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

[Xcore]

This is my first posting In this thread but I have followed it...

 

I would just like to firstly give my full support to this thread as well as voice my disappointment with Bioware once more in regards to handling playerbase communications...

 

However, I should point out that no-ones should be overly surprised. Bioware is not actually all that amazing when it comes to "giving a ****", need I remind you of Garrus' face texture in ME1 for PC?

 

 

Look, my main contention is gameplay issues and such, there is a little thread on that one too. I just think this is over, SW:TOR simply isn't what we hoped it would be and on top of that the realities of Bioware/EA running an MMO are coming out...

 

Not trying to be pessimistic but realistic through observation and analysis.

[Gelos]

They have and there are several gaming sites that have been covering this story . there are 7 or 8 news stories form various generic sites.

 

I haven't seen it on G4, Massively.com , or MMORPG.com . Sites that gave glowing reviews of SWTOR.

 

I really have not seen sites such as these question Bioware's statements and point out that what they are saying simply doesn't match reality.

[Tenceriker]

sorry but it's well known that photobucket is ****.

 

didn't mean to hurt your feelings over your favourite image host though. sorry man.

 

Everyone else can see it fine, the problem is with YOU.

[chaosvernon]

The problem with doing things this way is the higher res textures for every cinematic are loaded into the ram upon entering a planet and that's whats causing very long load times for some people and swtor.exe to take 2-4gigs of ram.

[Edryk]

I haven't seen it on G4, Massively.com , or MMORPG.com . Sites that gave glowing reviews of SWTOR.

 

I really have not seen sites such as these question Bioware's statements and point out that what they are saying simply doesn't match reality.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/11/swtor-senior-community-manager-responds-to-high-res-texture-conc/

 

This Massively article covers it, but describes this thread as 'screaming'. Unfortunately the site posts the 1.1 preview with Bioware's released video and screenshots a couple hours later.

[wewter]

"Mandatory post in hopes of this being addressed."

 

This.

[Tenceriker]

I haven't seen it on G4, Massively.com , or MMORPG.com . Sites that gave glowing reviews of SWTOR.

 

I really have not seen sites such as these question Bioware's statements and point out that what they are saying simply doesn't match reality.

 

You haven't been looking if you missed it on Massively.

[Plexas]

this is kinda like football really, sofa coaches screaming at the telly telling the coach of their favourite team sucks and that he should do X Y Z and that he would do better.

 

im yet to see anyone from those bajilion posts that could do better.

 

/flame shield on.

[Unruhe]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/11/swtor-senior-community-manager-responds-to-high-res-texture-conc/

 

This Massively article covers it, but describes this thread as 'screaming'. Unfortunately the site posts the 1.1 preview with Bioware's released video and screenshots a couple hours later.

 

At least Kotaku seems to be giving this proper attention.

 

They even went so far as to mention it again when they later showcased the EAware false advertisement.

 

So that's looking good. Almost too good, really. Since players are getting low resolution textures in their normal gameplay, isn't it only fair that BioWare's marketing materials look the same? I'll allow that these shots and the video may have been prepared before the change, but until players get a high resolution option back, I want some uglier screenshots.

[Unruhe]

this is kinda like football really, sofa coaches screaming at the telly telling the coach of their favourite team sucks and that he should do X Y Z and that he would do better.

 

im yet to see anyone from those bajilion posts that could do better.

 

/flame shield on.

 

We don't have to do better -- EAware does. And did, in fact, at one point. Then they decided "You want higher textures? YOU CAN'T HANDLE HIGHER TEXTURES!" and turned them off for everyone.

[AlValentyn]

The problem with doing things this way is the higher res textures for every cinematic are loaded into the ram upon entering a planet and that's whats causing very long load times for some people and swtor.exe to take 2-4gigs of ram.

 

So what? That's what ram is for, let it use as much as it can. The same for my CPU cores.

 

They need to be used.

 

Hell, I've SWTOR open, wimamp, firefox with about 20 tabs and I'm barely using my system's RAM.

 

If the game suddenly can use more than 4GB with high res textures it just proves the engine is utter tripe as both SWTOR.exe's only use a combined 1.9GB on my system.

[Plexas]

We don't have to do better -- EAware does. And did, in fact, at one point. Then they decided "You want higher textures? YOU CAN'T HANDLE HIGHER TEXTURES!" and turned them off for everyone.

 

i have the habit of not moaning like someone stole my lunch money because of something i cant change because im technically unable to, and wont change in the near future. do you have any idea of the implications of increasing texture resolution by even 25% in a game like this in terms of performance?

 

ppl without SSDs would be crying their asses off because of all the texture streaming when you get into an area with more players than usual.

 

this is kind of a catch 22. they add high res textures, you moan because texture streaming in mass pvp/fleet destroys your frame rates (which already moan about). they dont add high res textures, you moan because it should have them in. developers are probably the most disrespected professionals i can think of and i can relate to it since im a developer myself.

 

go ahead and flame if you want, im not here to troll anyone.

