1.1 brings no fix to the skill delay in pvp?

[Scotchy]

Noctournys... You're fighting a lost cause. I personally agree with you, but the majority of people are just going to want things instantly. I personally have all the problems with delay, and lag, and everything else. I, however, understand that things can be done in a short amount of time for games like these. Just let the impatient people stay here and complain.

 

BioWare has addressed the problem, and is most likely working on it. Give em time

[Noctournys]

You can say "have patience" all you want.

 

You can explain the painstaking process of bug-fixing

 

You can attempt to tell us they are working on it and changes are already in the works.

 

You can say all you want about how long it might take for their team to isolate and eliminate this glitch.

 

Sadly, none of these will hold subscribers like you think they will. Those of you without this problem, I envy you. Those of us with it (especially melee) are having to struggle to play PvP and hope it gets better soon. If there is not a fix long after the end of the first month, a lot of people won't be coming back.

 

I understand the issue may take a long time to solve, but I'm obviously not going to pay for that time, and neither will a lot of us.

 

I love this game more than any other I've laid my hands on in 15+ years of gaming, I just want PvP to not be such a bug-ridden, FPS-lagging, glitch-fest. I will probably resub for another month, if there is not a fix by then I am not sure I will be able to force myself to play.

 

As an aside, what are your specs? Be as specific as possible. What kind of 3rd party junk do you have running? How many processess floating around?

 

My machine (Hexacore "Westmere" Xeon @ 3.06 Ghz, Radeon 5870, 12GB of FB-DDR3 - a Mac Pro) has never had an issue with the game at any time. I get a solid 120 fps in every place but the fleet (i never disable vsync, as screen tearing makes me want to punch kittens).

 

My wife's machine (a 'handmedown' Mac Pro - 2x Woodcrest Xeon @ 2.66Ghz, 8GB of FB-DDR2, Radeon 4870) also runs the game flawlessly. She gets a solid 60fps everywhere except fleet.

 

my brother in laws machine (home built PC, cant be too sure on specific parts), sporting a Core i5 2500k, Radeon 6870, 8GB of RAM, an SSD Boot Drive that also contains SWTOR.. a pretty decent gaming rig...

 

gets awful, awful performance.

 

He's also a "computer expert", of course, and it's stuffed full of a billion and one third party apps. I suggested he partition one of his drives and make a clean install of Win 7 and the game.

 

Guess what?

 

His performance issues cleared right up.

 

Moral of the story:

 

dont assume the problem isnt on your end.

[Parrothead]

Noctournys... You're fighting a lost cause. I personally agree with you, but the majority of people are just going to want things instantly. I personally have all the problems with delay, and lag, and everything else. I, however, understand that things can be done in a short amount of time for games like these. Just let the impatient people stay here and complain.

 

BioWare has addressed the problem, and is most likely working on it. Give em time

 

They knew about this problem long before release. This isn't some issue that cropped up overnight after release that blindsided Bioware. We reported this to them and they ignored our attempts to help them, and now they are going to reap the consequences.

[Noctournys]

You know this was reported in beta for a long time, right?

 

Edit: This wasn't some fringe issue. It was widely reported and Bioware did nothing to fix it.

 

No, it was widely posted about in the Beta.

 

Almost none of those people filled out actual bug reports or posted their detailed system specs, et al.

 

There were threads with hundreds of posts - from the same 20 people. There were dozens of threads, full of the same 20 people.

 

I was there.

 

(That is an exageration, of course. It was likely hundreds of people. Maybe even a few thousand out of the tens of thousands who beta tested. ENd of the day, there were only about 4500 unique posters on the beta forums until the open weekends, out of 40,000 testers or more. The forums are a bad way to measure what's really going on since a tiny fraction of people who play even visit them once)

[Noctournys]

Noctournys... You're fighting a lost cause. I personally agree with you, but the majority of people are just going to want things instantly. I personally have all the problems with delay, and lag, and everything else. I, however, understand that things can be done in a short amount of time for games like these. Just let the impatient people stay here and complain.

 

BioWare has addressed the problem, and is most likely working on it. Give em time

 

I am not tired enough to sleep and ignorance annoys me.

 

So ill give it up in a bit when i actually get tired and probably never visit the thread again, but until i do, ive got nothing better to do while waiting for my WZ queues. (and i might even quit that, since ive been running into the same triple-operative group in Huttball for the last 4 games that is becoming... unfun).

