President and COO of HeroEngine blames Bioware for poor coding!

[Malice_Nihilim]

So I run the game on my old machine, a 2.4ghz quad core with 4 gigs of memory and 260 Nvida card. It is clearly showing its age and I get latency, I run low textures, etc etc etc...

 

but I am building a rig for a friend and put together an i7 with 16gigs of ram and a 560 Nvida card.

 

Both systems running 500gig 7200 HDD's.

 

The new machine, testing it out, was amazing. Graphics were crisp, had no notable frame rate lose in PvP and while there is still some response latency with abilities, it was reduced. I could do a huttball on full high everything and function flawlessly.

 

The end result is that I find a lot of the complaints on high end rigs to be baffling and while SWTOR should be more forgiving maybe on certain setups, I think that there are a lot of things on the back ends of your own machines/connections that might be causing more issue then SWTOR for most of it.

[Obstero]

Major difference here.

 

MMO's are an entirely different animal to BF3 which runs dedicated server racks for singular map rotations, thus you are always guaranteed a steady flow of bandwidth and FPS, the frostbite engine has had time to develop and refine plenty as such it has now reached a near-perfect stage.

 

Now with MMO's you have to account for the fact, that the server rack isn't running just Ilum, it's running lots of different "maps" all at once with different players doing different things, this is why during offpeak, latency is noticably improved over peak times where you can get the occasional stutter.

 

Do Bioware needs to optimize the engine and code? Sure, but to expect it to ever be anything near as perfect as an FPS that runs a map rotation, that just shows a lack of understanding and expecting something that clearly will never happen.

 

If you want to play action FPS games that run perfectly smooth all the time, go ahead play BF3 and enjoy playing a game in which community simply does not exist.

 

I'll continue to play MMO's, even despite knowing they are generally always going to be flawed until we get to a stage where high speed fiberoptic broadband connection is a requirement, only then shall MMO's begin to evolve beyond "lag"

 

What?

 

Rendering has got absolutely nothing to do with thousands of players playing on the server. The render code is horrible, it doesn't have anything to do with any sending/receiving of packets. That's why it lags.

[Sicknss]

MMO engines are really not designed to transmit the necessary data for large scale PvP as they are sending excessive amounts of player data that enriches the PvE experience but only serves to clog the pipes when PvP is active.

 

This is what kills me about fps comparisons, the total lack of appreciation for how much more data is transferred in an mmo. A lot of it is completely unnecessary but it's there. At the height of server stability and lag issues during Wrath I found it humorous that while standing in Dalaran my combat log showed some random person's crafting when I wasn't even grouped with them. Gee, I wonder where the performances issues come from...

[Aghar]

Sounds like standard coporate finger pointing to me. Both sides made mistakes but neither is willing to admit it, so they just point fingers and say he did it.

[DirtyDiggler]

Major difference here.

 

MMO's are an entirely different animal to BF3 which runs dedicated server racks for singular map rotations, thus you are always guaranteed a steady flow of bandwidth and FPS, the frostbite engine has had time to develop and refine plenty as such it has now reached a near-perfect stage.

 

Now with MMO's you have to account for the fact, that the server rack isn't running just Ilum, it's running lots of different "maps" all at once with different players doing different things, this is why during offpeak, latency is noticably improved over peak times where you can get the occasional stutter.

 

Do Bioware needs to optimize the engine and code? Sure, but to expect it to ever be anything near as perfect as an FPS that runs a map rotation, that just shows a lack of understanding and expecting something that clearly will never happen.

 

If you want to play action FPS games that run perfectly smooth all the time, go ahead play BF3 and enjoy playing a game in which community simply does not exist.

 

I'll continue to play MMO's, even despite knowing they are generally always going to be flawed until we get to a stage where high speed fiberoptic broadband connection is a requirement, only then shall MMO's begin to evolve beyond "lag"

 

 

 

 

To assume you have to play an mmorpg for community is to funny, some of the best community I have experienced was on FPS games in which our clan played the ladders on gamebattles. This game prolly has the worst community of any mmo so thats just funny.

