[Official High Resolution Textures Post] Can we get a clarification on this?

[Sharma]

anyone with realistic expectations wouldve seen this coming. now just need to learn to live with it and move on, or keep complaining. improved graphics and optimization happens to all long lived MMOs and will happen eventually whether the players complain or not. i'd rather spend more time bringing other issues to the devs attention like bugs, exploits, and much needed features or fixes like a GTN redesign, macros, target of target/focus portraits, etc.

[sithlordmauler]

Id rather play and awesome game on slightly lower settings, than a shallow lifeless game with a nice face on it.

 

IRL the shallow bombshell beauties a lot of times end up only having beauty skin-deep.

 

Thanks for the update Stephen, and thanks for your dedication to this awesome game.

 

Look forward to being around for many years to come.

[theblaznee]

Could we get an interrim fix where just our own characters are rendered with high rez textures.. So we can look at ourselves and not see an smudged blob?

 

The textures are fine when we run around looking at other players, but we spend quite a bit more time staring at our own player and I personally would like that to look a little crisper..

[FlawlessSoul]

Well, thank you for the concise reply, Mr. Reid.

 

However, I have chosen to stop playing The Old Republic.

 

You used the high-resolution character models and textures for hundreds upon hundreds of screenshots and videos that were purportedly showing actual gameplay - for instance, your progression videos which showed combat. Those certainly weren't dialogue scenes.

 

I purchased the game expecting that level of graphical fidelity. I have never seen another MMO use special textures that are unavailable to players in their gameplay videos.

 

Good luck to everyone working on the game and continuing to play it.

 

This is how I feel. If I thought I'd get anywhere with it, I'd request a refund of the original purchase price, as well, but as it stands I'll just not continue my sub after the free month is up. On top of that, your lack of transparency and your reticence about responding to an issue doesn't fill me with confidence regarding the future.

 

Send me an email when you finally get a release worthy product.

Edited January 11, 2012 by FlawlessSoul

[Jeronas]

It doesn't make any sense!

 

As earlier in Beta the High Resolution textures WERE available and plenty of beta testers were happy and content with it, without suffering performance problems!

 

It doesn't involve a lot of development, as it has been working before!

 

1. Why do you REMOVE the CHOICE for us to run HighRes textures? Why can't we decide if it's worth it to us and if our High End PC's can handle it?

 

The worst of all in this, is that this SIGNIFICANT decision and change was NOT COMMUNICATED to the public before release!!

 

2. With this statement, you basically confirmed and are now commiting and guilty of BLATANTLY FALSE advertisment! As ALL your screenshot and video footage, as well as earlier beta footage, shows HIGH RESOLUTION character models!

 

We PAID for the game (me 300 bucks for two CE editions) with the EXPECTATION to run the game as was ADVERTISED! With High resolution character models!

 

This brings us to the third point:

 

3. Are you going to offer a FULL refund for people that wish so, now the cat has come out of the bag?

[miliways]

This is incredibly disappointing, to be honest. I see no reason to completely remove the option.

 

If somebody wants to use the high textures, then they should be able to. There's no reason to completely remove the option, simply because you all feel the game runs smoother.

 

That should be left up the end-user, not ya'll.

 

I would absolutely agree, and I was puzzled on this myself awhile ago. The response from bioware however makes it clear that they are using an alternative rendering method entirely for the medium level-of-detail characters versus the high level of detail characters. At the moment, in the game, you can only do one or the other. So either all models are high level, or all are low. And they're saying from their testing, even on high performer machines, you can't really handle having lots of people in the high-resolution models.

 

Lots of this is probably due to the Hero Engine not being fully optimized, so they aren't able to squeeze out the performer they'd like. Also, this is an MMO, so the number of unpredictable player driven characters is very high.

 

Hopefully they'll write a solution which is a hybrid, can render some models at high detail while the rest are rendered at medium, and then the end user can adjust a slider as to how many high detail models are displayed. That would be an ideal solution.

 

However, merging the texture atlasing algorithm with the traditional asset rendering will take lots of time to code, and lots of time to test.

 

And since the game engine is 3rd party (hero engine) it'll take them longer to make the bigger, lower-level changes.

 

Give them time.

[JediMasterSarynn]

Thanks for the info, but this is highly disappointing. I built a new, high-end PC so I can immerse myself in the beauty of SWTOR, but that obviously isn't happening (from a graphical perspective). I don't really understand why the choice of running high-res textures isn't up to the user. It boggles my mind.

 

Currently, I run the game completely maxed out on 1920x1200 and I rarely go below 90 FPS even in the Fleet. Oh, and my PC only cost me about $1000 to build so while it is high-end, it isn't an extreme PC by any means (i5 and GTX 570).

[Doshin]

This is incredibly disappointing, to be honest. I see no reason to completely remove the option.

 

If somebody wants to use the high textures, then they should be able to. There's no reason to completely remove the option, simply because you all feel the game runs smoother.

 

That should be left up the end-user, not ya'll.

 

And that seems like a great idea on paper.

 

However, look at the threads with people talking about how the game isn't running smooth on their water cooled, over clocked super machines, could you imagine what would happen if they released a setting that they knew, ahead of time, would cause poor performance on even high end computers? it would be chaos, because everyone is always going to try to play on ultra settings, even if it causes performance issues, and then, they will most likely complain about poor programming choices that are causing the slowdown.

 

Basically, the amount of people complaining about the lack of those textures, are probably not as large as the amount of people who would be complaining if the feature was in, and their performance was slow, so not including them was the better decision. Maybe not one I like, because i do love me some hi res textures, but still the better decision.

