Design decisions and why the game engine hurts TOR

[laserfloyd]

Fix/replace the engine and the vast majority of my complaints would disappear. I'm having fun but the game just doesn't quite have the responsiveness I want. My machine can run plenty of other games on medium-high to high settings with ease. I have my settings zeroed out and set to the very lowest and it STILL runs sluggish. I know the engine is a massive undertaking but something has to be done about it or this game might have the same fate as Alderaan.... ya know, in 3000 years or so.

 

Seriously, props to most everything in game. Just rework the engine.

[Venjirai]

I agree with the OP.

They should have used the Unreal Engine.

Bioware does fine with quests and storytelling but the engine they use is always misplaced.

Now they are trying to optimize the crappy engine which will take probably more time and money than taking a superior engine from the getgo would have taken.

 

I personally would not mind if they take down the game for 3 months and come back with their engine fixed.

But that will not happen because they would lose too much money.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Venjirai

[wifeaggro]

Quote:

I want people to post what they dont like.

 

---

Why?

When people stop playing COD, do they go onto the forums and rant about it? No.

So why should this be anything different?

 

Why are you so bothered about someone else leaving? Does the reasons for them leaving affect your game in any way? No

 

Why does the op think his opninion matters to the point he has to come here and post in General about him leaving.

He isn't even asking BW to fix it. If he was then he would post in the suggestions thread. This thread is pure attention seeking and nothing more. It looks good and his issues are valid, but if he is serious about telling BW those issues then there are better ways to do it.

 

You want to help make the game better, there are better ways than an "I quit" thread in general.

You just want to troll...not interested.

You just want attention.. not interested.

Well seeing the decline over last 2 weeks. as more and more people hit end game his point becomes very solidifying. The game is bleeding pretty hard right now and for the very reasons he posted. TOR will have a retention rate close to what AOC had 90 days after launch that was a 50% retention which is horrible. though it wont hurt TOR horribly as it will still mean 750k paying subscriptions and they will be very profitable with that number. but what it does show is they don't know how to make a MMO and should consider all the things the OP said as a standard of their mistakes.Personaly they need to get a Director in their that knows how to guide and devolp a MMO , right now the game is stuck in the mud and if they think they can throw more of the same at their player base it will bleed even more.

[Ironspeed]

It doesn't belong here.

 

It is in no way useful to people in general.

 

You are entitled to your opinion of course, I found it rather usefull myself, comparing how other people feel and my own views..

[Rabenschwinge]

I agree with the OP.

They should have used the Unreal Engine.

Bioware does fine with quests and storytelling but the engine they use is always misplaced.

Now they are trying to optimize the crappy engine which will take probably more time and money than taking a superior engine from the getgo would have taken.

 

I personally would not mind if they take down the game for 3 months and come back with their engine fixed.

But that will not happen because they would lose too much money.

 

The Unreal Engine is not suitable for an MMO above a certain scale. Single player games and MMOs are not the same thing.

[Conspire]

For the OP and all others who've given up on this game... Ill see you all in TERA

[Kryptorchid]

The Unreal Engine is not suitable for an MMO above a certain scale. Single player games and MMOs are not the same thing.

 

What would be the scale that the Unreal Engine isn't suitable for? I am genuinely interested since I see quite a few MMO's in development using the Unreal 3 engine.

[Rabenschwinge]

The scope of the scenery (a typical scene in an Unreal game is typically a relativley confined environment - a room in Mass Effect 2 does not stretch as far as an open city in SW:TOR), the amount of actors, the way those actors interact and can influence each other and the fact that information on those most be downloaded in real time.

 

I am not a graphics specialist and not above err when it comes to this. But you will probably agree to me that the demands of an MMO where a lot more different textures which you didn't anticipate may suddenly become necessary are different from a single player game wherte you have a tight control over which resources are required when.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Rabenschwinge

[Meldwyn]

For the OP and all others who've given up on this game... Ill see you all in TERA

 

When is Tera going live? And what about GW2?

 

This is the first MMO game I have ever waited for with much anticipation, won't make that mistake again!

[Terko_Koslah]

I don't know how the OP can write something that long in what seems to be well thought-out analysis and points and then at the end say something so stupid like the game will be F2P in 12 months.

 

I don't care whether a game is f2p or not. It's the feeling what I am paying for and what is my experience with a game. I'm sure op has had some good times with swtor, but this imo is a generalization of his gamer's point of view, which in fact is pretty precise, if you don't fall in to caps like f2p, or other aspects of the game you like.

 

Understand that you can disagree. Whether or not you stumbled upon this thread by accident, I don't believe such things exist.