[Dovahbrah]

The sheer arrogance involved in just putting your hands over your ears and assuming it MUST BE a problem in the game itself, and not a problem with your hardware or software configuration on your computer, is staggering.

 

 

Seeing as how the devs themselves have noted the issue, you should probably back off.

[Earthchild]

I think part of the issue is that there are two problems, there is an "FPS" issues that that seems to effect only some people, it causes the FPS to drop from a 'good' range down to an unplayable range and then maybe back up, this can happen on 'fairly good' rigs but is not consistent. This FPS could be an issue with drivers , junkware and any number of things on the client machine, as well as 'bugs' in part of the game.

 

The other issue is the "ability delay" and just general poor fluid combat, I believe this effects everybody and is not directly related to the client pc, but is related to the number of players trying to issue commands/attacks. I think players that don't experience this either have lower expectations or just don't do warzones where it is most evident.

[nflstar]

Seeing as how the devs themselves have noted the issue, you should probably back off.

 

i have yet to see anything from the devs on this issue. care to post it?

[Grunnd]

As an aside, what are your specs? Be as specific as possible. What kind of 3rd party junk do you have running? How many processess floating around?

 

My machine (Hexacore "Westmere" Xeon @ 3.06 Ghz, Radeon 5870, 12GB of FB-DDR3 - a Mac Pro) has never had an issue with the game at any time. I get a solid 120 fps in every place but the fleet (i never disable vsync, as screen tearing makes me want to punch kittens).

 

My wife's machine (a 'handmedown' Mac Pro - 2x Woodcrest Xeon @ 2.66Ghz, 8GB of FB-DDR2, Radeon 4870) also runs the game flawlessly. She gets a solid 60fps everywhere except fleet.

 

my brother in laws machine (home built PC, cant be too sure on specific parts), sporting a Core i5 2500k, Radeon 6870, 8GB of RAM, an SSD Boot Drive that also contains SWTOR.. a pretty decent gaming rig...

 

gets awful, awful performance.

 

He's also a "computer expert", of course, and it's stuffed full of a billion and one third party apps. I suggested he partition one of his drives and make a clean install of Win 7 and the game.

 

Guess what?

 

His performance issues cleared right up.

 

Moral of the story:

 

dont assume the problem isnt on your end.

 

Phenom X4 II @3.6

4 GB RAM

GTX 560

 

~20 or so processes running in taskmanager at any given time, desktop animations off, compatibility mode on, basic windows mode, etc. Basically running everything to the minimum except for the occasional monitoring program. Graphics set to absolute minimum, still get a 10-15 FPS slideshow in warzones. Fresh install about a week or so ago to see if that would clear it up. Tried multiple versions of my nvidia drivers, etc.

 

Problem is not on my end.

[Noctournys]

They knew about this problem long before release. This isn't some issue that cropped up overnight after release that blindsided Bioware. We reported this to them and they ignored our attempts to help them, and now they are going to reap the consequences.

 

Revisionist history is cool, i hear.

 

I was in the beta. There were lots of threads like this one, with almost no one even considering that the problem might be their software (or hardware) configuration, and even fewer actually posting real bug reports and system logs.

 

Ill say it again, at least once more, before i head to bed:

 

if it was just the game, and not something on the user-end, then the game's performance would be identical on identical hardware. It provably isn't. Some people with identical hardware are getting wildly different performance numbers, which is pretty pointed:

 

Something installed on those machines is causing the issue.

 

It could be so many things its even hard to list them all.

 

Occam's Razor.

[nflstar]

Revisionist history is cool, i hear.

 

I was in the beta. There were lots of threads like this one, with almost no one even considering that the problem might be their software (or hardware) configuration, and even fewer actually posting real bug reports and system logs.

 

Ill say it again, at least once more, before i head to bed:

 

if it was just the game, and not something on the user-end, then the game's performance would be identical on identical hardware. It provably isn't. Some people with identical hardware are getting wildly different performance numbers, which is pretty pointed:

 

Something installed on those machines is causing the issue.

 

It could be so many things its even hard to list them all.

 

Occam's Razor.

 

Even IF it is user end. No other MMO ive seen has had this problem. If crappy low budget MMOs can account for this, then so should bioware with there huge budget and years of production time.

[Adeonn]

FOR ALL THOSE CLUELESS PEOPLE:

 

is not our hardware problem is a game problem for sure cus even some people with

 

x2 GTX 560

2600 i7 @ 3.4

SSD

16GB RAM

 

have a problem in wz or in fleet

 

 

AND BTW THE REQUIREMENT FOR PLAY THIS GAME ARE THOSE:

 

What are the system requirements for the game?

