Why did the performance significantly decrease in 2.1?

[tman_ac]

I guess everyone has noticed it already, with 2.1 they patched in a huge performance decrease. On the fleet the terminals are loading forever, never had that issue before 2.1. Some guild mates stay at the location for like 1 minute before the terminals show up. I am a lucky guy and it takes "only" 5-10 seconds before they are visible.

 

If I make a quick assumption, BW maybe gave us already the answer why the performance decreased like hell. According to this post, the Collections system may be the reason for it:

 

Hey, guys, let me give a little background on this decision and how it came to be.

 

During development of the Collections system, a couple of problems became apparent in terms of how things are architected on the back end of SWTOR. The short form is that making all items in a collection separate items had a lot of nasty side effects. It increased the amount of data storage per character considerably, it increased login times to handle versioning up your character, and it also quintupled the number of things in the collections GUI, making that GUI an unreadable mess. The team working on this feature looked at these problems and decided that the best possible solution to these issues was to consolidate these items into sets.

 

This as well reflects why they adjusted the players cap on the fleets and various planets:

• Decreased the instance population cap on Imperial and Republic Fleet Stations as well as several planets.
  

 

So, can anyone of the Devs explain me the following: Why did you implement a feature that leads to massive performance issues? I want a better performance rather than this collections system.

[OKandrew]

I am still waiting for them to acknowledge this. Getting old pretty fast.

[Pubsam]

If they hadn't put a handy sign up for it, I would never have found the customization kiosk on my own. I went to the area and there was literally nothing there. Then one player loaded. Then a few more, soon there's a crowd standing around... still nothing. My faith and patience were eventually rewarded when the thing in all its glory miraculously appeared! Whole process took at least a minute.

 

First day of the patch I also had a good minute of confusion in the bank area wondering where the bank went, or thinking it was there but not interactable for me.

 

Mission terminals in the much less populated 'Supplies' area still take about 15 seconds or so. Pre-2.1 I never waited on these things.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Pubsam

[tman_ac]

Yeh, that's what confused me as well. First I thought they move the terminals cause they didn't show up.

 

I really wonder if they have a QA. I mean, they obviously can't simulate heavy population so why didn't they bring that patch to the PTS before?

 

Lately it feels like they are patching in everything at all costs. This game needs a performance increase. not another decrease ffs!

[Pinkiebee]

Quote:

Decreased the instance population cap on Imperial and Republic Fleet Stations as well as several planets.

 

Has anyone actually seen a decrease? I've seen as many as 247 on fleet since 2.0 and even 2.1. I am also getting very tired of the slow phase times to flashpoints, opps, fleet. They all seem to have increased since 2.0 as well.

[LordArtemis]

The categories and how they are listed is just a mess IMO. I think it would have been far better to do the following...

 

Armor

Weapons

Crystals

Vehicles

Toys

Misc

 

With percentages of each and the items displayed in the right pane. I understand they wanted to provide us with a path to knowing where we could get these items, but in the end I think it just turned the entire list into a cat fight.

 

They could have just added an extra info line on the graphic...Source - [insert name here] Cartel Pack. If they wanted to go one better they could have also listed individual items in each armor set that would display as we collect them in a list style, much like set bonuses display on a chest piece or the like.

 

Better yet, move the individual items for armor sets mentioned above into the legacy achievement area...treat them like Achievements instead, showing the percentages of the packs and the armor collected, with individual pieces listed, much like the social armor list.

 

I think it simplifies and focuses the collection system, and still provides the percentages and listed items given as achievements, with perhaps a small achievement point bonus.

Edited May 24, 2013 by LordArtemis

[Umwak]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's seen this decrease in performance. I've also noticed it when changing location via Quick Travel, Emergency Fleet Pass, etc. The screen and music kind of freeze up for a few seconds before I'm finally transported. This was introduced with 2.1.

[iamthehoyden]

Yep, 2.1 introduced some seriously slow loading of items for me: bank terminals, mission terminals, etc etc. Most of those aren't a huge deal, but I'm really getting tired of driving along and then stalling out while npcs and items load in game. Very irritating.

