How did it come to this?

[MajikMyst]

Soooo, you are basing your opinion on thin air. Thanks for sharing.

 

I have explained my views and given my reason and backed it up with solid information.. I don't think that is thin air.. Can you explain your views and back it up with solid information and reasoning??

[Bloodstealer]

And that is all that matters.. It is your opinion.. I don't feel that anyone can make any kind of remotely accurate guess on a servers population by just counting the number of people in the fleet station.. It can surely tell you how many people are on the fleet.. But doesn't tell you about anyone else in the game doing other things..

 

Consider this.. There are 61 people in my guild.. That is including Alts.. I would wager the actual number of people is in the 30 or 40's.. For the most part we are all active.. We have two 8 man groups with people to spare and fill in if someone takes a day off.. How does your 40 or so people on the fleet account for the 40 or so people that are in my guild and on the server?? It doesn't and my guild is one of many..

 

61 including alts... and only 2x 8 man with a few to spare hardly makes the guild look 30-40 strong, so yeah I cud get behind the 30-40 on fleet easily... unless your telling me your guild restricts everyone to a main toon and only 1 alts and they are all online at the very same time...hmmmm I think your maybe reaching a little too high in the probability stakes here...

Edited June 4, 2012 by Bloodstealer

[syntxerr]

Your missing the point.. You can't make the comparison because you are talking about the game engine.. Other games running better is irreleven unless they are on the same engine.. As for Ilum?? Is it the game engine being brought to it's knees or people's computers?? Any MMO with large amounts of PVP combat with a lot of players is laggy.. Please name one that isn't?? Especially if you are all in very close proximity of eachother..

 

Again, you don't know if the issue is the engine, the level of graphics, people's computer, their bandwidth, or any number of other things that can cause probles with online play..

 

The issue here really is that people are more apt to blame the engine or Bioware and not their own crappy computers..

 

You still don't seem to understand that I don't care for comparing a game based on hero engine to another game on hero engine but the fact that I am comparing SWTOR's performance to performance of other games, which brings me to the conclusion that the engine must be garbage.

 

Look, as mentioned before, I play another game which has much more detailed graphics. I play it on full details at 2560x1440 and I don't have problems at all in larger scale PVP battles. Now, I am running TOR at 1920x1200 for performance reasons already. Ilum managed to kill it completely, even though we're not even talking dozens of players on the screen here and even the fleet still feels laggy on high settings.

 

So yes, I think it is a very good comparison. This is not about the technical aspects it is about how badly this game performs for what it is and compared to other games.

[Shlamorel]

You say the game needs a huge overhaul, yet you do not offer suggestions or ideas as to what needs to change..

 

This is what I was thinking.

 

I actually appreciate your well-articulated thoughts,OP. Your post left me curious to know what some of your ideas for overhauls would be - not because I disagree, but because it sounded like you had good ideas and I wanted to hear them.

[Mixxathon]

That's pretty funny because the exact same thing can be said about a lot of gamers. They think that because they don't like a game or some aspects of a game, they know more about what a developer "should have done" than the developers themselves.

 

The biggest "problem" with SWTOR is it's maturity (how long it's been around). If people would get over their incessant need for instant gratification and let the game have time to mature, most of the problems would fix themselves. But since nearly everyone posting threads like this wants the game to be perfect RIGHT NOW, which can't possibly happen, they decide to say the game is a failure and proclaim that they are abandoning the sinking ship before it's too late.

 

The best thing that Bioware can do is to take their time and fix things right even if it takes too long for all the folks who need instant gratification. Odds are that those folks won't get their gratification from the other games they're looking forward to, either. And by that time, maybe SWTOR will have evolved into something that can keep them busy for a couple more months, until their need for something new and exciting kicks in and makes them leave again.

 

I completely agree with this.

[GrandMike]

I have explained my views and given my reason and backed it up with solid information.. I don't think that is thin air.. Can you explain your views and back it up with solid information and reasoning??

 

You didnt explain anything, you did a bit ranting about your guild, talked about some irrelevant things and concluded something from that.

 

Sorry bro, aint clicking.

Edited June 4, 2012 by GrandMike

[MajikMyst]

61 including alts... and only 2x 8 man with a few to spare hardly makes the guild look 30-40 strong, so yeah I cud get behind the 30-40 on fleet easily... unless your telling me your guild restricts everyone to a main toon and only 1 alts and they are all online at the very same time...hmmmm I think your maybe reaching a little too high in the probability stakes here...

