Feedback from a subscriber and why I'm losing faith in the game.

[Hyde_v]

I rarely post my own feedback about any game. For me, I do not see much of a need. Game developers are going to do whatever they want to do no matter what a majority of people say to them. But on this one occasion, I wanted to leave Bioware some feedback about The Old Republic. I am not really expecting any kind of acknowledgement (though it would be nice to know someone in charge actually listened to me) nor do I want to get in to a big argument with other players about why I am this way about a topic or that way about another. Still, it would not surprise me for this to go unread and simply fall off the forums to wherever forgotten posts go.

 

Before I get in to it, a little about me: I've been playing video games all my life. MMOs for about fifteen years now. I am by no means the worst player but neither am I in the top ten. I try hard even if I do not always expect to win. I have been a subscriber of ToR since 2012 with the Collector's Edition and have bought all the expansions since. I may get burn out from time to time. I do play a couple of other MMOs but I always come back since I love Star Wars.

 

So, first, what I really like about the game. I love the story lines. They're great. And the voice acting, for the most part, is really good. My companion's AI is really good and since companions have a story as well, I can get attached to them and feel part of a team. GSF was an excellent addition and though it took a few tries, huttball is one of my favorite Warzones. And since I am an avid roleplayer, all of my characters have their own background stories.

 

But sadly, there is the other side of the coin. In the last few months that I have been playing the game, a number of issues have appeared that have disheartened me about the game itself. There are a range of issues so I'll list and group them together as best as I can.

 

*Lag*

In my untechiness, I cannot state with any real confidence just what kind of lag I experience. Whether it's server lag, connection lag, driver limit lag (if there is such a thing,) or whatever. ToR lags. Sometimes, it is worse than other times. But it is always there. Run to a new section of the main space station on the fleet and the game will suddenly pause and then start going again often with my character having changed direction through no command of my own. While players themselves are drawn in slowly, I can wait a good twenty to thirty seconds before a quest turn in machine will appear and can be accessed. NPCs sometimes will not speak until a minute or so after I click on them. And sometimes, they may not even speak at all though they are supposed to. In Warzones, my attack animations will not be displayed for several seconds after it starts. Capturing a node in Hypergate will take thirty seconds to change the graphic that I did, in fact, take the node and for the UI to register the point gain. Planet load times are long. On occasion, even the astromech computer interface icon on the loading screen stops spinning which makes me wonder whether the game has locked up or I have been disconnected. In fairness, I've tried the usual fixes for this. I've turned down my graphic settings to bare minimum, turned off all programs running in the background, including anti-virus, and made sure all my device drivers are up to date. My computer is rather high-end on specs so running the game is no problem at all and a colleague has told me that my pings to the game servers are "more than adequate" to run the game. Yet still, the lag persists.

 

*My tickets are full.*

I have had this happen to me on a couple of other occasions. My tickets will fill up and I can no longer create any new ones. At the moment, I have sixty-five open tickets from 3/18/2014 for things like bugs, reported players, and other issues. Of those, I have received three confirmation emails. I don't know if that is how backlogged your GMs are. But I have come across other items that I should let you know about (like getting stuck in a particular wall in the Civil War WZ,) but I cannot because I can open no more tickets. The last person I spoke to from Bioware about this was that it was a problem within the UI itself. Bioware was aware of this problem and was working to fix it. That was in the summer of 2013.

 