[Samoth_Nomad]

I'm glad I'm not the only person this is happening to. It's getting annoying, waiting 20-30 seconds for a mission terminal, mailbox, vendor, or cargo hold to load. This is the first time I've seen this kind of lag. The instances load just as fast as they always have, but these other things, not so much. It's pretty bad.

[Broja-Lew]

Having slow loading times or choppy screen issues with the terminals mission mail gtn, space combat, planet areas, the only things that remain pre 2.1 performance are the SHIP FP and OPS instanced areas.

 

Tried dropping the graphic settings from uber high to flat art and surprisingly no change at all. Frame rates anywhere between 40-100 and still space missions are like banging your head against the screen literally, (speed up slow speed up slow all the time).

 

It's tiresome, I'm reaching the point now where I am in constant dread of the next patch. I am just gonna have to play less just because dealing with this is hurting my eyes too much.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Broja-Lew
spelling

[tman_ac]

Just looks like the engine can't handle it. That's why we have no chat bubbles. And that's why they shouldn't have introduced collections.

 

I mean, what's next? 5 more features and we have to wait 5 minutes before the terminals are done loading.

 

Any word on this BW? You are even aware of this?

[Spatology]

I guess everyone has noticed it already, with 2.1 they patched in a huge performance decrease. On the fleet the terminals are loading forever, never had that issue before 2.1. Some guild mates stay at the location for like 1 minute before the terminals show up. I am a lucky guy and it takes "only" 5-10 seconds before they are visible.

 

If I make a quick assumption, BW maybe gave us already the answer why the performance decreased like hell. According to this post, the Collections system may be the reason for it:

 

 

 

This as well reflects why they adjusted the players cap on the fleets and various planets:

 

 

So, can anyone of the Devs explain me the following: Why did you implement a feature that leads to massive performance issues? I want a better performance rather than this collections system.

 

I like the collections system, but not at the cost of performance. I'd also like an answer to this question.

[Sobur]

Yep they are the geniuses that decided to go with an untested game engine instead of the reliable ones. Now they are going to have countless problems till bioware/EA turns the power off. Way to go.

[OKandrew]

Just looks like the engine can't handle it. That's why we have no chat bubbles. And that's why they shouldn't have introduced collections.

 

I mean, what's next? 5 more features and we have to wait 5 minutes before the terminals are done loading.

 

Any word on this BW? You are even aware of this?

 

No, they won't acknowledge this at all. I know, I've been asking for weeks for a response. Dead pan silence.

[JSitruc]

I dont know if this is related, but during SnV first boss. Sometimes when I get "Lost" my screen will blink as if im in the lost area. then blink back to a load screen. By the time the loading screen goes away 15-30 secs has passed, the environment effect and womp rats have taken my health down to 5%. Before I am able to react, im already dead.

 

This has happened to multiple people in my raid group and it seems like it didnt start happening until 2.1.

[tman_ac]

No, they won't acknowledge this at all. I know, I've been asking for weeks for a response. Dead pan silence.

 

Yeh, basically when they are silent about a matter it means: We can't do a **** against it so we keep quiet and hope they won't moan about it anymore.

 

Sad but true.

[JacenHallis]

It's not just on the fleet, either. Before 2.1, I had no problem with performance on Makeb. Now, there are times when performance degrades a lot, even going into single-digit framerates (usually at the respective faction bases). I could routinely get more than 50 fps in the fleet, with immediate loading of all terminals. Now, terminals do take a long time to load up, and framerates have plummeted, though I haven't actually measured.

 

There was something in 2.1 that really killed my performance. Every setting in Windows, every hardware setting, and every setting in the game has remained the same. The difference was the update.

[tuxiz]

this patch is lagging like hell for me im getting really huge fps drops never had that problem before .

[UltimateKrucible]

Glad it's not just me ... I've got a pretty good rig but always had slight problems with things taking a while to load or seeing lots of empty speeders flying round the feet (once put in a bug report about that - little ol' naive me ).