 

If the post makes you feel inferior or anyone else, I have nothing to say about that, because I could not have crafted such a well made post of this subject.

[wifeaggro]

What would be the scale that the Unreal Engine isn't suitable for? I am genuinely interested since I see quite a few MMO's in development using the Unreal 3 engine.

 

LOL the Unreal engine does not work for MMO's that heavily instance their game shard their zones to hide the Crappy FPS and render enviroments of a hampster wheel . People use the Hero engine to make MMO's like that.

[wifeaggro]

I don't care whether a game is f2p or not. It's the feeling what I am paying for and what is my experience with a game. I'm sure op has had some good times with swtor, but this imo is a generalization of his gamer's point of view, which in fact is pretty precise, if you don't fall in to caps like f2p, or other aspects of the game you like.

 

Understand that you can disagree. Whether or not you stumbled upon this thread by accident, I don't believe such things exist.

 

If the post makes you feel inferior or anyone else, I have nothing to say about that, because I could not have crafted such a well made post of this subject.

 

Trolls usally make stuff up his post is absloutely correct and reflects what a large portion of people who bought SWTOR and didnt like felt after hitting 50 the first time. My biggest problem with SWTOR is it feels like a very very stripped down game. At the end analysis the best way i can describe it is a very good Single player game that has a bunch of bad Online features. For all the good the fleet does it could have been a lobby to chat and deciede what instance you wanted to play. The engine is horribly optimised but i do think they can fix it. what i dont think they can fix is their fundemental design concepts.

[mangarrage]

All I can say is omg

 

I cannot be further from your experience and I certainly cannot disagree with you more

 

First off let me say congratz on being yet another wow fanboi with no experience whatsoever of anything that preceded it.

You comparison are just ridiculous to me and in fact I laughed out loud and quite a few times.

You do know that wow cut and pasted raiding from EQ and EQ2 right?

You do realize that there was less then 10 encounters in wow that were anywhere near what would be considered difficult. Off the top of my head I can think of 6. Not raids mind you individual mobs

 

PVP comparing the wz in wow to these is just laughable. AB = huttball oh man lol

 

In addition the fact that you do not think you are in a minority when it comes to FPS and the like, you are

If 1.5 million people play the game and 700k are having issues you are the minority and I highly doubt the number is anywhere near that or even 1/3 of that, so yea the minority

 

I run a compter that I bought and changed the video card to a 550 (which isnt that good of a card at all) and I have no issues with fps at all. I think my low was around 40 ever

Comparing this game to a game that can run on a Tandy 1000 or a Timex sinclair is just horrible

 

Only thing I can take away from this is Ilum, which is in fact horrible, but it is horrible for 2 reasons 1) faction imbalace and 2) player base

BW is not responsible for what people choose as their side or class and they are not responsible for the playerbase not creating pvp other then exploiting traiding kills or swapping control points. The player base did that. Until you can create a pvp experience where the player base cannot exploit a system, everything is going to fail

Open world pvp is this game isnt a BW issue its a playerbase issue

You have to take the dailies out of the game, the biggest reward, or the only reward should be killing other players, everything else should be removed, no chests, no awards for doing daily WZ just straight up pvp with a zonewide bonus for the side with less people

[Mrs_Murder]

One particular thing that bothers me is how the fleets are designed.

1) They're instanced, and you cannot travel to the other faction's fleet. Which means no epic faction vs faction like we had in "that other game". Bored? Let's get a group of 200 people and raid the other faction's main city! Or kite a world boss to a city and wreck havoc and watch people flee.

 

2) Its very design is anti-social. There's no gathering point, people are scattered all over the place. And for the RPers, you can't even sit down in the cantina or play games there. No one hangs out in the cantina. Not to mention you can't duel someone on the fleet. You have to go through the lengthy process of going to the shuttle bay, entering shuttle, traveling to a planet, exiting shuttle, entering air lock, exiting air lock, entering space dock, exiting space dock, taking a shuttle to the planet.

 

 

I'd like to see them replace fleets with open world cities, where we'd have housing and a huge marketplace in the center, where players could also engage in multiplayer games (poker, chess, arm wrestling etc).

I think this would fix a lot of the boredom people are experiencing, and it would feel more like an MMORPG rather than a single-player online game.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Mrs_Murder

[Drewser]

Well seeing the decline over last 2 weeks. as more and more people hit end game his point becomes very solidifying. The game is bleeding pretty hard right now and for the very reasons he posted. TOR will have a retention rate close to what AOC had 90 days after launch that was a 50% retention which is horrible. though it wont hurt TOR horribly as it will still mean 750k paying subscriptions and they will be very profitable with that number. but what it does show is they don't know how to make a MMO and should consider all the things the OP said as a standard of their mistakes.Personaly they need to get a Director in their that knows how to guide and devolp a MMO , right now the game is stuck in the mud and if they think they can throw more of the same at their player base it will bleed even more.

