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

[demonolithic]

Good read. Here's hoping.

[Xandole]

I have a pretty mean machine (duel ati hd 5800 in CFX, 12gig DDR4, duel low lat 512g SSD's) and can play anything full graphics and not have near the issues as SWTOR lol ....BIOWARE, i think having the dev team with major OCD designing graphics is great but when it starts costing your customers hard cash to replace burt out GPU's you might start losing clientele. I love the game to death but you guys really went waaay over board on the particle effects: namely environmental effects. Next time your in KP looking at Bonethrasher turn your eyeballs to the lower left of your screen and watch your FPS (ctrl+shift+F) keep watching, now turn 180 degrees and look at the wall... now turn back and look at big ugly.. mine goes 25-30fps...95-100fps....25-30fps thats a massive drop in frame rate and the best i can tell is that all that green haze floating around the room.... Awesome work on the game, but not everyone has a laptop with AC just a few of us with too much money and a gaming addiction

 

I never take long to load planets minus belsavis for some reason, i just wish they would figure out this sound bug and fix it, its driving me insane.. everything was fine pre 1.2, post 1.2 sound is intermittent and for all the money spent for the VO's i would imagine you would want people to hear them lol.

 

Great post though, great read, im a computer engineer so dont have anything to do with game design, i do mostly software and hardware engineering... same language different zip code =D ... and as for that DB rocket doctor that makes 175k a year... dude did you get a medical license from a community college? my fracken dentist makes 300k a year and hes one lazy MFR, hot assistant though....

Edited April 24, 2012 by Xandole

[Rowandiki]

Former game developer here. (No gigs with Lucas, BioWare, or the other companies associated with this... although I did contract for someone who did help with the marketing push lulz) I left the industry because too many non-gamers were entering it. Some thing about the dream of accruing abusive amounts of money from a single title seems to attract the parasites, the wolves, and the incompetent.

 

I like your game. I really do. The focus on the single-player aspect is amazing. The voice acting is from top notch talent (I personally know many of the voice actors in the game, actually) and it is delivered as well as it can be given the -extreme- amount of disconnected copy that had to be read. My kudos to your producers. I'm sure many, many long hours were spent on that aspect of the game alone.

 

Let's move on to the problem. Notice I said “problem” and not “problems”. You only suffer from one problem and all of these ailments stem from it.

 

The Client

 

I haven't researched your tech at all. I'm assuming you purchased licenses for the 3D engine and that the lead devs on the project had a solid streak of 3D game programming on their resumes.. but only a few of them them had any experience with the engine itself. This shouldn't come as a shock, as there are many, many 3D engines on the market and having one dev knowing them all would price that dev right out of the market entirely. The logic behind my guess is that if the entire dev team was deeply intimate with the engine, then they would have been able to successfully push back against the art and marketing department's insistence on using high poly count models everywhere.

 

Yes, the creativity of these departments are paramount because it's the pretty pixels us consumers froth over. However, if this factor is the foundation of developing a game (It often is the most frequent goto by artists, marketers, and MBAs alike) then it will become obvious in the final product. That being said, your leadership has long crossed over the “golden ratio” between pretty pixels and performance. It is obvious BioWare's entire objective regarding client development is to wage a holy crusade against GPUs everywhere and crush them. It's one thing to write Crysis. It's another to write something that blows up a GPU like Crysis and have absolutely none of the visual effects.

 

I'm sure the politics in your company, the silverback chest-thumping, and the e-peen flopfests all take turns stifling any attempt to rebalance this pixel-vs-performance ratio. (SSDD) When the flaws of your product are broadcasted to the world that the devs are not included in any actual decision making regarding priority or direction, it's time to fire your CTO for being spineless and probably all of his reports.

 

The Servers

 

Your networking infrastructure, however, is not as easily purchasable as an out-of-the-box 3D engine that you just drop in and start hacking away at. It is woefully taxed. I have nothing but pity on your back-end and IT department for one reason: your asset loading strategy is completely untenable in relation to your resource demand.

 

These loading screens between “zones” (See: MQ channels/rooms/subscriptions) are reminiscent to installing an operating system from a pack of floppy drives. You do know that when broadcasting client data to other clients, that shouldn't issue a blocking resource pull from the HD -every- -single- -time-, right?

 

Right?

 

I mean, I like the little pause when on a PvP server because it lets me know that I'm about to be ganked. But I know why that pause is happening. And I know that when you tested it on your local machines that were well-tuned for this sort of testing, and on staging server setups that didn't have even 1% of the load of a live environment, this issue never cropped up.

 

It happens to everyone.

