Your technology needs help... lots of help... lots and LOTS of help. :(

[JeramieCrowe]

so your excuse for bad performance on mid - high end systems is the fact that the devs developed this engine to run on a wide variety of systems, even low end?

 

Except that on my system, which isn't high end, I have had zero performance issues since the first day of Early Access. You wanna blame that on BioWare, too?

[Goretzu]

Except that on my system, which isn't high end, I have had zero performance issues since the first day of Early Access. You wanna blame that on BioWare, too?

 

When I play on my lower end machine it's generally ok (solo questing, flashpointing & WZing), but Ilum with a few is a slide show on any of my systems.

[terminova]

If you actually read my post, I point out (multiple times) how to fix the problem in extensive detail. I'll even lay them out for you again.

 

No, I read your post. My point was that posting in this manner on the forums isn't intended to actually help the devs or the game, it's more akin to getting attention for yourself from other people who are also mad and/or upset about the same thing. The whole "I know something, listen to me!" deal, and I have read part of your initial post before I just cannot remember where, but I'll figure that out later.

[Rikeryo]

Except that on my system, which isn't high end, I have had zero performance issues since the first day of Early Access. You wanna blame that on BioWare, too?

 

while standing around in my ship's hangar I have zero performance issues too! you know, realizing performance issues actually requires the ability to see them. I once read a post from a guy that claimed he had zero performance issues on his i7, 16gigs ram, geforce gtx560ti. for proof he posted a screenshot of a heavy fighting scene in huttball. the counter showed 25fps.

 

nevermind, even if you are able to see that you've got no issues - well, good for you. maybe you have the perfect system setup that makes this game run like smooth butter. I myself know people who also have no issues. but the majority has. but you're still just one person without issues - against thousands others. because YOU have no issues doesn't mean everybody else shouldn't have too. simple logic.

 

additionally thousands of other people complain about low fps and stuttering on good rigs, mainly in pvp environment, without any reason on their side, playing every other game on the market just fine.

 

where do you think all those fps issue threads came from? ten thousands of posts. the tech-savvy fellow players, some of them software engineers, who were posting some explanations like the disk i/o problems. blizzard troll poster? idiots? pc newbs?

Edited April 28, 2012 by Rikeryo

[JeramieCrowe]

while standing around in my ship's hangar I have zero performance issues too! you know, realizing performance issues actually requires the ability to see them. I once read a post from a guy that claimed he had zero performance issues on his i7, 16gigs ram, geforce gtx560ti. for proof he posted a screenshot of a heavy fighting scene in huttball. the counter showed 25fps.

 

nevermind, even if you are able to see that you've got no issues - well, good for you. maybe you have the perfect system setup that makes this game run like smooth butter. I myself know people who also have no issues. but the majority has.

 

additionally thousands of other people complain about low fps and stuttering on good rigs, mainly in pvp environment, without any reason on their side, playing every other game on the market just fine.

 

where do you think all those fps issue threads came from? ten thousands of posts. the tech-savvy fellow players, some of them software engineers, who were posting some explanations like the disk i/o problems. blizzard troll poster? idiots? pc newbs?

 

Now you're just being condescending. I have about 2 decades of experience here. Don't need to prove anything to you.

 

The bottom line is that the issue is far from as simple as the OP is trying to make it sound.

 

Perhaps BW should have led out with an engine that wasn't so intensive, then updated it later, but I, personally don't see the need.

Edited April 28, 2012 by JeramieCrowe

[Flain]

When loading in Corellia, I can go on holiday for a week and come back and then maybe it's loaded in.

[JeramieCrowe]

When loading in Corellia, I can go on holiday for a week and come back and then maybe it's loaded in.

 

Haha, same here! Corellia has some crazy objects, terrain and data, moreso than any other MMO I've played! That's probably why it looks so awesome.

[Rikeryo]

Haha, same here! Corellia has some crazy objects, terrain and data, moreso than any other MMO I've played! That's probably why it looks so awesome.

 

geez, you're a dedicated fanboy. nothing in this game looks really good. not good enough to justify those loading times.

Edited April 28, 2012 by Rikeryo

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

this thread is full of WIN

[JeramieCrowe]

geez, you're a dedicated fanboy. nothing in this game looks really good. not good enough to justify those loading times.