 

You have been wrong with every prediction you have made so far.

[Rabenschwinge]

One particular thing that bothers me is how the fleets are designed.

1) They're instanced, and you cannot travel to the other faction's fleet. Which means no epic faction vs faction like we had in "that other game". Bored? Let's get a group of 200 people and raid the other faction's main city!

 

2) Its very design is anti-social. There's no gathering point, people are scattered all over the place. And for the RPers, you can't even sit down in the cantina or play games there. No one hangs out in the cantina.

 

I'd like to see them replace fleets with open world cities, where we'd have housing and a huge marketplace in the center, where players could also engage in multiplayer games (poker, chess, arm wrestling etc).

I think this would fix a lot of the boredom people are experiencing, and it would feel more like an MMORPG rather than a single-player online game.

 

Hm. Mass PvP games - such as Warhammer Online - use considerably less detail per character - only a fraction of the vertices, clothing detail, effective texture pixels.

 

The design is not strictly anti social. The fleets are the social gathering points. On a fleet you trade, look for mates for your flashpoints and operations have access to all kinds of special item vendors and get your speeders. Along with that, the cantinas are gathering points by default, because you get rested XP (which you will later transform into actual XP) for every second being there.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Rabenschwinge

[JumperPenn]

Hm. Mass PvP games - such as Warhammer Online - use considerably less detail per character - only a fraction of the vertices.

 

The design is not strictly anti social. The fleets are the social gathering points. On a fleet you trade, look for mates for your flashpoints and operations have access to all kinds of special item vendors and get your speeders. Along with that, the cantinas are gathering points by default, because you get rested XP (which you will later transform into actual XP) for every second being there.

 

None of that is social or really encourages or enables social activities. Buying stuff and gaining rested XP aren't social nor do either really enable, encourage or facilitate socialization. If there were actual things to do like games in cantinas, or swoop bike races to watch/bet on, those would help.

[Terko_Koslah]

All I can say is omg

 

I cannot be further from your experience and I certainly cannot disagree with you more

 

First off let me say congratz on being yet another wow fanboi with no experience whatsoever of anything that preceded it.

You comparison are just ridiculous to me and in fact I laughed out loud and quite a few times.

You do know that wow cut and pasted raiding from EQ and EQ2 right?

You do realize that there was less then 10 encounters in wow that were anywhere near what would be considered difficult. Off the top of my head I can think of 6. Not raids mind you individual mobs

 

PVP comparing the wz in wow to these is just laughable. AB = huttball oh man lol

 

In addition the fact that you do not think you are in a minority when it comes to FPS and the like, you are

If 1.5 million people play the game and 700k are having issues you are the minority and I highly doubt the number is anywhere near that or even 1/3 of that, so yea the minority

 

I run a compter that I bought and changed the video card to a 550 (which isnt that good of a card at all) and I have no issues with fps at all. I think my low was around 40 ever

Comparing this game to a game that can run on a Tandy 1000 or a Timex sinclair is just horrible

 

Only thing I can take away from this is Ilum, which is in fact horrible, but it is horrible for 2 reasons 1) faction imbalace and 2) player base

BW is not responsible for what people choose as their side or class and they are not responsible for the playerbase not creating pvp other then exploiting traiding kills or swapping control points. The player base did that. Until you can create a pvp experience where the player base cannot exploit a system, everything is going to fail

Open world pvp is this game isnt a BW issue its a playerbase issue

You have to take the dailies out of the game, the biggest reward, or the only reward should be killing other players, everything else should be removed, no chests, no awards for doing daily WZ just straight up pvp with a zonewide bonus for the side with less people

 

I've had some problems with graphics with some fog effect or such when the camera just suddenly starts responding differently to my mouse commands. That is bad optimization in my opinion.

 

Also: Problems are still problems whether they are experienced by a majority or minority.

[Mrs_Murder]

Hm. Mass PvP games - such as Warhammer Online - use considerably less detail per character - only a fraction of the vertices, clothing detail, effective texture pixels.

 

The design is not strictly anti social. The fleets are the social gathering points. On a fleet you trade, look for mates for your flashpoints and operations have access to all kinds of special item vendors and get your speeders. Along with that, the cantinas are gathering points by default, because you get rested XP (which you will later transform into actual XP) for every second being there.

How are the fleets social gathering point? Its design separates people from each other.