 

Don't fire off blocking calls as a response to time-sensitive events that are pushed down from the server. Your client will fall apart because those events are random. Have a default placeholder asset primed in memory and ready to instantiate until the rest of the local resources (model, textures, etc) are pulled asynchronously.. Spinning plates, man. Spinning plates.

 

This blocking call is only part of the problem. I am almost positive the vast majority of these load screens are caused by the servers trying to poll live information regarding other connections... and that you've made this a blocking call as well. Network I/O is, literally, the most expensive time operation you could perform and you've made a mass polling operation a blocking call. Going from a planet to a warzone to planet is an experience similar to participating in hurdling... except each hurdle is a two hundred foot tall stone wall. This is because you've relied on blocking calls and no one caught it.

 

And no one's going to fix it. It's very easy to undo and yet... it will never be fixed. Why...?

 

...and back to your organizational problems we go.

 

Somewhere, an investor is having ******s (I can say "******s", right? American's aren't still squeamish about that word, are they? Does that put me on a terrorist list or something?) about the revenue and ROI. Yay, capitalism! All is well... except your growth is in jeopardy and both you and I know it. Anyone watching this pure marketing-driven priority of pushing out pointless doodads and trinkets instead of solving fundamental performance problems can spot it a mile away. You have too many non-devs leading the effort.

 

You will not survive your own success because your leadership will not take the ten minutes required to have someone explain to them that people won't play a game where 30% of the time is spent at loading screens due to a failure to prioritize and solve an extremely common problem in an industry-standard fashion. What they will listen to is some non-tech failed actress say that little cute tauntauns will solve these problems. B*tches love little cute tauntauns. (The * is for 'o')

 

Say it with me, BioWare:

 

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

 

Say that in your next stand-up, loud and proud. E-mail it every fifteen minutes to the CEO. You can fix these problems. It's solvable. You just have to spill some blood and not be afraid of it.

 

 

As a guy who unsubcribed for this very reason(the biggest) I say thank you for this post.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Yvin
edited quote

[Kanshan]

I haven't researched your tech at all.

 

I stopped reading there.

[Lularapio]

11/10

[DizzD]

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

 

Genius! Plus they could have bundled them with a code for a "Slightly different shade of existing promotional color and black" color crystal!

[Efour]

This would explain why I can hear my 6990 Fan screaming for help when playing SWTOR.

I dusted out all the fan filters inspected inside for filth quilting but to no avail, spotless as usual.

CCC reports 86 degrees Celsius, it doesn't even get that hot during BF3.

It will be summer soon addanother 20 degrees to ambient.

Sorry but that is unplayable and i dont want my ATI card to melt through the Earth's crust to try and find its way back to China.

[ChazDoit]

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A CONTENT PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM.

 

I've been struggling with Bioware's loading screens since Neverwinter Nights, so yeah, leading times and overall performance of the game is not very good

[PandaMonk]

It doesnt matter if this guy is right or not on the tehnical side. (on how the issue will be fixed)

 

But, the part that i agree with completely is :

Load times / performance fix would drasticly improve my gaming experience

 

I cant stress this inuf, the loading times and performance issues are ruining the game

far more then anything else (IMO).

[Red_Karma]

I have a very nice machine running this game and it runs fine. My girlfriends computer is just barely a notch under mine in specs and it shows when she plays this game. The frame rate dips in areas that it shouldn't...

 

A quick word on the credentials of those saying they are game designers/ devs/ or whatever:

They haven't given any reason you should doubt them and have intelligently commented on the OP's statements. I have been an artist in the industry for over 12 years, worked as an animator at first, worked in Maya, Max, ZBrush, PhotoSlop (it's spelled right ), wrote some MEL scripts for art teams to coordinate with animation, specialize in hard surface now, and on and on it goes. I tend to think that people that are actually in the industry feel that, when they play a game from another studio, it's a small glimpse into how they do things, what kind of talent they have there, and stirs a professional curiosity that drives innovation for their own product and skill set. To come on here and call these people liars is pretty low. Since this is the internet and people can say whatever they want, I'll just say that it isn't needed. Nobody posts what they do here to rub it in your face or brag. This is our profession and something we strive to make better.

[BiohazardBlaze]

I liked this post. But who are we kidding?

 

BioWare do not care.

 

There's a thread entitled "Horrid FPS" and it starts here and goes on for a decent 1600+ pages. A lot of what the OP said, rightly said, is also said in that thread. It's all for naught.

 

BioWare do not care.

[Puggy]

It IS pretty bad. I don't really know about the loading screens, but you definitely know there are issues when the entire client lags up whenever you open a UI panel like your inventory, or dismount, like you mentioned. I'm also a game developer and I cringed the first time I opened my inventory. Try running around while spamming your open inventory key... yuck!

