GnatB Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 Part of the problem, I think, is that it *is* the high end gaming rigs that are having issues. I have a pretty high end gaming rig. Playing at max everything easy. When 1.4 hit, my frame rate went to crap. Basically, whatever they did with their font engine, (presumably the outlines people talked about, through I didn't really notice a difference) apparently made font rasterizing a slow blocking task on certain high end (a.k.a. crossfire, and I believe SLI) configurations. The game almost literally pauses everytime it rasterizes text. When lots of text is constantly updating (i.e. nameplates scaling in size) it is pause.pause.pause. Unplayable. Now sure, turning off nameplate scaling dramatically reduces how frequently it updates the text. Though the game still LITERALLY pauses for a couple of seconds if there are a bunch of new nameplates all at once. (such as when approaching the cargo hold area on fleet) Though that can be reduced by cutting back on the type of nameplates displayed. (Say, enemy only) The problem also is almost completely eliminated by turning off crossfire (either by changing the option in the graphics card settings, or by running in windowed mode). Now sure, my computer is actually good enough that I'm still getting ~60fps with settings all still on max, and one of my videocards basically turned off. (disabled crossfire). But, that means the one card is heating up more than I'd really like. And, of course, there ARE others whose computers aren't excessively overpowered, for whom turning off one of their cards presumably means they have to dramatically crank down the visual quality. 'Oh, and leaks? can't say as I've had a problem with them myself... that being said, my computer has tons of memory. My dad, who I play with every weekend, has much less memory and rather predictably drops to desktop every ~2.5 hours of play. Sounds pretty memory leakish to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruskaeth Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 Im just gonna leave it here This is an awesome example. I've tried everything, but since 1.4, same experience as Gosia has on the video and a lot of crashing. Memory leak much? Must be my computer when it's not crashing while I run Skyrim on full details and InDesign + Photoshop on other screen, just as an example. SWTOR: Even if I play with only one monitor, it still stutters and crashes. For some reason, the memory leak seems to be connected to how many people are logged on the instance. Mornings with very few people on the fleet and dozens of loading screens later, no crash. Fleet full and it crashes a lot. I asked around and many others had noticed the same. So BioWare, if your load balancing doesn't work, do something about it. If the load balancing does work, make fleets smaller with shared general/trade/pvp chats. This is a possible solution if you are unable to fix whatever went wrong in previous updates. Maybe having the setup on that shows least amount of other players is creating the memory leak? I am going to test changing that setting to other values. Yours, Ruswyn/Mrachan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamieKirby Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 If its the performance issue i think it is, i had it also, but playing in window mode (fullscreen) fixed it for me, it will likely fix it for you. But in the end, when has a game or patch ever been released completely bug free?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruskaeth Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 Doesn't make a difference if I change between windowed (fullscreen) or windowed normal or total full screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNCommand Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 Memory leak? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 (edited) never seen anyone talk about this in game. Must be rare. ROFL, hat off for your fine irony sir, made me luagh XDDDDDD Edited November 12, 2012 by recsa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fornix Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 ROFL, hat off for your fine irony sir, made me luagh XDDDDDD You call it irony, however on my server I hardly see performance issues come by as a topic either. Usually whenever it's mentioned it's just 1 person saying something followed by a lot of "nope, fine for me" type of comments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNCommand Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 You call it irony, however on my server I hardly see performance issues come by as a topic either. Usually whenever it's mentioned it's just 1 person saying something followed by a lot of "nope, fine for me" type of comments. Same for me, except for the forum I never hear about it in game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 You call it irony, however on my server I hardly see performance issues come by as a topic either. Usually whenever it's mentioned it's just 1 person saying something followed by a lot of "nope, fine for me" type of comments. 