Trading = "/2 WTS this and that" or stare at the GTN -- which is in its own little corner of the fleet.

Look for mates/flashpoints = "/1 LFG D7HM"

Special item vendors = in their own little corner of the fleet, and you only hang out here for five minutes while you figure out what to buy for your planet commendations while you're leveling up.

Cantinas = You don't need rested xp once you're 50, and you only hang out in rested areas when you're logged out. NO ONE hangs out in the cantina on my server. Ever. Why would they?

Everone (150-200 at primetime) is either clustered by the PvP mission terminal or are staring at the GTN.

And like JumperPenn said; Buying stuff and gaining rested XP aren't social nor do either really enable, encourage or facilitate socialization.

 

And as for graphics, I'd be glad to give up some of the graphics if it meant SWTOR would become a proper MMORPG with at least a social gathering area, housing and minigames.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Mrs_Murder

[Rabenschwinge]

None of that is social or really encourages or enables social activities. Buying stuff and gaining rested XP aren't social nor do either really enable, encourage or facilitate socialization. If there were actual things to do like games in cantinas, or swoop bike races to watch/bet on, those would help.

 

They bring people together. You can't force people to act social that must come on their own, but you can bring them together in one place where the slow paced stuff takes place. As opposed to actual combat where you can't be distracted.

[lightertripod]

Sad to say most if not all of the OP post is true

 

the engine is awful

 

biggest issue for me with the engine is the viewing distance for world PVP cannot count the times I have jump on what I thought was a 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 or even 4vs 6 and found my self in a mass of 20-30 people

 

actually suprised its not been mentioned by more people

[miliways]

Saved up for a new PC purely for TOR

 

That was very foolish.

 

If you had bought a new PC for WoW you'd be just as dissapointed.

 

MMORPGs have to worry about an entirely different environment than say, FPS or racing games (which push your graphics to the limit).

 

Expecting an MMORPG to push your system and show next-gen rendering techniques is unrealistic. Besides, MMORPGs are all about multiplayer, so they purposely target a lower system spec so they can have more players.

 

You set yourself up for failure. You're expecting the unrealistic.

Edited February 20, 2012 by miliways

[Mrs_Murder]

They bring people together. You can't force people to act social that must come on their own, but you can bring them together in one place where the slow paced stuff takes place. As opposed to actual combat where you can't be distracted.

 

Isn't that what I'm suggesting? One giant marketplace where people can hang out TOGETHER, as opposed to the current state where people are scattered all over the place and there's nothing to bring them together in social activity. The fleets do not bring people together in any way. Just because people are in the same zone doesn't mean it brings them together.

I'm not even a roleplayer (I play on a PVP server) and even I find this to be a necessity.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Mrs_Murder

[wifeaggro]

You have been wrong with every prediction you have made so far.

 

Neither you our I can be proven correct at this point. And in all honesty we will probably never know. BW will never release their subscription numbers no MMO does except blizzard.

At the next qrtrly investors call we will get a rough estimate when they anounce the quarter. but my best guess is TOR will have 45 % burn off . that sucks for a 90 day mark but it no where indicates tor is a failure i suspect that it will be a major success. Im glad you like the game Drewser honestly i do and i hope you enjoy it for a long time.

 

As for me i find it very rudimentary and feature lacking , they made a good single player game with MMO features. The engine is horrible as the OP states. I can load up a full DX10 MMO with high res textures .siege in a completely destructible enviroment with over 45 people PVPing and get 65 FPS. i load up TOR and zone onto the fleet and get 20 FPS and massive render hiccup with 20 people standing infront of me doing nothing but standing. It is not my system Drewesr befor you go all Coolaid fanboi on me

 

Intell 990x OC 4.2 mhz liquid cooled

 

590 gtx 3 gigs video

 

8 gigs 1333 Ram

 

Win 7 ultimate x64

 

No reason to be hostile to those that are posting in hopes the Devs will fix the glaring weakness's of this game so we might all enjoy it. Glad your having Fun though and love it the way it is

Edited February 20, 2012 by wifeaggro

[Deirhese]

To the OP:

 

Your complaints are not the engine. You just used that title to catch people's eye so they would read your review of the game...not the engine.

 

A massive wall of text also ensures most will not read it, thus you get your instant gratification of people agreeing with you even though they didn't even read it.

 

 

If you had to learn medicine, would you expect it to be in a few sentences or a massive wall of text covered over many books?

 

If something requires that much explaining then it is kind of hard to condense it for those with short attention spans. Either read the whole thing or skim and try to get a pretty good idea before arguing with it. I don't see how his (OP) well thought out post implies he wants instant gratification. Also I read the whole thing by the way.