[oblongship]

Well.. clearly lets just compare 2 games quick

 

BF2 on Frostbite 2 Engine and this Swtor on HeroEngine:

 

IN Bf3 on 64 player map, where everything is destructible, bullets flying here and there, flames, explosions we get stable game with 60FPS Ultra Settings.

 

Now lets pick any 8v8 Warzone! What do we see? Horrible performance and fps.

 

Let's pick Ilum 32 vs 32 fight. What do we get? A *********** 1 fps SLIDESHOW

 

You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

[Thiussat]

Instead, the picked an engine that's got a free license for up to 99 developers and when it makes money they take 30% of the profits. Now i doubt this is the case, and that BW/EA bought a license. Whoever suggested HeroEngine should be shot.

 

So your assumption is that free = bad? I think Linus Torvalds would like to have a word with you. Linux is 100 times more technically sound and stable an OS than Windows will ever be. And what does it cost? $0 (unless you buy support). In fact, Linux, and other free Unix based OS's run the Internet. The vast majority of web servers you connect to daily run Linux or another Unix. So, I don't buy that because something is freely licensed that it is of low quality.

 

That said, I am not defending Hero here. I really do not have the expertise (nor do 99% of the other posters on this forum) to make a judgement as to the engine's technical worth. All I know is that somewhere down the line, either because of original Hero or because of Bioware's tweaking, performance in this game is far from optimal.

[Kunari]

Whoa, Neil Patrick Harris is the president and COO of HeroEngine?

 

Legend... wait for it... Dary

[da_krall]

Again, is it a server housing thousands of players? No

 

Is it a server housing thousands of players and several static maps? No

 

Is it a server housing thousands of players, several static maps and several pvp instances? No

 

It is a server housing 64 players MAXIMUM, thus it won't have nowhere near the same stress load that an MMO does.

 

And just so you know, BF3 wasn't "spot on" at release either, plenty of players complained about stuttering framerates and other issues at release, ironed out with patches.

 

So once again, if you must use an analogy, compare it to another MMO and MMO engine and not an FPS with an FPS engine.

 

The differences are like Night and Day.

 

MMOs generaly wont be using 1 real server per game server. Its probably split over a number of servers as well.

[IcyFisty]

Someone already pointed this out, but I am going to reitterate this.

 

You cannot compare 64 players on a BF3 server (which by the way has plenty of its own lag at times) to 32 v 32 on Illum on a SWTOR server. BF3 has dedicated servers for just those 64 people. I can only guess at SWTOR's server infrastructure but I would wager that their servers are handling much more than 64 people at a single time.

 

The frostbite 2 engine is also brand new and was unavailable back when bioware picked up the hero engine. Comparing the hero engine to the frostbite engine is like comparing a core 2 duo to a core i7. The technology is just not the same.

 

In the end, you just can't please everyone and people will always find ways to complain about games they find faults in, the OP included. I'm playing the game and I enjoy it, thats enough for me. If you feel the need to rant about poor coding and corporate finger pointing then by all means, take your shots.

[Malice_Nihilim]

So your assumption is that free = bad? I think Linus Torvalds would like to have a word with you. Linux is 100 times more technically sound and stable an OS than Windows will ever be. And what does it cost? $0 (unless you buy support). In fact, Linux, and other free Unix based OS's run the Internet. The vast majority of web servers you connect to daily run Linux or another Unix. So, I don't buy that because something is freely licensed that it is of low quality.

 

That said, I am not defending Hero here. I really do not have the expertise (nor do 99% of the other posters on this forum) to make a judgement as to the engine's technical worth. All I know is that somewhere down the line, either because of original Hero or because of Bioware's tweaking, performance in this game is far from optimal.

 

I agree. UnrealEngine is free, so is the CryEngine, so is the engines used on Fallout. You can download these engines and use them and as long as you don't make money off them, they don't care. You launch a product, you then deal with the company based on your needs/expectations of how to pay for it. Normally its a base price + royalties. The less base price, the more royalties are expected, or you just pay it off outright (at the time, HeroEngine was running about 250k outright buy.

