mean, I just thought that wording was funny.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Granrick

[Elgarr]

1 white knight out of how many replies?

 

I think quite a few of a techi nature see this information is a huge problem for them, that's why they would be stupid to come out waving a flag.

 

I think they want to see how it pans put just like everyone else before deciding on what to do.

[Vorphalack]

Interesting, seems like a big ol nerdspiracy, but somehow very plausable. Would be pretty stunned if that actually was the problem, but not surprised.

 

Dosen't really matter if this theory is true or not, the awful performance in highly populated areas, Ops and Warzones is very real. It's not really a conspiracy if you can point to your own monitor and say ''look, it's happening right in front of me''.

 

Whatever the casue, we have to live with the effect. As it stands, all of the end game content is quite unenjoyable for me thanks to the performance hit of doing anything in a large group. My system is way above the reccomended requierments, but I only have an average 8MB down (2MB actual) 2MB up (500K actual) broadband connection. That wont change any time soon becasue I cannot get anything faster in my area.

 

If they dont address this soon I cannot justify paying for the subscription. Watching my dudes glitch around the screen, watching attacks simply do nothing, watching the last 20 seconds of backed up animations unload on me long after the combat ended.....no thanks. Unresponsive combat has killed more MMOs than I care to count. If this isnt resolved than I am considering rturning this to Amazon for a refund under the Sale of Goods act ''not fit for purpose'' clause.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Thank you for pointing that out.

 

I notice the language is "could" and not "is". Which tells me no one has actually done it yet, only that it's possible, but you'll notice he mentions the very limitations and problems I listed.

 

None of which, graphicaly, are present in SWTOR, although some of the bandwidth issues are.

 

Again, think of the effort needed to do this, knowing full well, they would have these issues.

 

I continue to believe they aren't using this method of copy protection. Becuse a) it is too technicaly challenging and b) a simple model from an MMO would take 2 days max to recreate from scratch using 3ds max. So they aren't really achieving anything.

 

I tend to agree with you for the most part, that it's extremely technically challenging...but it seems to fit the observed facts too well to just discard without some hard data one way or the other.

 

HOW exactly they're using it I don't know, that the second process is software rendering is a half-wild guess, but I think they MAY be using SOMETHING from in there...or something similar, at any rate.

 

I will note though, that the paper I linked is the initial research paper on the subject, and as such is a theoretical discussion. According to google, it also dates from 2004, plenty of time for someone to have implemented something.

 

I'd love nothing better than to be proven wrong...but what we need is real proof. Answers. Either from Bioware or from a direct analysis of the system itself, which I don't have the know-how to do. I'm praying someone who does reads this.

[Flowerslayer]

We're on to you Bioware. If this is true, boy are you in for some explainin'.

[Elgarr]

Unless you're getting into some kind of metaphysical philosophy about reality, I don't think that's true

 

I think i know what you mean, I just thought that wording was funny.

 

Wording with myself sometimes can get funny, glad you know what I meant.

[drbaltazar]

What the OP suggests is a rather intresting concept and makes sadly a lot of sense. But then, what makes sense to me not is this:

 

People at Bioware etc cannot be stupid and not predict that someone would find out about this and raise the issue. So - did they try to hide it and its not hidden enough, or the Devs just did not care about the whole absurdidy of taking copy right issues so seriosly?

 

On the other hand, the devs promised an explanation on the high rez textures - so maybe lets wait and see what they say? Maybe this will actually admit to this and explain how or why it can or cannot be changed/fixed.

they wanted to be secured first and foremost or lucas forced them to be ,and it is not very goodly optimised or we arent set properly at our end to be optimised for it or the web isnt accepting it and it is being rerouted somewhere it shouldnt be!we ll have to wait and see

[Ailirah]

ability delay is adjustable in game ,0,250,500 (ms)etc

 

Actually, I am one of those people with no ability delay at all. I was speaking of the other thread, the [Official High Resolution Textures Post] - and I saw a reply from a Dev there, that a full reply to this issue is coming, they are just fine polishing it.

 

This is the reply I am waiting for, as it is ultimately connected to the issue raised here, too, in a way. Though ofc a proper reply to this thread would be great too!

[Blackfriar]

Assets not loading quickly could also be because of a fragmented or slow harddrive.

 

Which would make sense. Back in the 1980's and 1990's when the OS didn't do it automatically for you. Except I'm running Windows 7 and it does it automatically, every Sunday night. And even my third-party utilities, when I go to check up on the Windows defrag, say it's not fragmented, so we can't even dun Microsoft for this failure.

 

And the thing is, I have the same exact problem as everyone else. And it makes no sense.

 

My bottom-line as a gamer is that I like more than just low-demand CRPGs and I've, to meet those needs , bought a massively over-clocked, liquid-cooled, completely stable regardless of application/game, fully-up-do-date computer with RAID 0, top-end (over-clocked) video, processor. Heck, it even has a 1200 watt power-supply to run all of that without brown-outs. So we're not even able to complain about power-draw issues that can, on under-powered machines, cause delays and stuttering.

 

And it's not some kludge, kit or fly-by-night computer, I got it from Digital Storm, one of the best custom-rig makers in the gaming-computer industry. There is no game I cannot run at full settings that doesn't run at high FPS (and fast loading) with as immaculate detail as is possible given today's gaming demands and software rendering technology.

 

Except this one.

 

So I'm not willing to accept the blame. I'm not willing to let 'it might be you' be an excuse and used against others. I'm not willing to give EA/BioWare a pass on this issue. Because I'm not one of these people with some ATI 4200 graphics card (2000 technology updated for DX10) that thinks my card has a 'high number' on a 'new computer' it, therefore, 'must be good' when, in fact, it's a piece of obsolete junk repainted for DX10 and sold to them as 'capaable.'

 

And I note this game was a Spring 2011 release pushed back TWICE. It sill isn't done. And, what's worse, it still has many of the SAME REPORTED STINKING VIDEO/UI BUGS IT HAD ELEVEN MONTHS AGO and I have no reasonable expectations it will get done within my completing the game. And while, in couple of years, they may have finally delivered a decent MMO, it'll be TOO LATE.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Blackfriar

[drbaltazar]

This sounds far-fetched. It's much more likely to be incompetence causing problems rather than malevolence.

 

now you are onto something!