[Hillde]

i have the habit of not moaning like someone stole my lunch money because of something i cant change because im technically unable to, and wont change in the near future. do you have any idea of the implications of increasing texture resolution by even 25% in a game like this in terms of performance?

 

ppl without SSDs would be crying their asses off because of all the texture streaming when you get into an area with more players than usual.

 

this is kind of a catch 22. they add high res textures, you moan because texture streaming in mass pvp/fleet destroys your frame rates (which already moan about). they dont add high res textures, you moan because it should have them in. developers are probably the most disrespected professionals i can think of and i can relate to it since im a developer myself.

 

go ahead and flame if you want, im not here to troll anyone.

 

Your missing the point the graphics are frankly poor and not upto the standard of more recent releases. This isnt a technical issue, this is poor implementation. Its dissapointing they think its good enough.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Hillde

[Unruhe]

i have the habit of not moaning like someone stole my lunch money because of something i cant change because im technically unable to, and wont change in the near future. do you have any idea of the implications of increasing texture resolution by even 25% in a game like this in terms of performance?

 

ppl without SSDs would be crying their asses off because of all the texture streaming when you get into an area with more players than usual.

 

this is kind of a catch 22. they add high res textures, you moan because texture streaming in mass pvp/fleet destroys your frame rates (which already moan about). they dont add high res textures, you moan because it should have them in. developers are probably the most disrespected professionals i can think of and i can relate to it since im a developer myself.

 

go ahead and flame if you want, im not here to troll anyone.

 

People that say they aren't trolls... are usually trolls.

 

"Not moaning like someone stole my lunch" "crying their asses off" "moan" "moan" sounds like trolling to me.

 

Some characters in TOR look like they smeared dog puke all over themselves, due to this atlassing garbage that is forced on all players running any hardware. If some people can't run the game on high, the answer is for those people to put the game on medium, not remove high for every single player.

 

If you're a developer and can't understand that, I guess nothing I can say is going to help you. These textures exist. They were in beta. They're in cutscenes. EAware is still using them in gameplay footage and stills to misrepresent the actual product. We're not asking them to do any more work this very instant, we're asking them to let how the game looks be up to the user's discretion instead of hardlocking us to the lowest common denominator -- something that no other modern MMO does to its users.

[Janet]

So this is entirely irrelevant. Crashes due to memory usage on 64bit platforms are impossible unless the game utilized more than 4GB which it never event gets close to that kind of memory usage. This is only a matter of poor optimization on the game engine and nothing else especially if you consider that the so called high res textures are not even high res to begin with.

 

It never gets close to 4GB because they seem to have a soft cap and start swapping out things to disk once they start reaching 2GB. I've never seen the process go above that much even in very active scenes. This would make sense if they were budgeting for the lowest common denominator of a 32-bit OS without LAA, where 2GB is indeed your limit.

 

If this is the case, concerns about performance if they allow people to keep high resolution textures are valid, because no matter how much RAM you have, you'll end up paging textures in and out. (To the disk, no less, the least performing storage space in your computer.) If this hypothetical soft cap is true, I imagine they locked out the high textures option because it's easier than getting rid of this hypothetical soft cap.

 

I really hope they fix this soon, though. Cheap as memory is, it's increasingly common for people to run more than 4GB memory these days.

[Unruhe]

It never gets close to 4GB because they seem to have a soft cap and start swapping out things to disk once they start reaching 2GB. I've never seen the process go above that much even in very active scenes. This would make sense if they were budgeting for the lowest common denominator of a 32-bit OS without LAA, where 2GB is indeed your limit.

 

If this is the case, concerns about performance if they allow people to keep high resolution textures are valid, because no matter how much RAM you have, you'll end up paging textures in and out. (To the disk, no less, the least performing storage space in your computer.) If this hypothetical soft cap is true, I imagine they locked out the high textures option because it's easier than getting rid of this hypothetical soft cap.

 

I really hope they fix this soon, though. Cheap as memory is, it's increasingly common for people to run more than 4GB memory these days.

 

If that's true, can we get a new Guinness entry under the voice acting one that reads:

"Oldest new full-price MMO ever released"

[Virgle]

At least Kotaku seems to be giving this proper attention.

 

They even went so far as to mention it again when they later showcased the EAware false advertisement.

 

Nice to see someone picking this up. Hopefully they stick with it.

[Plexas]

Your missing the point the graphics are frankly poor and not upto the standard of more recent releases. This isnt a technical issue, this is poor implementation. Its dissapointing they think its good enough.

 

Its actually far superior to any other MMO i played so far. Their mistake wasnt removing them but having them during the betas. once they add the AA setting to the ingame menu anyone with a 1GB - 1.25GB VRAM card will see their vram usage near their limit, add higher texture resolution and you get a potential issue.

 

i see my VRAM maxing out at 1200MB or so running 8xQ AA at 1080p resolution for example.

 

considering the wide majority of ppl have mid range computers, from a business standpoint the decision was correct, it also makes perfect sense to focus on delivering more content and fixing important issues like ability delays (a real game breaker sometimes) instead of this.