 

But where previously it would be things like textures or the floating mail icons on mailboxes that would take a while to come onscreen - now its the boxes themselves!

[Voxx_Voltaare]

Even before this patch I've always had piss poor performance on fleet. Lots of stuttering and such. My computer specs are so high that at one point it briefly achieved consciousness and asked ME why TOR performed so bad.

 

I don't know if there is any hope for the future. An engine can only be optimized so much. It just boggles my mind that they could be so short-sighted to build on an engine that couldn't even handle the core tenants of a MMO.

[Ansalem]

Apparently the devs have just given up responding to threads like this. They must know the game performance sucks and there is no hope for it to ever improve. I guess we just get stuck with combat delays, psuedo GCDs, slow loading, bad rendering, and occasional crashes when we try certain flashpoints. If a dev responds to this thread Ill insert the foot right into my mouth.

[goldhtown]

I think I speak for a vast majority of players when I say performance after 2.1 is worse than it was before.

 

***Primary Issue***

Slow Graphic Rendering

 

Simple Example:

On fleet, the Bank, Mail Box, or any other small clickable loads very slowly. For many people in our guild, with even high-end systems, it was immediate response before now it takes 10-20 seconds minimum for them to appear after loading fleet.

 

***Major Issue***

Graphic Rendering issues in 16-man Operations (way more than before)

This became very apparent when doing S&V 16 Man HM Boss 7, Dread Master Styrak:

 

*Constantly tanks were reporting the dragon spit was not rendering.

 

*Repeatedly members would report rendering issues right after being returned from a nightmare phase. The raid wiping issue was the 8 force ghosts not rendering for some players, trying to get in melee range to prevent obliterate on a mob that has not rendered is a major issue.

 

*After multiple issues all having to do with things not rendering during the fight we finally killed the Dread Master after about the 5th attempt. We could have probably one shot it if we didn't have all these problem across 10 of our 16 people in the raid.

 

***Our Understanding***

From what we hear this is an issue with the new collections feature causing extra load times for everyone, and interfering with graphic rendering on even the highest end of systems.

 

***We need a solution soon!***

If my guild is to continue to do 16 Man Raids we will need a solution very soon.

*Do whatever you guys need to do internally to fix this please!

*Please disable the collection option ASAP if that is the problem until it is fixed.

*My guild has 40+ subscriber accounts that raid on almost a nightly basis throughout the week, and they count on 16 Man Raids (This number does not reflect alts or trial members)

* Alternative option MOVE THE COLLECTIONS option to the personal star-ship ONLY. (Disabled everywhere else)

 

WE NEED A SOLUTION SOON.. MEANING NEXT WEEK or I will be forced to start canceling 16 man raids in favor of 8 man making a lot of people unhappy.

 

*****To Conclude*****

Frankly, we're upset that this is effecting so many people, not just low-end systems but very-high end systems also. We are very tired of hearing guild member complaints about performance issues that suddenly come up after the new patch that NEVER existed before.

 

A dev response at least telling us you guys are working on it would be appreciated, and a rough timeline when a patch to fix things is coming.

[TomWolp]

I have also noticed a signifcant drop in performance since 2.1. Before that, the game ran pretty well on my 2 year old computer.

 

I have the same Graphic Rendering issue. The first day after 2.1 hit was the most pronounced with the guild bank not rendering at all. It has gotten better but it takes significantly longer to render things than they used to.

 

 

That however is an annoyance. The more serious issue is I have began to notice ability delays and abilities simply not firing. I know people have complained about this before, but I did not have issues prior to 2.1. Since then, especially on Makeb, I have had those delays.

[Projawa]

IMO the biggest performance issues are the lag spikes that occur in fps/ops/wz leading to fake GCDs.

I keep a running ping -t going in the background when I play and the lag spikes seem to be getting longer- now they are 2-3 seconds, before 2.x they were 1.5-2 sec on average.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Projawa

[KostonxEld]

Happening to me as well. All terminals and mail boxes and banks on fleet load SO SLOW now. This and I noticed in an op my fps was a lot lower now than it has ever been. 2.1 messed something up for a lot of people.