 

Processor:

 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better

Operating System:

Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later

 

RAM:

 

Windows XP: 1.5GB RAM

Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB RAM

 

Note: PCs using a built-in graphical chipset are recommended to have 2GB of RAM.

 

Star Wars: The Old Republic requires a video card that has a minimum of 256MB of on-board RAM as well as support for Shader 3.0 or better. Examples include:

 

ATI X1800 or better

nVidia 7800 or better

Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better

 

DVD-ROM drive – 8x speed or better (required for installation from physical editions only) Internet connection required to play.

 

so stop say that is our hardware problem and open your eyes, there are a good % of player having those issue, you are not 1 of them?

Good for you, but for who have this problem is really hard to play pvp in wz

[Noctournys]

Seeing as how the devs themselves have noted the issue, you should probably back off.

 

Which thing are we talking about here?

 

The framerate problems people are having in Warzones/Alderaan/Hoth/Random Planet here But not other planets? No mention of that from Dev's - only performance issue mentioned is the known framerate bug in Fleet stations.

 

The ability delay?

 

Yes, im aware. I've also never addressed that issue. People say it exists. I believe them. My primary class (Sniper) doesn't really deal with it. No complex animations. Just shots, pretty much. We dont really suffer from it much, and ive certainly never noticed it.

 

My only alts at the moment are a lowbie trooper and a lowbie JK, and ive done nothing serious enough to bring the issue to my notice, but ive seen enough videos of it that im sure it exists and JO was pretty clear that they found half a dozen different causes to that one and that fixing it is a priority but will take some time.

[Noctournys]

Phenom X4 II @3.6

4 GB RAM

GTX 560

 

~20 or so processes running in taskmanager at any given time, desktop animations off, compatibility mode on, basic windows mode, etc. Basically running everything to the minimum except for the occasional monitoring program. Graphics set to absolute minimum, still get a 10-15 FPS slideshow in warzones. Fresh install about a week or so ago to see if that would clear it up. Tried multiple versions of my nvidia drivers, etc.

 

Problem is not on my end.

 

What else did you install on your fresh install?

 

Ventrilo/Mumble/TS?

 

An IM Client?

 

a disk imaging service?

 

Did you download the most recent DirectX 9.0c install *directly* from Microsoft? (this cleared up some performance issues for a friend with a midrange machine - he's now got a steady 50fps, up from 30fps).

 

Just a fresh install of Windows 7, for me, (i have a fresh VM that is never modified, to use as a recovery) is 31 processes. What are you cutting out to get it so low?

[Earthchild]

Revisionist history is cool, i hear.

 

I was in the beta. There were lots of threads like this one, with almost no one even considering that the problem might be their software (or hardware) configuration, and even fewer actually posting real bug reports and system logs.

 

Ill say it again, at least once more, before i head to bed:

 

if it was just the game, and not something on the user-end, then the game's performance would be identical on identical hardware. It provably isn't. Some people with identical hardware are getting wildly different performance numbers, which is pretty pointed:

 

Something installed on those machines is causing the issue.

 

It could be so many things its even hard to list them all.

 

Occam's Razor.

]

 

Out of all the machines having problems what is the one thing we know they have in common?

[Dovahbrah]

i have yet to see anything from the devs on this issue. care to post it?

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1269596#edit1269596

[Noctournys]

FOR ALL THOSE CLUELESS PEOPLE:

 

is not our hardware problem is a game problem for sure cus even some people with

 

x2 GTX 560

2600 i7 @ 3.4

SSD

16GB RAM

 

have a problem in wz or in fleet

 

so stop say that is our hardware problem and open your eyes, there are a good % of player having those issue, you are not 1 of them?

Good for you, but for who have this problem is really hard to play pvp in wz

 

Right, but you ignore the part that if it were only the game, i would also suffer from this horrible performance, as my machine (Hexacore Westmere Xeon - based on an i7 core, @ 3.06 Ghz, and a last-generation Radeon 5870) is lower spec than your post there - but somehow i dont have any performance issues except in Fleet ( Where you're -never- going to get good performance, with 200+ people hanging around in a small area, no matter how beefy your rig is).

 

If two machines have identical hardware, and one gets poor performance, and one gets good performance... the only thing it CAN be is the software installed on the machine.

 

Occams Razor.

 

The bolded claim is particularly interesting to me.