1$ each time some one in my party has got stuck/dc at loading screen when starting a FP from LFG since 1.4 and i wouldnt need to pay sub until 2014. Luckly we have learn how to workaround it: 1- Make sure process is kill, if not kill it 2- Wait a couple mins and log an alt 3- If "<name> char is already connected" message appears, disc and retry with diff char 4- Once alt has succesfully login, come back with DCed char. Whole process can take anything from 3 to 10 mins, i see it happening almost every day at least 1 time to different people, so please, dont tell me its not happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fornix Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 1$ each time some one in my party has got stuck/dc at loading screen when starting a FP from LFG since 1.4 and i wouldnt need to pay sub until 2014. Luckly we have learn how to workaround it: 1- Make sure process is kill, if not kill it 2- Wait a couple mins and log an alt 3- If "<name> char is already connected" message appears, disc and retry with diff char 4- Once alt has succesfully login, come back with DCed char. Whole process can take anything from 3 to 10 mins, i see it happening almost every day at least 1 time to different people, so please, dont tell me its not happening. However, there's once again a major difference between stuck (which may also be interpreted in different ways as freeze, or simple loss of connection) and a dc to loading screen. We sometimes have one member who experiences such loss of connection as well, and then either keeps loading or can't move. But that's a vastly different issue in its entirety again though. And the whole process to get back in our case takes very little time, as we don't wait a few minutes before logging back in. Instantly usually does the job quick enough, if main doesn't work directly log an alt and switch to main. Happens roughly once every 2 weeks to us. And personally, I think this is mainly just a routing issue. Problems which may be particularly hard to track down as it's not so much an engine problem per se, but just the connection to the server not being solid. Of which not even all lies within EA/BioWare's power to fix. They can only strive to workarounds to make it as stable as possible on their end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 However, there's once again a major difference between stuck (which may also be interpreted in different ways as freeze, or simple loss of connection) and a dc to loading screen. We sometimes have one member who experiences such loss of connection as well, and then either keeps loading or can't move. But that's a vastly different issue in its entirety again though. And the whole process to get back in our case takes very little time, as we don't wait a few minutes before logging back in. Instantly usually does the job quick enough, if main doesn't work directly log an alt and switch to main. Happens roughly once every 2 weeks to us. And personally, I think this is mainly just a routing issue. Problems which may be particularly hard to track down as it's not so much an engine problem per se, but just the connection to the server not being solid. Of which not even all lies within EA/BioWare's power to fix. They can only strive to workarounds to make it as stable as possible on their end. Ok, let me explain it more precisely, the issue is as follows: 1- LFG match up windows pops up, every1 press ready and travel now 2- We all get into the FP but 1, he then says on TS, im stuck at 33% on loading screen 3- 1 min after that he gets DCed to desktop 4- If he tries to reconnect he gets the "already connected" message 5- If he tries to login with a different char he gets the "<original char name> is already connected" message. 6- Waiting a few mins allows him to login an alt and then he can log back in the original char This is not happening to one specific person, some people gets it more often and some less, but many experience it from time to time, and it NEVER happened before 1.4, it all started with 1.4, since we are always (in my guild) on TS we know when it happens, if we were pugging maybe we would just think "look at that slacker, he just DCed to screw our FP". So its not a routing or Service provider thing, it is something related to the game and the "improvements" done in 1.4. I personally dont experience it very often, im on the lucky % of people that rarely gets a DC, but it doesnt means its not happening a lot to a lot of people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fornix Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 So its not a routing or Service provider thing, it is something related to the game and the "improvements" done in 1.4. I personally dont experience it very often, im on the lucky % of people that rarely gets a DC, but it doesnt means its not happening a lot to a lot of people. One does not yet exclude the other. If for example they changed at what rate a loss of packages is acceptable, as counter measure to possible exploiting, you may have been having periods in which your connection had loss of package peaks already prior to 1.4 which simply didn't affect you back then yet. Let's further iterate on that, one way to exploit in MMO's and multiplayer games is cutting the connection temporarily, moving, and going back online. This allows you to port from spot to spot, rather than walk. In the early months of PvP here, you could see that happen to players as well. Although probably not intentional in all cases, as regular packet drops do the same. If now they decided, such potentials to exploit are unacceptable with the upcoming ranked seasons, they may have adjusted their networking protocol. Require packets being sent back and forth at least every 1 second for example otherwise time the client out. (Timing the client out in this case is preferable within an MMO, as otherwise people would simply plug their inet if they'd be about to die to prevent death) So in other words, it may very well still be a routing or service provider issue. Keep in mind, it may not even be your direct own service provider, but any intermediate between you and the SWTOR servers may be at fault as well. Commonly though, drops such as these start with cheap routers. Unfortunately, many of those don't have packet loss graphs. However, if yours does see if around a drop such as described you notice an increase in packets lost. If you do, a better router may solve a lot of your issues already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 One does not yet exclude the other. If for example they changed at what rate a loss of packages is acceptable, as counter measure to possible exploiting, you may have been having periods in which your connection had loss of package peaks already prior to 1.4 which simply