This game can't handle large-scale combat.

[Knifewrench]

It's funny how many people are grieving over some kids who knew it was a smart idea to tank a couple of turrets that did 3k per hit, healspam through it while their friends sat on the enemy's medcenter spawn point. (which is not a new concept. People were doing it on lowbie planets way before) BioWare said they were going in with a scalpel and not a sledgehammer. Whether they do or not is irrelevant to what you're doing individually. I've fought against a number of battlemasters before I got that rank. And going from tier 2 to tier 3 is marginal.

 

As a matter of fact, there were threads hovering all around the place asking for a valor reset because of people who banked off of sharing warzones with lowbies. But you had ways around that. Some people are going to play this game more objectively than you and do it better. Deal. Faction imbalances in an area that does not cap players entering is a definite problem, and they will band-aid that like WoW did with fatuous restrictions.

 

For those of us blessed with not having a crippling imbalance, there is a more visible issue than waking up to force lightning for breakfast every five seconds. If you actually wanted to play the game as intended and fight zerg versus zerg, your game client would crash, your computer would crash, and your hard drive would reformat itself because it thought the game was cancer. You cannot even approach the enemy, let alone your own team, without the FPS dropping to 7-8. That's without the spell effects. I run a Phenom II x6 1055T and a GTX 570. I can record mostly any game at 1080p @ 30-60 fps. This game's rendering engine is so bloated, it is not compatible with group combat larger than a warzone. I would think anyone who really wanted World PvP wanted this type of combat included, so this would be the final nail in the coffin.

 

Server lag doesn't really need any explanation. I'm surprised these servers did not force shutdown with the DoS that must be happening with everyone spinning and running in place. It does really amplify the ability lag, though. It got really bad when both factions had 40-50 people each. What game isn't going to have that problem, though. It would help if they changed the objective so it's not kill trading in one spot.

 

Combine both, and nobody can really do anything but mash ranged AoE and hope they tag some people that die a little later. So PvP in the sandbox they want us all to party in as the be-all end-all zone is now a PowerPoint Presentation. (credit goes to Towelliee for that reference) If PvP only is your reason for playing this game, you are very well screwed for the time being.

 

There's still the PvE aspect of this game which, judging from the Flashpoint hardmode encounters, has a lot more dynamic stuff going on than "throw the debuff on the idiot who wipes the raid if he doesn't respond correctly." If you're shooting for a grander scale than 8v8, this game won't be able to accommodate anytime soon.

 

Here we go, the short SHORT version: World PvP will never happen because those that want it will have to try to skill their way through 4 FPS and horrendous lag.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Knifewrench

[Drengir]

Seconded!

 

Scale down the OWPvP alot and we might get it to an acceptable level. As it is now it's so far from acceptable it's not even funny!

 

My biggest concern isn't even the population/design issue of ilum, it's how they expect me to enjoy 10-20 FPS (in the larger battles). And that is on my new top end computer, Can't imagine how horrible it must be on the "normal" computers out there, where people get >5 FPS...

[MegusAlexandrus]

PvP is so bad but yes this will bring the game down , The game can't handle large scale combat

[cashogy]

agree with this completely. the valor farming is only a minor issue, and can be easily remedied. the failure that is this games rendering system is going to persist, killing any large scale pvp before it begins.

 

i have a very good gaming rig. i play bf3 on max settings without any issues, and at very high fps. for bioware to suggest that the high res textures in this game would overload my computer is hilarious.

 

the nice note that gabe amantagelo (sp?) posted claims that the lag in ilum is from our own computers' inability to render that many characters. how is this the case when my graphics card is only running at 35% load?

 

bioware has developed a game for 2005. its 32bit, which is a huge limiter right there. this game needs a serious amount of optimization. this is not the kind of fix that will take a weekend or a week. this is the kind of thing that will take months, and should have been done BEFORE the game was released.

 

bioware was in the unique position of viewing all the mistakes that other MMO developers have made in the recent past and making sure that those mistakes were not made here. they have failed miserably in that task, and in most cases have barely managed to do many of the things other MMOs did correctly.

[lilTJeezy]

How would you tune it down? Reducing graphics? More shards? Werent these the same problems people were crying about last week? FFS

[Shivus]

PVE: great 40-60fps at all times

 

warzones: fine 30-60 fps depending on how much is going on around me.

 

Open world pvp on Illum: 10-20 FPS with 4 involved parties. Adding in companions for each that's 8, half the size of the largest warzone skirmishes that I can handle without dropping below 30 fps.