 

Typically speaking.. Not everyone in a guild is on at the same time.. Not sure if you knew that or not.. I don't acually know how many accounts are in my guild since there is no little /accounts option like in WOW.. So I am guessing at how many actual players their are.. Yes.. There are 61 characters in my guild.. I make no limits on alts allowed in the guild.. I see no need to.. But typically speaking (In WOW of course) you need about 8-10 people for every single raid spot to raid on a regular basis.. This game seems to be around a 1-6 ratio.. 6 players for everyone 1 spot.. This will make sure that even if someone doesn't show or has real life issues of some sort, we keep raiding..

 

So I am not sure what you are confused about?? My only point was, the players in my guild or any other guild are not being counted unless they are online and on the fleet.. Which makes using the fleet population to guess just about anything is pretty rediculous.. But some folks want to believe what they want.. Which of course is their right..

[Toweleeeie]

Your missing the point.. You can't make the comparison because you are talking about the game engine.. Other games running better is irreleven unless they are on the same engine.. As for Ilum?? Is it the game engine being brought to it's knees or people's computers?? Any MMO with large amounts of PVP combat with a lot of players is laggy.. Please name one that isn't?? Especially if you are all in very close proximity of eachother..

 

Again, you don't know if the issue is the engine, the level of graphics, people's computer, their bandwidth, or any number of other things that can cause probles with online play..

 

The issue here really is that people are more apt to blame the engine or Bioware and not their own crappy computers.. Please understand.. I wasn't meaning you.. But I was there in the beta when certian Ilum issues came up.. Many people have 4 an 5 year old technology in their computers.. They barely met the minimum requirements.. To make matters worse, these people were also trying to run at high gfx settings and resolutions.. Then complaining the game was choppy and laggy.. Yes I know this because we had to post our specs in the beta..

 

I dropped $2,300 on a computer for BF3, I can run everything on ULTRA and AA at max Vsync at a constant 60 FPS.

 

I tried SWTOR on all settings, so very low to very high and there is still slow down with 16+ people on screen.

 

I keep all drivers up to date, yes with fresh/clean installs. I am very computer savy. I clean imy comp once a month. I do everything there is to keep a healthy computer running.

 

Its the POS engine.

[MajikMyst]

That's pretty funny because the exact same thing can be said about a lot of gamers. They think that because they don't like a game or some aspects of a game, they know more about what a developer "should have done" than the developers themselves.

 

The biggest "problem" with SWTOR is it's maturity (how long it's been around). If people would get over their incessant need for instant gratification and let the game have time to mature, most of the problems would fix themselves. But since nearly everyone posting threads like this wants the game to be perfect RIGHT NOW, which can't possibly happen, they decide to say the game is a failure and proclaim that they are abandoning the sinking ship before it's too late.

 

The best thing that Bioware can do is to take their time and fix things right even if it takes too long for all the folks who need instant gratification. Odds are that those folks won't get their gratification from the other games they're looking forward to, either. And by that time, maybe SWTOR will have evolved into something that can keep them busy for a couple more months, until their need for something new and exciting kicks in and makes them leave again.

 

^^^

 

Exactly!! Bravo!!! Well said!!

 

A award for you sir!!

[Bloodstealer]

First of all.. I have never seen 200+ people on the fleet and I doubt you have either.. 40-50 people in the fleet actually isn't that bad.. Do you know how many people are on all the other planets?? How about the people that are in flashpoints or warzones?? Perhaps running ops??

 

Judging population by the fleet is like judging the population of a city by how many people are in a football stadium.. It isn't very accurate..

 

I am not denying that this game hasn't lost people.. But the sky isn't falling that is for sure..

 

Really.. At launch my chosen server was heavy populated with a 1hr wait time to get online with easy 200+ on fleet.. a good sign maybe, but of course it was new then so expected.. of course now players should be more into the rolling alts and trying other stories modes so that number including hooking of new players should be somewhere consistant in the first 6 months and balancing out against those that try and dont like imo.... but for some strange reason my server has dramatically gone from beinga top 10 server to a bottom 10 server in the last 3-4 months... I call that a pretty alarming trend, and one thats echoed across many more servers I would hazard a guess.. read the posts about whole guilds leaving, freinds and family leaving.. sure a small proportion of the actual gaming community post her, i know that but the attitude and the trends dont just come from the forumks, they are merley a mouthpiece for the bigger population.. the inactivity per server doesnt lie...