 

Oh, of course, yeah. Anyone who doesn't hate just to hate is a "fanboy". Far be it for anyone to actually enjoy this game! That's impossible! Ha! Only "fanboys" will enjoy any MMO! If you enjoy WoW, you're a WoW fanboy! If you enjoy RIFT, you're a RIFT fanboy! If you enjoy GW2, you're a GW2 fanboy! It's either fanboy or hater, isn't it?

 

Gawd, I'm so glad this world is so black and white! You have helped me see the light, Rikeryo, how can I ever repay you?!

 

[NasherUK]

Marketing department missed the opportunity to cross-merchandise an Old Republic edition OCZ SSD. "Cut your loading times to 45 seconds!"

 

Lol, I have TOR installed on a sata 3 SSD and it still takes the best part of a minute to load some planets. Where as on something like skyrim I can load the entire world in about 10 seconds or less

 

The system resouces and network traffic this game uses is ridiculus. The engine they are using is terrible, I don't understand why they picked it when there are MUCH better ones around. They even used the unreal engine for Mass Effect 2 and 3 :/

Edited April 28, 2012 by NasherUK

[JeramieCrowe]

Lol, I have TOR installed on a sata 3 SSD and it still takes the best part of a minute to load some planets. Where as on something like skyrim I can load the entire world in about 10 seconds or less

 

The system resouces and network traffic this game uses is ridiculus. The engine they are using is terrible, I don't understand why they picked it when there are MUCH better ones around. They even used the unreal engine for Mass Effect 2 and 3 :/

 

I guess the reason will become clear in about 3 years.

[sambeta]

Haha, same here! Corellia has some crazy objects, terrain and data, moreso than any other MMO I've played! That's probably why it looks so awesome.

 

No offense but this game doesn't look that great graphically. It literally is like a slightly shinier xbox original title. I'm neither a fan boy or a hater of this game but I am a realist and this game suffers some massive problems. I'm on the EU Red Eclipse server and on the fleet while at peak time (200+ people) the frame rate drops to an abysmal 5 fps.

 

My PC is spec'd very highly although I only have 8bg of DDR3 RAM. (pffffttt only) I have a a GF GTX580 card that handles even the most complex of textures without issue. Internet wise I have fibre optic broadband that never goes below 30mbs. TOR insists on self destructing and crashing every time there is any sign of people on planets. During the Rak event on Tatooine my computer needed to be restarted several times.

 

It's a poorly optimised game to say the least and I'm greatly disappointed that corners were cut that really do effect the playability of this game.

Edited April 28, 2012 by sambeta

[cs_Kimmo]

Just posting my support for the OP. This guy knows what he's talking about and it's a shame he isn't in a position of more power, game development wise.

[Itukaaj]

I think they have about 8 more weeks to square this away. They can salvage the game and subscribers. I also recommend enhanced WZ servers and ops servers that lower latency like wow does. This has to be done and in time for the 6 months subscribers to see and believe.

[mattgyver]

No, I read your post. My point was that posting in this manner on the forums isn't intended to actually help the devs or the game, it's more akin to getting attention for yourself from other people who are also mad and/or upset about the same thing. The whole "I know something, listen to me!" deal, and I have read part of your initial post before I just cannot remember where, but I'll figure that out later.

 

Thanks for the behavioral analysis on the OP. Every post on this forum has multiple motives and reinforcers behind that behavior, to include your response to OP. Now I have demonstrated that I know something too, but the real dynamic here is your negative tone.

 

I for one appreciate the OP taking the time to detail something that he understands well for those who may not. The forums get read, and if this has any chance of helping the dev team even by acting as a reminder of their existing task scheduling, then it was worth while.

[terminova]

geez, you're a dedicated fanboy. nothing in this game looks really good. not good enough to justify those loading times.

 

It's not the graphics that impact loading times, it's how complicated the map is to render and how far out the game is rendering the map that impacts loading times. What I mean is, for example, when I was reloading map in the spaceport on Balmorra, the game was loading the map well beyond the city itself when I was still in the spaceport. Plus, there were a lot of individual boxes and parts that were loading layer by layer, so it's not the graphics that are the problem, it's the complexity of the map which includes the number of layers being rendered and how far out the map is being rendered. I ended up turning shadows to low and AA to low to combat the problem of the game trying to render shadows that fell across the entire map from a cliff or massive building on the other side of the map.

Edited April 28, 2012 by terminova

[Strangefate]

Well Strangefate to be honest we both know more poly == slower rendering

 

What's even more surprising is how the shadows hurts the frame rate when we see the really poor result.