 

The game is terribly optimized for large scale pvp. Aion had the exact same issue. When raiding forts it was just a matter of which side crashed to desktop first. In fairness to Aion that was with 3-400 players involved.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Shivus

[Knifewrench]

How would you tune it down? Reducing graphics? More shards? Werent these the same problems people were crying about last week? FFS

 

Either tweak or completely redo the rendering engine that is drawing what is unnecessary. That's my guess on what the issue is. I've only glanced at 3D programming so I don't have the expertise to add to that. And this isn't exactly a L2P issue. There's maybe one or two aids people can do to squeeze a little extra out of their computer's performance... but it's obvious that all the fault lies in the game's software itself.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Knifewrench

[Shivus]

Either tweak or completely redo the rendering engine that is drawing what is unnecessary. That's my guess on what the issue is. I've only glanced at 3D programming so I don't have the expertise to add to that. And this isn't exactly a L2P issue. There's maybe one or two aids people can do to squeeze a little extra out of their computer's performance... but it's obvious that all the fault lies in the game's software itself.

 

Also looking at the difference between high and low graphics, there isn't much of a difference. Low is a bit lower res, but beyond that there's no difference. Again compared to Aion where Low made it look more like vanilla WoW or Everquest 1 than one of the more visually impressive MMO's.

[thejingle]

How would you tune it down? Reducing graphics? More shards? Werent these the same problems people were crying about last week? FFS

 

You act like the game not being able to handle more than like 20 players is something that people should be cool with, its an MMO for gods sake, and before you even approach anything massive it becomes unplayable.

[Sarosen]

to be fair, in any mmo, 2-3 raids going against 2-3 other raids...with like 300 people in a 50 meter radius...is always gonna lag.. fact.

[Bullsith]

Stupid if you ask me. Their engine is so impotent it makes me question if they really had a 200 mil budget for this game.

[AWDBAHL]

After 6 hours in Illum today this problem began to occur to me as well. In the base, i was getting 1-2 fps on the lowest possible settings. There were at least 90 empire in the base with us and maybe 1/4th that in republic players. My guardian was reduced to running in, using saber throw, then hoping to get out before he got gang ****ed by force lightning.

 

But that isnt the real problem. My guildies and I eventually left the base out of sheer boredom and decided to roam the northern area of Illum as a 5 man group looking for stragglers or enemy roaming groups.

 

It turns out that for average systems like my own, anything above 12 players on screen at once eliminates playability.

 

This is an enormous problem since myself and my guildies all hail from DAoC, and love large scale open world PvP. We don't mind facing a zerg, and have set our goal to being able to face and defeat superior number through teamwork.

 

But that will never be possible with the performance issues that now plague the game.

 

I am often left to wonder if large scale PvP is even feasible from a technological standpoint. DAoC also had certain limits when it came to large scale PvP. Some relic raids would literally crash the server if they exceeded a certain size. Even Warhammer Online, made by the same people, had issues when too many characters were on screen.

 

I have actually never played a game wherein large scale PvP was a smooth and well crafted experience no matter the number of players. I don't even know if its possible.

Edited January 19, 2012 by AWDBAHL

[Sheneria]

After 6 hours in Illum today this problem began to occur to me as well. In the base, i was getting 1-2 fps on the lowest possible settings. There were at least 90 empire in the base with us and maybe 1/4th that in republic players. My guardian was reduced to running in, using saber throw, then hoping to get out before he got gang ****ed by force lightning.

 

But that isnt the real problem. My guildies and I eventually left the base out of sheer boredom and decided to roam the northern area of Illum as a 5 man group looking for stragglers or enemy roaming groups.

 

It turns out that for average systems like my own, anything above 12 players on screen at once eliminates playability.

 

This is an enormous problem since myself and my guildies all hail from DAoC, and love large scale open world PvP. We don't mind facing a zerg, and have set our goal to being able to face and defeat superior number through teamwork.

 

But that will never be possible with the performance issues that now plague the game.

 

I am often left to wonder if large scale PvP is even feasible from a technological standpoint. DAoC also had certain limits when it came to large scale PvP. Some relic raids would literally crash the server if they exceeded a certain size. Even Warhammer Online, made by the same people, had issues when too many characters were on screen.

 

I have actually never played a game wherein large scale PvP was a smooth and well crafted experience. I don't even know if its possible.

 

eve online 1000 vs 1000 if the node gets reinf. is playable, the smaller that number gets the smoother it is.

[drbeat]

After seeing the lagfest that is Ilum, I now realize why there's so much sharding, server caps are so low, and the worlds are designed like corridors.

 

At least they are limiting how many people can go into Ilum. Limiting the number of players is the solution for everything it seems.

[Cylliano]

Good post OP, that is what I am also worried about. Right after the patch went live when there were still relatively few people in Ilum, we had 2 Ops sized raids fighting each other. That is not a lot, considering we talk about maybe 40-50 people in total. Ability lag was about 1-2 seconds. Frame rates were very low, gameplay was stuttering and not very enjoyable.

 

Fighting actually meant activating your AoE target marker, dragging it carefully roughly in the direction of the enemy group and place it carefully on the ground, clicking it the moment your screen has updated enough that you are sure it will fire off. Healing pretty much went the same way. Single target healing not very reliable as people were usually dead before your heal went off, so AoE healing was the best tool in your arsenal.