didn't affect you back then yet. Let's further iterate on that, one way to exploit in MMO's and multiplayer games is cutting the connection temporarily, moving, and going back online. This allows you to port from spot to spot, rather than walk. In the early months of PvP here, you could see that happen to players as well. Although probably not intentional in all cases, as regular packet drops do the same. If now they decided, such potentials to exploit are unacceptable with the upcoming ranked seasons, they may have adjusted their networking protocol. Require packets being sent back and forth at least every 1 second for example otherwise time the client out. (Timing the client out in this case is preferable within an MMO, as otherwise people would simply plug their inet if they'd be about to die to prevent death) So in other words, it may very well still be a routing or service provider issue. Keep in mind, it may not even be your direct own service provider, but any intermediate between you and the SWTOR servers may be at fault as well. Commonly though, drops such as these start with cheap routers. Unfortunately, many of those don't have packet loss graphs. However, if yours does see if around a drop such as described you notice an increase in packets lost. If you do, a better router may solve a lot of your issues already. You could be right ... if this were happening everywhere, but its a loading screen issue, it only happens on loading screens, for the looks of it seems some kind of memory leak problem, but who knows, the fact is that if it were an "anti-exploiting" change it would happen on regular game play too, also one could have expect they explaining that change when this issue was first reported. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FINNT Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 (edited) By the relatively huge numbers of posters/posts on the issue and with every Windows versions (XP, 7 and some 8) I would estimate that this is huge issue. Of course I can relatively be wrong If its huge issue and 1.5 doesn't fix it, this game fails at luring desired amount of new/old players. Edited November 12, 2012 by FINNT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draksen Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 (edited) The funny part is when (well in fact no, it's not funny....) some people say that there's no problem at all because they run the game in windowed mode. See the irony. That's what I have to do also. I also have had to lower AA and texture details to keep good fps in Taris (outdoor, with vegetation). And I played with all to max with 60+ fps before 1.4... So all is fine now, right? I drop my graphics, I play in windowed mode and voilà, problem solved?! Maybe they'll tell me to play the game in 16 colors and 640 x 480 next time... And this is only about performance... I'm not gonna mention the light pillars popping vertically randomly when I fire with my blaster, no, I'm not gonna mention them... Amateurish wannabe AAA mmo. That's what it is. Edited November 12, 2012 by Draksen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fornix Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 You could be right ... if this were happening everywhere, but its a loading screen issue, it only happens on loading screens, for the looks of it seems some kind of memory leak problem, but who knows, the fact is that if it were an "anti-exploiting" change it would happen on regular game play too, also one could have expect they explaining that change when this issue was first reported. For my guild mate it's not always loading screen. And also during FP's I've had it as a fluke occurence to people. However, it happening primarily during loading screens is not strange. Rather it is a occurence seen in numerous MMO's. As whilst you're loading a bigger file, your computer may hickup on it, during that pause exceed the timeout limit and be halted from further loading. In particular alt-tabbing during a loading screen whilst running an MMO in full-screen mode is prone to cause such an issue. Of course, considering as to how we do not have access to the client's source code, this remains speculation at best. But definitely something which may see improvement throughout updates. Often, it comes down to balancing how secure do you want to be, and what is acceptible in terms of timeout period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirtnose Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 (edited) I hate it when people say 'oh it doesn't happen to me, so it must be a rare issue!' I mean ffs, use your brain. Such a stupid statement. Edited November 12, 2012 by Dirtnose Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smexymage Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 (edited) It isnt rare. A huge % of players are concerned by the problem. And you know and have spoken with a huge % of the people who play this game have you? This is one of the main things that annoys me about people who complain about this game. They say things like "most people" like they know this for a fact. Although im doing the same thing in a way, you probably know a very small percentage of people playing this game, and have probably read even less posts by different people. Edited November 12, 2012 by smexymage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matty-Wan Posted November 12, 2012 Author Share Posted November 12, 2012 NOTE: How do you know it is a memory leak? Are you looking at the used memory and noticing it going up and up and up, and no releasing any? This is exactly what I am doing. I noticed since 1.4 that after each time I go through a loading screen my performance got worse and worse. After around 6-7 loads, my memory overloads and I freeze or crash. I think I may start recording my memory usage after each load and put it into excel so we can look at some data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FINNT Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1483412 