[alexmis]

I'm sorry for the offtop - does anyone know when Nvidia is going to provide new drivers(hopefully that increase the performance of the game a little)?

 

Thank you.

[SillyTurtle]

That makes entire sense. Thanks for that great explanation. Now, like others are wondering why isn't it our choice. The real question is based on that explanation, is there a way to keep those current settings for “low” setting, and turn off that mode when selecting “high” setting? In other words when using texture atlas, is it something that can be turned off/on based on a setting or something that either IS or ISNT and overrides the entire game?

 

Reason I ask that is because if it can only be on or off regardless of any other settings, that would explain why it can't be our choice.

 

Hard to explain... :-( hope this makes sense.

[nonforma]

Then give us the option but call it Ultra or Extreme. There's plenty of us that are spending the majority of game time in situations unlike what was described as causing the slowdown.

 

It's pretty common when raiding in many MMOs to need to turn down graphics/audio settings when doing large raids to improve performance.

[Zakua]

You guys should not be promoting the game with hi-res screen shots IF it is not obtainable via the ingame UI.

 

I understand your explanation and the dev teams desire to make the game enjoyable for the masses. Some of us have nice PCs so let us flirt with the hi-re stuff, if it brings my PC to a crawl then I'll upgrade or turn the options down.

 

On a side note. What is up with the lack of AA in game? I am sorry if this has been spoke of or addressed in the forums but.....I have my NV CP turned on to override AA at 32X and it's still jaggy.

 

Sorry not trying to de-rail =)

 

VIVA LA HI-RES!!!

[Turelus]

Would it be possible to have the "cutscene textures" for armour previews at least?

It's kind of shame that what we see when choosing armours is so low quality at the moment.

[Waypoc]

With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback.

 

Not meant with any disrespect, but this is the only paragraph that matters.

And the TL;DR for this is that it's a poor game design or an extremely myopic point of view of how MMO's should be developed or both.

[Shaz]

I, too, am incredibly disappointed at this. I have been waiting since release for my characters to look the way they are supposed to.

 

The way they looked in beta.

 

The way they were advertised as looking like.

 

The fuzziness, blurriness, and smudginess of the low quality textures that we get to now label 'high quality' is very upsetting. My husband and purchased brand new PCs to make sure we could take advantage of this game to its fullest. Now I'm faced with the fact that my husband and I spent thousands of dollars that we didn't need to, because the low quality of graphics in this game don't come near to demanding the systems we built to play this game.

 

Very disappointed, and seriously feeling out-right lied to.

 

Poor form, BioWare. Very poor form.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Shaz

[junkfunk]

Is an option like what LOTRO did in providing a high-res and low-res client viable? I'm obviously not expecting something like this to happen overnight, but I feel that it might be something to look into.

 

I built a computer specifically for this game and it sucks that I can't use it to its full potential. Having a high-res client option might alleviate some of the concerns.

[Angellus]

Its funny how nice the textures look in this Developer walktrhough for Eternity Vault.

 

 

and lets not forget about the marauder with a hooded cloak.

[kleners]

Time for option2

 

bioware look away. we will reverse mod this atlas back out. work on some 2k texture packs and fix your mistake.

 

I also have about a couple months left in me for something more real than this excuse. i have promised all my friends no this is a bug. No the game is not a 2000 game engine. it looked better in beta and will be fixed.

 

and now you have released that no, this game has infact just traveled back in time about 10 years. These were excuses we can hear with everquest. not a 2012 game.

[Dezzi]

Not meant with any disrespect, but this is the only paragraph that matters.

And the TL;DR for this is that it's a poor game design or an extremely myopic point of view of how MMO's should be developed or both.

 

Brilliant response. You nailed it.

[Baaddare]

sorry to hear this was a "BUG." It would seem that like in most MMO's "we" would have the option to have higher graphics if we wanted to. It just seems that instead of fixing issue with the graphics you just keep reducing our options. In beta we had alot of sliders for example to adjust render distances for different items they are all gone. Now it took you a month of promissing High Res to say oh sorry there never was going to be High Res.

[MisterWratten]

To miliways and Dashin (responding to names via memory, apologies if they're misspelled),

 

I totally get what you're saying. I'm not going to jump ship over this or anything, I just think it's a very poor decision.

[ShadowMasterRP]

So basically... you are purposefully removing the ability to use high quality textures... instead of having an OPTION to use or not use them?

 

How does that make any sense?

[Mumit]

That's extremely disappointing. Honestly, probably one of the biggest gut punches I've read from a developer. I appreciate the time you took to type of the response, I just don't appreciate the content of it.

 

It's perfectly acceptable for there to be bugs, features not fully implemented or simply missing, etc. Those are things common with any game of this scale. When something like higher graphics quality is there, but it's disabled due to not functioning well on lower end PCs, that's just something I can't continue to support.

[carnac_fett]

Its funny how nice the textures look in this Developer walktrhough for Eternity Vault.

 

 

Watch the developers put that video in the game so they can claim it's a cutscene.

[Elgarr]

Lol so just a tad false advertising then?

 

And no wonder some have given such glowing reviews, they aren't playing the same game we are now.

 

Lol thanks for showing your true colours Mr 95% even funnier, of no one would have brought this up,you wouldn't have said anything, which shows how you truly work.

 

Hopefully more now will see past this and see just what BW are for misleading people for this long.

 

Oh and lmfao at those who defended there awesome engine ha ha.

 

BOOM HEAD SHOT!

Edited January 11, 2012 by Elgarr