 

CC and more complex tactics just werent possible. Add to that random loading screens popping up and you had a pretty terrible performance. I am afraid unless some serious polishing and tweaking of the engine is done, mass scale pvp just is not an option.

[StrifedRevan]

Agree

 

I can't even drive around the fleet without running into a loading screen for 30 seconds, really? my system is pretty high-end and ya, combat in Ilum was unplayable. Ouch BW, this game seems like it was released 1 year too early, I'm pretty amazed how all these critical issues got past all those months of beta testing, guess we can all thank EA for rushing an unfinished product to cash in for the holidays.

[brentonj]

agree with this completely. the valor farming is only a minor issue, and can be easily remedied. the failure that is this games rendering system is going to persist, killing any large scale pvp before it begins.

 

i have a very good gaming rig. i play bf3 on max settings without any issues, and at very high fps. for bioware to suggest that the high res textures in this game would overload my computer is hilarious.

 

the nice note that gabe amantagelo (sp?) posted claims that the lag in ilum is from our own computers' inability to render that many characters. how is this the case when my graphics card is only running at 35% load?

 

bioware has developed a game for 2005. its 32bit, which is a huge limiter right there. this game needs a serious amount of optimization. this is not the kind of fix that will take a weekend or a week. this is the kind of thing that will take months, and should have been done BEFORE the game was released.

 

bioware was in the unique position of viewing all the mistakes that other MMO developers have made in the recent past and making sure that those mistakes were not made here. they have failed miserably in that task, and in most cases have barely managed to do many of the things other MMOs did correctly.

 

This man speaks the truth.

[Celebrus]

While I completely agree with everything involving the large-scale combat, I don't see the need to write off the valor farming as such a minor issue, simply because you likely involved yourself in it.

 

Try staying on the topic of your post instead of making statements for Bioware. If they decide that the valor "exploit" is indeed that, and decide a reset is necessary, then they will. However it's not your place to insinuate that people that take advantage of the system are somehow "better" players, simply because they caught wind of something in general chat and jumped on the bandwagon.

 

Just seems a bit telling that you begin your post with a defense of what could be a valor exploit, rather than actually speaking on the real topic at hand, which is the poor large scale capabilities of this game,

[lethal_ghost]

Explains why they did so much sharing, with this poor engine that can't handle the massive part of mmo and ability lag really putting me off the game. BW have admitted it basically by capping population on illum

[--Grim--]

The engine is great for beautiful, large scale PvE environments. I love it for that, the PvE zones are awesome.

 

But for PvP this engine is absolutely the most craptastic of all modern mmos. It is criminal how badly this engine performs in PvP.

[cashogy]

Explains why they did so much sharing, with this poor engine that can't handle the massive part of mmo and ability lag really putting me off the game. BW have admitted it basically by capping population on illum

 

that seems to be the answer for everything. either that, or its client side inability to render their super awesome textures for 100+ players.

 

this game is getting more and more like a single player rpg with optional co-op every day

[Knifewrench]

While I completely agree with everything involving the large-scale combat, I don't see the need to write off the valor farming as such a minor issue, simply because you likely involved yourself in it.

 

Try staying on the topic of your post instead of making statements for Bioware. If they decide that the valor "exploit" is indeed that, and decide a reset is necessary, then they will. However it's not your place to insinuate that people that take advantage of the system are somehow "better" players, simply because they caught wind of something in general chat and jumped on the bandwagon.

 

Just seems a bit telling that you begin your post with a defense of what could be a valor exploit, rather than actually speaking on the real topic at hand, which is the poor large scale capabilities of this game,

 

People tend to put all issues of the game on an equal level of severity. A slightly crooked turret in Alderaan is somehow as important as warzone queues kicking us to the character select screen. Class imbalance threads get laughed at all the time. Because a lot of these issues are insignificant or become insignificant if the person plays better. As far as the Ilum issue, they did announce several times they were taking actions against people that spent the day farming bases. Besides that, how does someone being a "War Hero" make them harder to kill all of a sudden? Any player that has any worth is going to solve that type of problem without dev/mod intervention.

 

Even after the couple of threads we've had where we've had tips on optimizing our operating systems and turning off shadows to allow a little boost, it's still not enough. This is one of those things that are totally out of the players' hands.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Knifewrench

[Kryptorchid]

What's sad is, anyone that was in Beta knows this, the game can't even handle 12v12 Warzones (or 8v8 for some people it seems).

[Knifewrench]

Bumping this since I woke up today to find out my account wasn't really frozen yet. Either they gave a free day or this game unintentionally went F2P. Either way, gave me a chance to figure out a symptom was removed, but not the cause.

 

Instead of desperately trying to land an AoE into a sea of red at 4 FPS and praying you get credit for the kill on top of a spawn point, we now have desperately trying to land an AoE into a sea of red at 4 FPS and praying you get credit for the kill on under or next to a spawn point.

 

This zone still remains a burlesque of end-game world PvP.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Knifewrench