*Hackers*

I never know for sure whether someone is hacking in the game or not. But I never just assume that because I see someone do something weird that they are hacking. However, in the last few months, I've noticed a number of odd incidents that seems awfully suspicious and have had other players say "That is a real hack." For example, the issue I mentioned above about how in Hypergate the game takes thirty seconds or more to show the fact that you captured the pylon has many people telling me that this is a clear indication that someone in the game is using a speed hack and is bogging down the server responses. If you are playing the Denova WZ and the game stutters every few seconds during combat, that means someone is using a hack for instant kills. People who recover from a stun at the very instant they are stunned or appear to be reeling from a stun and can still Throw the Huttball aren't just lucky many times in a row. And it's not just Warzones. I've seen players of Starfighter getting accuracies of 72% or more. It is usually the same people every time. And those are the same names people say again and again are using an Aimbot hack. Do I know for sure? No, I don't. And I would love to turn these folks in. But my tickets are full and I cannot create any more. I will not name names (but boy, could I,) but these kinds of players are taking the fun out of the game for me. I cannot compete against someone who uses a hack to two-shot me or move so fast that I cannot target them. And I don't want to download and use the very hacks they are using. Though it is a really easy matter for me to find these hacks. I could even list sites that allow you access to them. But again, I will not do so. Also, many of the weird things I see, like stunned players still passing the Huttball, might be lag. I can never really tell.

 

*Queue times*

Oh, brother. Queue times can be atrocious. Depending on what level you are, you could spend twenty to thirty minutes in queue for a Warzone. It is not uncommon to spend forty-five minutes to an hour (or more) waiting for a flashpoint to find a group. The group finder is great. And I thank Lucas's beard that we have it. But the queue times need to be addressed. Yes, I've read the articles about the Hero engine and the developer statements that cross server queues have a significant technological hurdle to overcome. But the last time I heard anything about this was in June of 2013 on these very forums. Which brings me to...

 

*Developer communication.*

I completely understand that a developer's time is limited. There is a lot to do and not enough time to do it. When I first started playing, the developers talked to us on a monthly basis. Suddenly, that just stopped. Granted, monthly talks are difficult and time demanding for the developers. But since then, communication dried up. Before a new content patch, the developers will make a video talking about what is coming up. But that is not communicating with us and answering our questions. How about once every four months you answer a couple of player questions? Just something that says "Hey, folks! We do hear you! Keep sending us your feedback and we'll try to respond!" That has been missing for more than a year now.

 

*Team balancing*

Sometimes, the WZ finder does not seem to balance the teams out. One side will have three healers while the other side has no healers. In GSF, one team can accumulate thirty two kills in less than three minutes while the other team has yet to hit five. Arenas can, and are, often four versus three, or four versus two, four versus one, or even just four and no opposition. 4 vs. 0 should cause the game to abort. Not award a free win. Oh, it's nice to get! But geez, I'd rather play than get a free victory at no cost. As for the thirty kills in two minutes, that may be attributed to the aforementioned Aimbot hack in GSF...although I have never been able to shoot someone who was directly behind me either.

 

I'm not trying to grief anyone or get special favors. I just want to play a fair game and have fun. Even if I lose a close game, it can still be a "GG." But so many things are going against that fun that I am starting to consider quitting. And that's sad. The Old Republic has great potential and there are only so many places you can pretend to be a Jedi without being arrested. I sincerely hope someone at Bioware reads this and addresses a few things. Having my own house on Korriban is neat and all. But if I could play a warzone without having to hit my Rapid Fire icon more than once before I see the laser firing would be a lot nicer.

 

I will bump this at least twice if only to satisfy myself that it has at least been visible long enough for someone out there to see it. It's that important to me.

 

I do thank you for your time.

[Lordkoon]

If you want a balanced PVP warzone be sure that the long queues that you experience now will be a dream compared to what could be if things were balanced and the game was waiting patiently for 2-3 healers to sign into a warzone in order to start one. I don't know what level or what server are you having trouble queuing for wz but I always wait 5 min at most on a pve server. While waiting I do my dailies.

[Drudenfusz]

*Queue times*

Oh, brother. Queue times can be atrocious. Depending on what level you are, you could spend twenty to thirty minutes in queue for a Warzone. It is not uncommon to spend forty-five minutes to an hour (or more) waiting for a flashpoint to find a group. The group finder is great. And I thank Lucas's beard that we have it. But the queue times need to be addressed. Yes, I've read the articles about the Hero engine and the developer statements that cross server queues have a significant technological hurdle to overcome. But the last time I heard anything about this was in June of 2013 on these very forums. Which brings me to...