 

Now what I was impressed with is the database access when looting items. I don't know if it's preemptive processing or not but the loot is generated faster than in others MMO. The funny thing is you can actually loot an item even before its loot aura is rendered.

 

-Yes, more polygons are not free of course, but even characters are pretty low poly compared to most games.

In the end all meshes and lowest MIP texture in a level/planet need to fit into the lowest memory requirement for the game, so there's really only so much non instanced stuff you can put into a planet.

An MMO will always have lower polygon counts and texture res than regular games, and should run a lot smoother.

Regular games render between 2-4 times the amount of data on your screen at once.

 

-I forgot about the lighting yes, that's been for me one of the worst issues too if cranked all the way up.

By the looks of it they're either using real time lights which would be really slow, or some hybrid light with baked shadows for the enviro that still renders realtime shadows for dynamic objects (characters).

Whatever they use, it's baaad and probably part of the reason indoor instances always run worse = more light sources than outdoors.

 

-The database stuff, all of their dice rolls happen before the actual animations ie: if you use an attack with a very slow animation you'll notice that the damage done will be substracted from your target the moment you hit the button, not when the animation plays or anything (the dmg numbers will be shown to you later too tho).

That's how you sometimes get nice finisher moves, as the game knows beforehand if your hit is gonna kill the enemy and can play a different finisher animation instead... same with blocking etc.

My guess is that the database takes advantage of that, so while your animations are still swinging and your mob's still haven't switched to death animations, the game is already ready for the loot table.

 

+1 Strangefate

 

Why thanks, your OP made me smile as given their current problems it seems like a very believable scenario.

 

As much as I admire the effort the OP put into their post, and clearly they seem quite passionate, I think they show very little appreciation for the realities of game development. I've worked in the industry for over ten years myself, it is a rare situation where developers either have the time or the resources to really shine technically at all levels. I've worked for some of the best companies in the industry, and I've seen plenty of awful code and I've even written some myself.

 

Having a good technical strategy comes down to experience, and you only get experience by researching and solving problems. While some solutions may meet the requirements of a project, they are by no means the best solutions, and any good developer will tell you how many times they wish they could go back and rewrite systems. But game developers, who work hard enough with often demanding schedules, don't always have the luxury of unwinding their mistakes. Sooner or later the game has to ship.

 

I don't know anyone who worked on this game personally, so I can't vouch for their technical prowess. But I can say that it is easy to criticize technology and offer solutions based on anecdotal analyses, and quite another to be knee deep in the project, facing the realities of a huge project with lots of dependencies and technical hurdles, as well as team politics, which I could seriously write a book about.

 

Anyway, good luck to the OP. And good luck BW. I'm enjoying the game.

 

I think the years they had and 200mil in development are resources enough.

Plus BW has a great name in this industry, they could hire any talent they want, the only reason they wouldn't do this is if they thought the project would be child's play for them and they're too sexy for their shirts.

 

Looking at their net code issues, engine and lack of optimization resulting in poor performance for many, kinda gives the impression that they had a lot of headless chickens running around.

It is very common when a studio expands to promote people internally. They may not know jack, but if you've been there long enough and you know how to make Jira tasks, you got the job, congrats.!

 

I've been running our current project (100+ people in total) without any technical artist or other similar leads at my side for almost (or over?) a year now.

It is a ton of work and running around putting out and preventing fires, but at least we don't run down ambiguous paths where nobody knows if things will work or not and nobody that should, can give a precise answer or can take some initiative and follow up on things. There's no blame game either.

I've been trying to fill out other roles for quite some time, but your average experienced technical artists are still asset-minded people that can't look at a level and break it down into it's issues. If you can rig an asset and put it into the engine and can exchange 4 words with a random programmer, you're a qualified technical artist !

And Art leads are usually just managers these days, know little about anything but making tasks.

 

Then of course, each department HAS to blame the next one because they simply wouldn't understand what's wrong with their own department's work. Looking at perf graphs or complex material / particle settings alone will be like studying hieroglyphs for them.

 

People and their incompetence make game development a challenge, noting else.

Whatever the hurdles of their project, they had all the resources needed to deal with them, however, it takes smart people to be aware of your team's limitations. Without knowing that, you won't know who you need to hire.

 

I happen to know some people that worked on the game, some work at our studio now, and some went to work there from here when their development started.

Edited April 28, 2012 by Strangefate

[terminova]

Thanks for the behavioral analysis on the OP. Every post on this forum has multiple motives and reinforcers behind that behavior, to include your response to OP. Now I have demonstrated that I know something too, but the real dynamic here is your negative tone.