Challenge yourself.. go log an alt on every server and one by one log onto them, record a fleet number and post the results.. state the time you start and I will do the same... then lets compare our findings.. heck we could do this for peak times and off peak times and see what we get...

On my home server I am lucky now to see more than 30 on fleet, and always single digits on planets... hardly a great advert for an MMO with so much potential

Edited June 4, 2012 by Bloodstealer

[Goretzu]

You should go back to Torstatus and look at their over all trends.. This game is NOT hemorrhaging players as you state and never has been.. Do we really have to be so melodramatic?? \

 

 

Er.... yes it IS. It's not doing any worse than Rift, AoC and WAR, but that's still not "good".

 

Currently it's looking at a real 6th month retention rate of 50 to 25% (50 being the most optimistic and ok, 25 being the most pesimistic and pretty bad).

 

We had all this noone is leaving nonsense for months..... then we got the 1.3m announcement which meant at least 400,000 had left in 3 months.

 

Again.. To my very first post... Care to list any of those changes?? Care to give any thought on how to make things better?? Can we trade melodramatic for constructive??

 

I've been making constructive comments since Beta.

 

Some have been acted upon (UI cd displays).

Some partially acted upon (travel system upgrades)

And some not acted upon at all (space improvements, PvP and RvR improvements, staticness/lineraity improvements.

 

Now what have YOU done exactly?

[GrandMike]

I dropped $2,300 on a computer for BF3, I can run everything on ULTRA and AA at max Vsync at a constant 60 FPS.

 

I tried SWTOR on all settings, so very low to very high and there is still slow down with 16+ people on screen.

 

I keep all drivers up to date, yes with fresh/clean installs. I am very computer savy. I clean imy comp once a month. I do everything there is to keep a healthy computer running.

 

Its the POS engine.

 

NO! Its your fault. You ddnt go to future and brought some future hardware!

 

Game is fine and your computer SUCKS! It isnt worthy of even running SWTOR! Even if its DX9 game with low-res textures and shadows!

 

[MajikMyst]

I dropped $2,300 on a computer for BF3, I can run everything on ULTRA and AA at max Vsync at a constant 60 FPS.

 

I tried SWTOR on all settings, so very low to very high and there is still slow down with 16+ people on screen.

 

I keep all drivers up to date, yes with fresh/clean installs. I am very computer savy. I clean imy comp once a month. I do everything there is to keep a healthy computer running.

 

Its the POS engine.

 

Your specs are missing from your post.. For all I know you bought a mac and are using bootcamp..

[JediCahlwyn]

You say the game needs a huge overhaul, yet you do not offer suggestions or ideas as to what needs to change.

 

A Major overhaul?

 

Of course the game doesn't need it. The game itself is solid. .

 

Exactly! I am getting so sick and tired of these mass "Oh noes!" threads. The game is solid. I've played most every MMO since 1998 (started with EverQuest) and this is by far, for me, the best one! It has JUST launched! Come on! We are just at the six months mark of year one and these people act like it is 5-10 years old.

 

1) Bioware opened WAY too many servers. That spread the population too thin to begin with (even at "full" I felt we had far less than we should have had on anyway and now it sucks). This has caused a measurable and significant amount of people to quit prematurely and this sucks too... almost like being punished twice for the same mistake. They need to fix it FAST.

 

2) The game has launched with more features and endgame than most other MMOs (if not all). People are kidding themselves if they say otherwise. The problem is that they are comparing it to longrunning MMOs. YES WoW has more endgame... guess what? Its 8 years old!

 

3) There are a lot of bugs. Yes there are... and MANY should be fixed weekly. Some of the bugs have been going on since early Beta. That is ridiculous. They need to respond faster! However... they ARE trying. They DO care.

 

4) By this time next year the game will have more free expansions and at least one paid for true expansion. The level cap will be raised, there will be new endgame and class stories will progress. The servers will be condensed and stable and those of us still here (raises hand) will have a rich and tight nit community and there will be tons of new players every month & year for the next 5-10 years.

 

The game hasn't failed. The game won't be shut down within the next 5 years at minimum. Stop the hyperbole and get a reality check! Stop posting doomsday threads for attention.

[Goretzu]

But I was there in the beta when certian Ilum issues came up.. Many people have 4 an 5 year old technology in their computers.. They barely met the minimum requirements.. To make matters worse, these people were also trying to run at high gfx settings and resolutions.. Then complaining the game was choppy and laggy.. Yes I know this because we had to post our specs in the beta..