 

again, im not here to troll anyone so refrain from insulting me or anything. i have a rig capable of running this on whatever settings i want to and i too would like to see higher graphical quality but as i said, there are more important matters to solve right now.

[Tenceriker]

i have the habit of not moaning like someone stole my lunch money because of something i cant change because im technically unable to, and wont change in the near future. do you have any idea of the implications of increasing texture resolution by even 25% in a game like this in terms of performance?

 

ppl without SSDs would be crying their asses off because of all the texture streaming when you get into an area with more players than usual.

 

this is kind of a catch 22. they add high res textures, you moan because texture streaming in mass pvp/fleet destroys your frame rates (which already moan about). they dont add high res textures, you moan because it should have them in. developers are probably the most disrespected professionals i can think of and i can relate to it since im a developer myself.

 

go ahead and flame if you want, im not here to troll anyone.

 

First of all, if you actually think developers are the most disrespected professionals you've never been in any customer service field. Try stepping into the shoes of someone who gets screamed at 24/7 and see how much you more enjoy any developing deadline no matter how ridiculous they are. For brownie points, try being in the food services industry and see if you can make it for just a day without pulling out all of your hair.

 

Secondly, you need to go Google, click on search and learn what a "catch-22" is. Bioware put themselves into this corner by not being doing the right thing and coming clean about the lack of high-resolution textures before the game launch. This is something many people would have weighed before purchasing the game. The most damning thing TOR has done is show people that the high-res graphics exist and then refuse to implement them into the live game. No excuse will override the fact they were yanked out and swept under the rug. I thank Mr. Reid for his reply but unless this is implemented soon this game is going to become cannon fodder in the MMO industry because of the switch and bait tactics SWTOR uses when it comes to graphics. There is nothing more many of us would like to see than SWTOR to succeed but this is a major issue that is holding this game back.

[Edryk]

Its actually far superior to any other MMO i played so far. Their mistake wasnt removing them but having them during the betas. once they add the AA setting to the ingame menu anyone with a 1GB - 1.25GB VRAM card will see their vram usage near their limit, add higher texture resolution and you get a potential issue.

 

i see my VRAM maxing out at 1200MB or so running 8xQ AA at 1080p resolution for example.

 

considering the wide majority of ppl have mid range computers, from a business standpoint the decision was correct, it also makes perfect sense to focus on delivering more content and fixing important issues like ability delays (a real game breaker sometimes) instead of this.

 

again, im not here to troll anyone so refrain from insulting me or anything. i have a rig capable of running this on whatever settings i want to and i too would like to see higher graphical quality but as i said, there are more important matters to solve right now.

 

And then this post brings us back to the oft repeated point: They shouldn't be advertising with settings that are currently unavailable and were never meant to be available to the user. It gives unrealistic expectations, is misleading, and generates the disappointment you see in these six threads.

[Unruhe]

Because, in reality, these advertisements were never supposed to look this good -- that was a bug.

 

Sometime in Q1 2012, maybe they'll update all of their promotional materials to reflect the reduced graphical fidelity that the players actually experience after handing over full retail price for a 2012 MMO.

[Urko]

And then this post brings us back to the oft repeated point: They shouldn't be advertising with settings that are currently unavailable and were never meant to be available to the user. It gives unrealistic expectations, is misleading, and generates the disappointment you see in these six threads.

 

Exactly.

[Urko]

i have the habit of not moaning like someone stole my lunch money because of something i cant change because im technically unable to, and wont change in the near future. do you have any idea of the implications of increasing texture resolution by even 25% in a game like this in terms of performance?

 

ppl without SSDs would be crying their asses off because of all the texture streaming when you get into an area with more players than usual.

 

this is kind of a catch 22. they add high res textures, you moan because texture streaming in mass pvp/fleet destroys your frame rates (which already moan about). they dont add high res textures, you moan because it should have them in. developers are probably the most disrespected professionals i can think of and i can relate to it since im a developer myself.

 

go ahead and flame if you want, im not here to troll anyone.

 

Lotro handles it ok.

 

If its the general engine that cant handle the textures , then as the developer they have messed up big time.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Urko

[SunwindIon]

its actually far superior to any other mmo i played so far. Their mistake wasnt removing them but having them during the betas. Once they add the aa setting to the ingame menu anyone with a 1gb - 1.25gb vram card will see their vram usage near their limit, add higher texture resolution and you get a potential issue.

 

so those people can use a lower setting! it won't be any different for them than it currently is. Not hard is it?

Edited January 16, 2012 by SunwindIon

[Urko]

so those people can use a lower setting! it won't be any different for them than it currently is. Not hard is it?

 

And if they are too pig headed to do so thats their lookout.

 

Most MMOs have all the different graphics settings and let the PLAYER choose for their hardware, if theres some reason why this cant be then the look of the graphics at present will have an exodus happening.

 

Maybe not in first 3 months or so, but by Summer id like to lay a bet.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Urko