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=538577 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=147542 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5354364 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=532954 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4753688 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5206100 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4240122 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3163503 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5265224 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=170445 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1477780 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=465128 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=541996 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5344131 http://www.swtor.com/fr/community/showthread.php?t=435045 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahnog Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 And you know and have spoken with a huge % of the people who play this game have you? This is one of the main things that annoys me about people who complain about this game. They say things like "most people" like they know this for a fact. Although im doing the same thing in a way, you probably know a very small percentage of people playing this game, and have probably read even less posts by different people. Well said. I would say a huge number of players are not experiencing these problems. The relatively low number of people complaining about it would verify that. I know I haven't seen any of these problems and my machine is not a top end machine. My processor is only one step above the minimum requirement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jemfisto Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 I have noticed stuttering, have crashed multiple times and blaster/lightsabers are glitched when in combat, light starts flaring all over the screen. Very annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smexymage Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1483412 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=538577 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=147542 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5354364 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=532954 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4753688 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5206100 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4240122 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3163503 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5265224 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=170445 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1477780 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=465128 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=541996 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5344131 http://www.swtor.com/fr/community/showthread.php?t=435045 So I did a rough count on all the above threads. I obviously didn't read each reply but I checked that one page has at the most 10 replies before a new page is created. Also, every reply on every thread may be replies to other posters so not every post is a single complaint about this issue but just for numbers sake I have assumed they are. All in there are 1561 posts. If we assume that every post is a unique complaint for this issue and there are 500K people playing this game then roughly .3122% are suffering this problem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etheric Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 So I did a rough count on all the above threads. I obviously didn't read each reply but I checked that one page has at the most 10 replies before a new page is created. Also, every reply on every thread may be replies to other posters so not every post is a single complaint about this issue but just for numbers sake I have assumed they are. All in there are 1561 posts. If we assume that every post is a unique complaint for this issue and there are 500K people playing this game then roughly .3122% are suffering this problem But not everyone who plays the game posts on the forum. The reality is there are problems with this game in its current state and the problems need to be addressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-Me- Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 And you know and have spoken with a huge % of the people who play this game have you? This is one of the main things that annoys me about people who complain about this game. They say things like "most people" like they know this for a fact. Although im doing the same thing in a way, you probably know a very small percentage of people playing this game, and have probably read even less posts by different people. Can you deny that most people that played this game are no longer playing it? You don't have to know people to know most people are gone, poof, /uninstalled. Count me as one of those that found the game unplayable after 1.4. I canceled my sub over it, I refused to alter setting in my computer for one game that worked somewhat OK before the update. Stuttering was my main issue and it was gamebreaking but they actually did something after a month to fix the stuttering for me so ATM I'm still here but still dealing with lag that shouldn't be there. When people come in to try F2P and find all the performance issues and terrible F2P model....well lets just say it wont be good. You thought TOR hate was bad before, just wait until we have all the ex-subscribers and F2P tourist flooding the internet with ***'s about this game. They wont be a vocal minority by a long shot. Subscribers to this game are the minority now and I wonder why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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