 

I've never seen anyone that could run a small (20 a side) Ilum skirmishs well.

 

And these were people with PC that ran 100+ a side Warhammer Online battles flawlessly.

 

The current engine is very badly optimised for anything above very small scale (which isn't unsurprising as it's difficult to do, it took WAR a long time to get their engine there), although I wouldn't rule out that there wasn't some engine problem with Ilum itself either.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Goretzu

[JediCahlwyn]

I dropped $2,300 on a computer for BF3, I can run everything on ULTRA and AA at max Vsync at a constant 60 FPS.

 

I tried SWTOR on all settings, so very low to very high and there is still slow down with 16+ people on screen.

 

I keep all drivers up to date, yes with fresh/clean installs. I am very computer savy. I clean imy comp once a month. I do everything there is to keep a healthy computer running.

 

Its the POS engine.

 

Then you were robbed or you don't know how to maintain your PC.

 

I dropped $700 on my PC and I run SWTOR at MAX settings and can have 100+ on the fleet at it runs fast and clean for me. For one don't use Vsync... that is probably your issue. Most times I have 80-100+ FPS and if it gets busy the FPS-meter says it dips to 50-60 and as low as 30-40 but it ALWAYS looks and runs the same. I don't know what you all do to your games but if mine works fine yours should too!

[Elfa]

This and THIS again. People seem to think that World of Warcraft instantly got 12 million subscribers. They seem to forget all those years of development and effort Blizz put into it. Then again at that time the MMO community was a very different place. Its either all now or nothing.

 

I call crap on that statement. How may times did you hear the words "WoW killer" from inside the SWTOR camp itself?

 

SWTOR isn't competing with WoW as WoW was at its launch,, it's competing with WoW 8 years later. It should have had everything that WoW has now, at launch. To ask your fans to patiently wait around for the next 8 years while you get your **** together is utter garbage.

 

That said, I personally love the game, I just hate that argument.

[Bloodstealer]

Typically speaking.. Not everyone in a guild is on at the same time.. Not sure if you knew that or not.. I don't acually know how many accounts are in my guild since there is no little /accounts option like in WOW.. So I am guessing at how many actual players their are.. Yes.. There are 61 characters in my guild.. I make no limits on alts allowed in the guild.. I see no need to.. But typically speaking (In WOW of course) you need about 8-10 people for every single raid spot to raid on a regular basis.. This game seems to be around a 1-6 ratio.. 6 players for everyone 1 spot.. This will make sure that even if someone doesn't show or has real life issues of some sort, we keep raiding..

 

So I am not sure what you are confused about?? My only point was, the players in my guild or any other guild are not being counted unless they are online and on the fleet.. Which makes using the fleet population to guess just about anything is pretty rediculous.. But some folks want to believe what they want.. Which of course is their right..

 

OMG.. your actually answering your own moot point... lolz.

I have ran my own guild for 7+ yrs, I think I know by now not everyone comes online at the same time... you on the other hand seem not too. I also know that by your own admission that your guild has approx 61 toons (yes toons not players)... with 2x8 mans with a few to spare.... that in know way indicates a 30-40 person guild.. otherwsie no one seems to want to roll alts and try out other class stories... possible yes.. likely - no. I would hazard a guess a maybe half that size of guild so with maybe say 50% of that realistic figure being online then a fleet with 30-40 on it seems believable to me unless your on one of the busiest servers, in which case I would hope the figure is at least double that.. and that's not anywhere near what I would call a thriving server anyhow.

People use the fleet as an indicator because its the main activity hub.. pvp, flashpoint, GTN, skills, 1st place after starter planet etc etc.. So that is where you find the greater populus - like I said previous, roll an alt on every server and go see for yourself...

[Toweleeeie]

Your specs are missing from your post.. For all I know you bought a mac and are using bootcamp..

 

Cough...

 

Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.20 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366 Liquid cooled

12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)

GTX580 3G edition was $600 alone

Asus Rampage III Extreme

1,000 Watts - Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular 80 Plus PSU

[MajikMyst]

I've never seen anyone that could run a small (20 a side) Ilum skirmishs well.

 

And these were people with PC that ran 100+ a side Warhammer Online battles flawlessly.

 

The current engine is very badly optimised for anything above very small scale, although I wouldn't rule out that there wasn't some engine problem with Ilum itself either.