[Cassidan]

I stopped reading there.

 

Then you missed out on why so many are giving up in order to save their sanity and computers...lol.

[Rylorn]

Get it done BW /support

[Diet-Hutt]

Get it done BW /support

 

Post haste.

 

- DH

[Drakkip]

Yeah I had forgotten about when I dismount and my companion is summoned the game "freezes" for like half a second.f The why's of that I am not familiar with, however, I do find that other basic designs I do notice that I feel need addressing. The massive amounts of places you can get stuck in the world and lack of enough quick slots to name a couple. Edited April 24, 2012 by Drakkip

[Valperion]

Thanks OP for the good read.

* Finally something worth reading on this forum.

[Canmore]

Thanks OP for the good read.

* Finally something worth reading on this forum.

 

Actualy the OP just sounds butt hurt he didnt get a job with EA lol

[Valperion]

Actualy the OP just sounds butt hurt he didnt get a job with EA lol

 

If you actually understand what he is saying, its something worth reading.

* These loading issues have been a serious problem ever since the beta.

* I am just concerned about the memory leaks...

[Tantala]

World load times are irritating but I can live with them - for someone brought up on the zone-in delays of the original everquest on a dial-up connection they really aren't an issue.

For me the worst thing about the current client is that my GPU seems to be running on the edge of thermal overload most of the time. It rapidly achieves temperatures of 88-89C and the fans howl. By contrast the far more graphic intense environment of Skyrim runs happily (and quietly) at 65C.

The graphics in SWTOR, while imaginative and perfectly adequate for the gameplay, are not especially rich or detailed. There is no conceivable reason why they should stress my system so heavily. This really needs to be addressed before we have a rash of GPU failures due to prolonged use close to the thermal cutoff.

[Goretzu]

This isn't some big secret. Yes for some reason, SW:TOR uses a lot of resources, and works my AMD graphics card to 80C, as if I was playing Skyrim at max settings. But it doesn't have the quality graphics of Skyrim. In fact, Skyrim doesn't even push my graphics card that hard at max settings.

 

The animations are also not that smooth. An example would be if I used an ability on a mount, there would be a brief screen freeze. WoW did not have such problems 7 years ago when I played, so for some reason this engine is clunky despite not having high-end quality graphics.

 

The game is playable now, but I hope in future they will fix all performance problems.

 

The will optimise it, bound too, it still needs a lot atm though. Large group fights are still a big problem.

[Tiek]

im not a tech head..

 

but 5 minutes to load a planet with a mid-range computer and a fast connection is something that needs to be fixed.

 

going to corellia to do dailies is like a guild joke.. we wait until everyone needs an afk break and all go land on corellia. maybe, by the time i get back, the loading is nearly done. only to have to go load the black hole. its eventually going to drive people away if it hasnt already.

[LilSaihah]

going to corellia to do dailies is like a guild joke.. we wait until everyone needs an afk break and all go land on corellia. maybe, by the time i get back, the loading is nearly done. only to have to go load the black hole. its eventually going to drive people away if it hasnt already.

 

With loading times as they are, I kind of wonder why they don't add the ability to go directly to your ship and to Black Hole. It's a great daily zone, I just don't want to load it D:

[Valperion]

im not a tech head..

 

but 5 minutes to load a planet with a mid-range computer and a fast connection is something that needs to be fixed.

 

going to corellia to do dailies is like a guild joke.. we wait until everyone needs an afk break and all go land on corellia. maybe, by the time i get back, the loading is nearly done. only to have to go load the black hole. its eventually going to drive people away if it hasnt already.

 

Correlia has been a joke in my guild ever since beta as-well.

* We kept doing warzone pvp tests in the beta, and we would never take a warzone queue on Correlia, knowing how LONG it takes to load back into the world.

* Only reason we where on Correlia was to finish the story and move onto Ilum.

* But sadly 95% of the beta testing community didn't reach close to lv50, since bioware kept on wiping the client.

- Thus we never did enough tests regarding the end game content.

 

But they did stress some things...

Like spamming the GTN from multiple locations. "why"

* We crashed it!

Like flooding the imp fleet.

* We dropped it to a solid "1 fps"

[Space_Gimp]

Question:

You can call yourself a doctor and lie, but if your posted prognosis dealing with what should be routine treatment of an obvious physical ailment is right on the money...who gives a damn?

 

- DH

 

I do. Smart people do. If I have a problem with my health then I want a doctor that knows what he is doing to tell me what exactly is happening, what's it called and how it's treated. These people in these threads are not game designers. They are not game developers.