 

You're basing your claims on?

 

Forum Posts?

 

God i hope not. The forum metrics here are pretty clear - less than 70,000 unique posters. Even if EVERY ONE OF THEM had these issues - which is clearly untrue - it wouldn't even add up to 10% of the playerbase.

 

Is it a sizable number of people? Yep, no question. But it isn't some staggering issue that plagues the entire playerbase.

[Noctournys]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1269596#edit1269596

 

...

 

not the issue we're talking about at all. We're talking about performance problems, not ability lag. I've never once addressed it before you brought it up. So...

 

your point was?

[Noctournys]

Even IF it is user end. No other MMO ive seen has had this problem. If crappy low budget MMOs can account for this, then so should bioware with there huge budget and years of production time.

 

Uh... didn't play WoW much for the first 3 years, i see.

 

Hell, even now. Try flying into certain areas with your view distance turned up to max. I dont care how beefy your rig is, itll stutter and turn into a slideshow, particularly as you enter a capital city.

 

Other MMOs might make different DirectX calls that aren't used in SWTOR; SWTOR might call on some DirectX extensions that conflict with something else some people have installed.

 

A lot of "cheap" MMOs dont use DirectX at all (Blizzard's uses OpenGL natively, to maintain cross-platform compatibility, and then internally converts the OpenGL calls to DirectX calls if you use the DirectX rendering path) and might never trigger the conflict you're seeing.

[nflstar]

Uh... didn't play WoW much for the first 3 years, i see.

 

Hell, even now. Try flying into certain areas with your view distance turned up to max. I dont care how beefy your rig is, itll stutter and turn into a slideshow, particularly as you enter a capital city.

 

Other MMOs might make different DirectX calls that aren't used in SWTOR; SWTOR might call on some DirectX extensions that conflict with something else some people have installed.

 

A lot of "cheap" MMOs dont use DirectX at all (Blizzard's uses OpenGL natively, to maintain cross-platform compatibility, and then internally converts the OpenGL calls to DirectX calls if you use the DirectX rendering path) and might never trigger the conflict you're seeing.

 

Look at the title of this thread then re-read your last 2 posts please.

Edited January 16, 2012 by nflstar

[Thiussat]

.. learn a bit of patience. Maybe go educate yourself on just how hard it is to fix something this big in an MMO.

 

This isn't something they can just whip up a fix for overnight. Get out of that instant gratification mindset; real coding is hard.

 

First they have to reliably reproduce the bugs, in their labs, so they can track what the code is doing to cause it. THen they have to isolate it to make sure it isn't something on the client end (which, considering this ability delay doesn't affect everyone - ive never once had a problem with it - it might be).

 

If it IS something on the client end, they need to figure out what it is (a bad driver? a third-party process running in the background that is conflicting with a UI call, TCP call, or other process that SWTOR also uses? A motherboard chipset that needs its BIOS updated that is causing network problems? There are hundreds of things it could be) and then figure out if the fix needs to be client side (I.E. - tell the customers to update their BIOS, kill certain 3rd party processes running in the background, or roll back or update drivers) or if it is something that cant be fixed by the client but is still the fault of there machine, you now have to figure out how to code around it, WITHOUT ALSO SCREWING SOMETHING UP FOR OTHERS.

 

If it ISNT something on the client end, you then have to isolate the code, figure out why it is doing what it is doing, where the problem is, find out what other things are attatched to that piece of code and will also have to be rewritten, and then make changes. Then test them, extensively, and hope you didn't break something else. And in a piece of software this large - millions of lines of code - that can take hundreds of man hours just to track down and reliably reproduce the bug.

 

This stuff doesn't happen overnight. They're working on it (read the dev posts); when they have something to say, theyll say it.

 

As to the performance thing: I am more and more convicned that this is a client-side issue; that is to say, that it is an issue with individuals computers. My wife and I had a friend of ours and his brother over last night; they brought their computers, both to play some LAN games with others and we did a little SWTOR PvP.

 

They have nearly identical hardware - the elder brother built both machines, and they may actually be identical hardware. One of them has the horrible framerate problems, and one does not.

 

One of them uses the desktop as their primary machine, and thus it is loaded down with 3rd party processes, background applications, drivers, and other gunk. The other primarily uses his laptop as his day to day machine and only games on his desktop PC.

 

Guess which one has problems?

 

Yeah.