 

He claimed to be trying to help the devs with the game, but he's posting on the forums instead of telling them directly. The original post before being changed was extremely unhelpful and antagonistic towards the devs, as well which is why I stated he wasn't actually intending to help the devs, but rather vent. What I said was hardly negative even if you wish to claim and continue to claim it is.

[GlowstickSwinger]

Which I said, in the part you cut out from my quote, that it only stops *noticeably* if there is latency with the I/O.

 

Simply reading from the disk, even if there is no one else using it, causes latency.

[GlowstickSwinger]

No, I read your post. My point was that posting in this manner on the forums isn't intended to actually help the devs or the game, it's more akin to getting attention for yourself from other people who are also mad and/or upset about the same thing. The whole "I know something, listen to me!" deal, and I have read part of your initial post before I just cannot remember where, but I'll figure that out later.

 

I'm treating SW:TOR like an open source project.

 

You go to their github, you drop a ticket, you write down what you see, and if you know a thing or two, what you think may be the issue, and if you know enough, you branch off, fix it, then push back.

 

I can't do any of that for obvious reasons.

 

The next big thing I can do is make a stink until the Customer Support team, which has infinitely more influence over things than any of us, and actually may even participate in the dev standups, take notice.

 

Do you honestly think my email detailing all of these problems would have been picked out from the thousands of people requesting pony-shaped lightsabers, LFG for Ops, or wondering why their tauntaun pet can't be cut open for extra warmth?

 

As it turns out, this thread was moved to the suggestion box... which means someone saw it.

 

Of course, now this thread will die because that's where threads go to die... sigh...

Edited April 28, 2012 by GlowstickSwinger

[ironix]

As it turns out, this thread was moved to the suggestion box... which means someone saw it.

 

Of course, now this thread will die because that's where threads go to die... sigh...

 

Yeah, some moderator was probably told to do some damage control and moved this into the rubbish bin... urm, suggestion box. =/

[terminova]

I'm treating SW:TOR like an open source project.

 

You go to their github, you drop a ticket, you write down what you see, and if you know a thing or two, what you think may be the issue, and if you know enough, you branch off, fix it, then push back.

 

I can't do any of that for obvious reasons.

 

Because it isn't an open source project.

 

The next big thing I can do is make a stink until the Customer Support team, which has infinitely more influence over things than any of us, and actually may even participate in the dev standups, take notice.

 

Do you honestly think my email detailing all of these problems would have been picked out from the thousands of people requesting pony-shaped lightsabers, LFG for Ops, or wondering why their tauntaun pet can't be cut open for extra warmth?

 

As it turns out, this thread was moved to the suggestion box... which means someone saw it.

 

Of course, now this thread will die because that's where threads go to die... sigh...

 

No, the best thing you could have done is use the ticketing system and been infinitely more polite than you actually were.

 

Ultimately, the ends do not justify the means.

[GlowstickSwinger]

Because it isn't an open source project.

 

I don't care....?

 

No, the best thing you could have done is use the ticketing system and been infinitely more polite than you actually were.

 

Ultimately, the ends do not justify the means.

 

*looks back at other posts that were kind and full of bunnies and rainbows and Skittles while offering a technical breakdown*

 

Nope, none of those exist.

 

*looks back at other posts that were kind and full of snide and sarcasm and big meanie meanness while offering a technical breakdown*

 

Hey, I found one!

 

It has 20k+ views.

 

Looks like my way works. Of course, you are free to post numbers, results, and a detailed history of such things that say otherwise.

 

Or stick to out-dated rules of thumb and pray for the best. That's cool, too.

Edited April 28, 2012 by GlowstickSwinger

[JeramieCrowe]

Simply reading from the disk, even if there is no one else using it, causes latency.

 

Now you're just splitting hairs. Of course I mean outside the parameters of the typical 8-10ms latency that's not even detectable by the human eye. Typical latency will not be noticed. What you're describing only happens noticeably if the latency is outside normal operating parameters, and we're talking hundreds of ms. Only then will the block be noticed.

 

For example, I never notice the block-stops until, one day, I forgot to reschedule my virus scan. When that thing kicked up, then I noticed it. And I appreciate the block-stops, actually.

 

Like I said, once technology catches up to this coding, and is able to be "unfolded", we'll see the fuller potential of it.

Edited April 28, 2012 by JeramieCrowe