 

Now keep in mind that HeroEngine used in the case of SWTOR is basically just an alpha skeleton, and was never the whole engine in the first place. 95% of the engine is completely customized BW creation. All of the real value of using HeroEngine was really lost in the way that BW went about it IMHO. HeroEngine's greatest value is its toolsets and multi user 'on the fly' work environments, the management tools are excellent as well and I like there pathing engine as well.

 

Sadly BW isn't useing the tools, BW isn't using the pathing engine, and BW basically custom designed everything from the ground up and reinvented the wheel here instead. This is pretty standard for an MMO sadly.

[Drakks]

Lets be honest.. HeroEngine is not all that impressive.

 

It's a simplistic engine that, and I say this will all due respect, there is literally zero logical arguements to be made in support of it's use in a high dollar MMO.

 

I can't think of an MMO to date with an engine that wasn't capable, with minor optimizations, of supporting 16 players at the same time without gagging itself into unconciousness. I don't doubt Bioware screwed up in it's implementation as well, but I think the real point is why, outside of it being insanely cheap, would you use this engine on a high budget MMO that you easily projected a large playerbase for?

 

It's really like opening up a tour bus franchize, and buying a fleet of clown cars that you're convinced will each hold 30 people comfortably.

[dannomite]

Too many laptop gamers is the more likely problem. Even the ones with dedicated graphics usually cheap out on the processing power to make them more energy efficient.

 

The only problem I see with the game, is that the client side is very cpu intensive. With every patch, they'll chip away at it though.

[NinjaScroll]

I understand the need to get costumers in...

But taking an "outdated" engine to make a game such as this one was a terrible idea.

...

Bioware should've ask EA if they could have used the Frostbyte engine, that would've been a killer.

[Bavieo]

Ive read this whole thread and i find it rather entertaining its certainly made my afternoon at work go alot quicker cheers guy x

[bklynfinest]

Fine. So the server comparison to an FPS is irrelevant - fair enough. Please clarify why this could not have been a foreseable issue given the anticipated subscription levels...[EDIT] with respect to their infrastructure setup Edited January 25, 2012 by bklynfinest

[Lazorous]

Higher-ups posting updates on the forums does not mean they arent working on problems. A single update once a week in the announcement page would take ~10-15 minutes. Besides, there are likely a large number of people working collectively on the bugs, so 1 taking the time to post an update would help the community more than hurt, as you see it. They could even use their media department to post these updates so no time is wasted to begin with.

 

As a business owner, I can tell you that when you're addressing issues, it's not a simple 10-15 minutes of time to communicate the issue and resolution all the time. And especially in the software field, you can't just assume you have the answers to everything without really looking into the problem to figure out where the issues are.

 

You first have to collect the issues, which there are tons, as you know. Then you have to identify that it is truly an issue of the game, and not the user. Once you've identified it is an issue with your product, you have to identify where the problem is and then get an idea on the solution. It can be very time consuming to locate certain issues within millions and millions of lines of code to debug through.

 

When your dev team finally says, "OK, I believe we have an idea what is causing the problem and we're working on a fix", then you can announce it to the public. So when you have a ton of bugs to go through, along with managing updates and new content, there's a lot of information to sort through and it takes time to write a PR quality statement that will go out to the millions.

 

It's simply not a quick 10-15 minute thing, once a day, every week.

[da_krall]

Whether the engine can do it or not is irrelevant.

 

Their competitor's engine can: Aion, WoW, And even rift can handle 100's of people in a zone. And I'm pretty GW2 will handle it too.

 

This is probably only a requirement for PvP games though. Not PvE games with PvP stuck on the end.

Edited January 25, 2012 by da_krall

[Malice_Nihilim]

Lets be honest.. HeroEngine is not all that impressive.

 

It's a simplistic engine that, and I say this will all due respect, there is literally zero logical arguements to be made in support of it's use in a high dollar MMO.

 

I can't think of an MMO to date with an engine that wasn't capable, with minor optimizations, of supporting 16 players at the same time without gagging itself into unconciousness. I don't doubt Bioware screwed up in it's implementation as well, but I think the real point is why, outside of it being insanely cheap, would you use this engine on a high budget MMO that you easily projected a large playerbase for?

 

It's really like opening up a tour bus franchize, and buying a fleet of clown cars that you're convinced will each hold 30 people comfortably.