 

And something like that is even harder to track down in practice than the ability lag - because there are literally tens of thousands of possible hardware combinations, and the issue doesn't seem to persist with any rhyme or reason even on machines with identical hardware!

 

Code work takes time. Calm down, have some dip. Relax. It's not like theyre just going to not fix it - they WANT your money. They have no interest in losing customers, but the customers also need to chill the crap out and let a little reality sink in. Instant Gratification isn't something you can have with software patches.

 

Get over it.

 

I got a solution. BW should open-source their code. I will bet within a week some college student geek will have discovered the bug. Don't forget the power of Linus' Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus'_Law

 

I kid of course, as no software giant like BW will ever open-source anything. And, of course, in the case of an MMO it would open a can of worms with hacks and exploits.

 

Still, though, it would get fixed much more quickly.

[Dovahbrah]

...

 

not the issue we're talking about at all. We're talking about performance problems, not ability lag. I've never once addressed it before you brought it up. So...

 

your point was?

 

Title of this topic is about ability lag, I'm not referencing the specific issue you're talking about.

[Dravinian]

.. learn a bit of patience. Maybe go educate yourself on just how hard it is to fix something this big in an MMO.

 

This isn't something they can just whip up a fix for overnight. Get out of that instant gratification mindset; real coding is hard.

 

First they have to reliably reproduce the bugs, in their labs, so they can track what the code is doing to cause it. THen they have to isolate it to make sure it isn't something on the client end (which, considering this ability delay doesn't affect everyone - ive never once had a problem with it - it might be).

 

If it IS something on the client end, they need to figure out what it is (a bad driver? a third-party process running in the background that is conflicting with a UI call, TCP call, or other process that SWTOR also uses? A motherboard chipset that needs its BIOS updated that is causing network problems? There are hundreds of things it could be) and then figure out if the fix needs to be client side (I.E. - tell the customers to update their BIOS, kill certain 3rd party processes running in the background, or roll back or update drivers) or if it is something that cant be fixed by the client but is still the fault of there machine, you now have to figure out how to code around it, WITHOUT ALSO SCREWING SOMETHING UP FOR OTHERS.

 

If it ISNT something on the client end, you then have to isolate the code, figure out why it is doing what it is doing, where the problem is, find out what other things are attatched to that piece of code and will also have to be rewritten, and then make changes. Then test them, extensively, and hope you didn't break something else. And in a piece of software this large - millions of lines of code - that can take hundreds of man hours just to track down and reliably reproduce the bug.

 

This stuff doesn't happen overnight. They're working on it (read the dev posts); when they have something to say, theyll say it.

 

As to the performance thing: I am more and more convicned that this is a client-side issue; that is to say, that it is an issue with individuals computers. My wife and I had a friend of ours and his brother over last night; they brought their computers, both to play some LAN games with others and we did a little SWTOR PvP.

 

They have nearly identical hardware - the elder brother built both machines, and they may actually be identical hardware. One of them has the horrible framerate problems, and one does not.

 

One of them uses the desktop as their primary machine, and thus it is loaded down with 3rd party processes, background applications, drivers, and other gunk. The other primarily uses his laptop as his day to day machine and only games on his desktop PC.

 

Guess which one has problems?

 

Yeah.

 

And something like that is even harder to track down in practice than the ability lag - because there are literally tens of thousands of possible hardware combinations, and the issue doesn't seem to persist with any rhyme or reason even on machines with identical hardware!

 

Code work takes time. Calm down, have some dip. Relax. It's not like theyre just going to not fix it - they WANT your money. They have no interest in losing customers, but the customers also need to chill the crap out and let a little reality sink in. Instant Gratification isn't something you can have with software patches.

 

Get over it.

 

Code work takes time?

 

You mean like the 3 years I have been on this message board waiting for the game?

 

That amount of time enough?

[Uuhwee]

The engine is just crap!

 

Switching targets is also delayed?

How poor must an enigne be, that it needs 1-2 secs to change the picture of the avatar?

 

It is a shame that this game cost 50bucks.

 

BW should pay us for testing this beeshizzle.

 

Its Star Wars and u screwed it......!

[Belzuba]

The engine is just crap!

 

Switching targets is also delayed?

How poor must an enigne be, that it needs 1-2 secs to change the picture of the avatar?

 

It is a shame that this game cost 50bucks.

 

BW should pay us for testing this beeshizzle.

 

Its Star Wars and u screwed it......!

 

Oh my.. stop whining

 

I am playing WZs all the day and i really do not have any problem with targeting.

 

Get new pc