 

I don't know anything about Warhammer.. I have never played it.. I do know that when Wintergrasp was first released in WOW.. The battles right in front of the door were horrid for me and I have never had issues in any of the other battle grounds.. Reguardless of number of players.. I can remember some pretty crowded Alterac Valleys..

 

Wintergrasp over time did get better.. Upgrading my computer helped, but Blizz also made some changes.. Was it the engine?? No..

 

Again, I am not saying it isn't the engine.. All I am saying that it is impossible for anyone to really know what the problem is or what can be done.. I just fail to see the reasoning behind blaming the engine without reason or cause to support it..

[Goretzu]

I don't know anything about Warhammer.. I have never played it.. I do know that when Wintergrasp was first released in WOW.. The battles right in front of the door were horrid for me and I have never had issues in any of the other battle grounds.. Reguardless of number of players.. I can remember some pretty crowded Alterac Valleys..

 

Wintergrasp over time did get better.. Upgrading my computer helped, but Blizz also made some changes.. Was it the engine?? No..

 

Again, I am not saying it isn't the engine.. All I am saying that it is impossible for anyone to really know what the problem is or what can be done.. I just fail to see the reasoning behind blaming the engine without reason or cause to support it..

 

 

As I mentioned in my edit, WAR was terrible right after Live, performance-wise, but they got on top of it eventually (WAR can run 400 v 400 before a server crash these days - far too late for the game itself though, subs-wise).

 

It might not be the engine, or solely the engine, it might be more to do with their network code (although I'd have thought they'd have some change over staff-wise from Warhammer Online with that)..... although more likely it's both.

 

The bigger problem with SWTOR isn't just that it still has engine performance issues, it's that is currently has NO RvR or OPvP at all....... worse with no mention of when (if ever) it might be coming back.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Goretzu

[MajikMyst]

Cough...

 

Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.20 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366 Liquid cooled

12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)

GTX580 3G edition was $600 alone

Asus Rampage III Extreme

1,000 Watts - Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular 80 Plus PSU

 

Wipes monitor.....

 

You have a nice rig there.. What is your connection to the internet?? That can also make a difference.. But other than that, you shouldn't have much of an issue that I can see.. Just please keep in mind that having the best parts doesn't automatically mean you will have the best performance.. Especially when it comes to online games.. It just means that the problem is most likely not your computers..

 

Like I said in my post above.. We don't know what the issue is.. It could be the engine, it could be the game code, it could be how Ilum was built as a planet, it could be your interenet.. It could also be none of the above and something that we just don't know about..

 

Again very nice rig.. Out of curiousity?? Why didn't you get the I7-2600??

[JediCahlwyn]

Cough...

 

Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.20 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366 Liquid cooled

12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)

GTX580 3G edition was $600 alone

Asus Rampage III Extreme

1,000 Watts - Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular 80 Plus PSU

 

You having something working incorrectly or glitchy or something... Again I run on MAX settings and I have:

 

i7-2600 ($280ish)

8gigs ram ($100ish)

GTX465 ($100ish)

 

Yeah...

[Devlonir]

I call crap on that statement. How may times did you hear the words "WoW killer" from inside the SWTOR camp itself?

 

SWTOR isn't competing with WoW as WoW was at its launch,, it's competing with WoW 8 years later. It should have had everything that WoW has now, at launch. To ask your fans to patiently wait around for the next 8 years while you get your **** together is utter garbage.

 

That said, I personally love the game, I just hate that argument.

 

Source please. Because really, besides some forum posts at the very start of open development and the forums on this website, which are literally years before delivery and before the team itself realised how big of a job they had, not once did I hear any Bioware staff claiming the game would be better than WoW from the get-go. Different, yes. Better story, yes. Better in ever way, never.

 

So please, source for your claim or your statement has to be, as you said it yourself, called 'crap'.

[GrandMike]

Source please. Because really, besides some forum posts at the very start of open development and the forums on this website, which are literally years before delivery and before the team itself realised how big of a job they had, not once did I hear any Bioware staff claiming the game would be better than WoW from the get-go. Different, yes. Better story, yes. Better in ever way, never.

 

So please, source for your claim or your statement has to be, as you said it yourself, called 'crap'.

 

Not Bioware, thats true, but EA. And since EA is overlord of BW, what EA wants BW does....or doesnt.

 

Too bad old forums were wiped, there were some really juicy stuff there

Edited June 4, 2012 by GrandMike