 

Check out Dominus and find out. It is a 3 way DAoC style large scale open world PvP game, running on HeroEngine. It is currently in beta and functioning to requested spec's, so it doesn't sound like it is the engines fault as much as BW attempting to make an engine not designed for many of there features, to fit and thus bork it.

[Drakks]

Too many laptop gamers is the more likely problem. Even the ones with dedicated graphics usually cheap out on the processing power to make them more energy efficient.

 

The only problem I see with the game, is that the client side is very cpu intensive. With every patch, they'll chip away at it though.

 

So I need some future space computer to pvp at a decent framerate in Ilum?

 

My system is fairly top shelf, I have zero issues running games at higher graphical settings -- I can turn this one down to nill and it stutters and chokes out in Ilum all the same.

 

System specs are not the issue, the issue IS the game right now. No one is getting good framerates in pvp -- ranged classes may be able to avoid some of it by virtue of being outside of the center of action, but melee most certainly are not.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Drakks

[Malice_Nihilim]

I understand the need to get costumers in...

But taking an "outdated" engine to make a game such as this one was a terrible idea.

...

Bioware should've ask EA if they could have used the Frostbyte engine, that would've been a killer.

 

To bad BW wasn't part of the EA family at that stage of the game. They were already well into development by the time EA picked them up. We would be waiting another 3 years at that point if they switched engines like that.

[Jerro]

can someone post a video of a game using Hero Engine which has a large scale pvp battle where there is little lag? that would show the engine can do it which would point the blame squarely at BioWare. Otherwise, it looks like Hero Engine can not handle it.

Well not really any masspvp videos with heroengine but there is another game coming using heroengine http://www.dominusthegame.com/ and when looking at their videos on youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/PrimeBFD/videos atleast it looks like they got the "fluid" moving feel right.

[Drakks]

Check out Dominus and find out. It is a 3 way DAoC style large scale open world PvP game, running on HeroEngine. It is currently in beta and functioning to requested spec's, so it doesn't sound like it is the engines fault as much as BW attempting to make an engine not designed for many of there features, to fit and thus bork it.

 

Beta coding doesn't convince me that it actually does this. I recall early TOR footage showing fairly seemless play as well.

 

I would also add Dominus is independantly funded and not nearly as high budget as TOR. I understand them liscensing Hero, but a massively funded Star Wars project? Not so much.

 

Edit: I just looked at videos on the site, they seem to be Demo footage as opposed to Beta. Not sure if I missed something.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Drakks

[PostalTwinkie]

On the issue of engine performance: HeroEngine and BW need to get together and figure out what the issue is and fix it, instead of fighting.

 

On the server discussion: The lack of knowledge in this thread on how data centers function is almost hilarious. Not to mention people are so freely discussing, as if they actually know, how SWTOR's infrastructure was deployed.

 

So lets just say this....

 

No MMO launch is perfect, and the technical aspects can be worked out. My, and many others, immediate concern is end game and PvP.

[Malice_Nihilim]

Fine. So the server comparison to an FPS is irrelevant - fair enough. Please clarify why this could not have been a foreseable issue given the anticipated subscription levels...[EDIT] with respect to their infrastructure setup

 

The answer is easy. BW said over and over and over and over and over and over and over again....

 

This is a story driven theme park crafted experience.

 

There design and engineering theory for years was based on 4-8 people running around doing quests and enjoying there story....

 

than to placate the masses howling about PvP, they put in WZ....clearly not a lot of effort went into them as there are only 3. PvP's importance is also noted by the fact that the guy in charge of PvP, Gabe, is also the guy who lead the team to do ALL the flash points and Ops...So you tell me where the effort was put in design and development.

 

 

Then in beta we cried and cried that PvP would be sooooo awesome if we had a planet set up to battle over...eventually they crumbled and bam, we have illum, thrown together last second.

 

This is not a PvP game, this wasn't designed to be a PvP game and so was never coded with the thought of PvP, it was only in the last year that they stapled the bastard child of PvP onto this game. No matter how you slice is, at its core, by design, PvPers are the second class community and not who this game was at all focusing on, down to its deepest core.