This is not entirely true, the recent PvP FAQ stated clearly that BioWare is not working on cross server tech and has no interest in doing so at the moment. But yes, that was quite a blow and made me lose also some faith in the future of SWTOR.

[JediMasterSLC]

The instances of hacking are mostly likely just a) the game engine being literally terrible b) some players being significantly better than the others.

[DarthMaulUK]

When you have a freemium model like SWTOR does, long Q times are to be expected because

 

a) hardly anyone subs now

b) restrictions on preferred (limits on 5 warzones/flashpoints a week reduces participation)

c) PvP has been officially killed by Bioware after this thread

 

As for lag, there isn't much you can do when the game has a clunky engine and bad coding. If you were here for the days of Ilum pvp at launch, you would have seen a marked improvement as the game engine can now handle at least 9 players in combat without major lag.

 

The future of SWTOR is bleak as the focus turns to money. A Bioware design brief starts 'Where can we make money from items to sell?' - and up pops PLAYER HOUSING.

 

To me, it's a case now of how much money can they make from idiots paying for items on the cartel market until the game goes belly up and/or fully free to play by Winter 2014. They hardly fix anything, and the majority of SUBS are sick and tired of the 'carrot and stick approach' Bioware use.

 

With 2 major MMOs due for release, is it any wonder they are offering Subs 'perks' for remaining a sub during the release windows of both TESO and Wildstar? Good luck in your quest to get things moving forward but it will be an impossible task

[Toweleeeie]

OP have you tried a SSD? The lag your expierencing is crazy. If your ping is good, it sounds like a packet lose issue. Call your ISP and have them test it.

 

The rest is spot on.

[Fidelicatessen]

Excellent post! Well presented, good criticism, and thought-provoking. I hope this percolates its way into the devs' Chambers of Iniquity.

[Darth_Wicked]

After reading your post, there's some stuff I fail to understand...

(...) I have been a subscriber of ToR since 2012 with the Collector's Edition and have bought all the expansions since. (...)

 

You bought all the expansions? The only expansion which required a purchase at launch was RoTHC as far as I can remember. What are you talking about?

 

Regardless, this one takes the cake for me...

*My tickets are full.*

Jesus H Christ... How did you even manage that, I dare to ask.

[NoFishing]

I'm not sure how you can claim that the developers are not communicating. Communication from them right now is as high as it has ever been, if not better. Heck, we had the sage/sorc class designer giving real back-n-forth in the PTS forums in the last couple of weeks. Every month they hold an in-person cantina event where they answer questions, and someone invariably posts a transcript. Not to mention every week there is at least one if not two twitch streams where they take and answer questions. And since most of your concerns seem to be related to PvP, there is also this.

 

Sorry, but your complaint about communication is just objectively wrong.

 

As for the rest of it, I dunno. Seems like reasonably balanced and constructive feedback.

Edited April 2, 2014 by NoFishing

[DarthDymond]

This is not entirely true, the recent PvP FAQ stated clearly that BioWare is not working on cross server tech and has no interest in doing so at the moment. But yes, that was quite a blow and made me lose also some faith in the future of SWTOR.

Yeah, I tend to agree that this is one decision by the devs I'm not a fan of. While I agree that PVE cross-server queues won't be that big of a fix for long queues, especially outside of the tactical FPs, I think this would be a big help for PVP queues - especially in off hours and on lower population servers.

 

To OP on that subject of queue times though, what server are you on and what times are you usually playing? If you're regularly playing at an odd hour for the server it can make a world of difference for the queue. For a while when I was playing super-late at night due to my schedule it would take easily a half hour for a warzone pops, and I sometimes wouldn't get a GSF or FP pop at all during a session. But when I went back to playing during peak hours I was back to getting a pop every 3-4 minutes for warzones and maybe twice that for GSF or FPs.

 

And as has already been said, the issue of balanced PVP teams is sadly something that just ends up getting weighed against the frequency of queue pops. If three healers queue together, a wait for a PUG group with at least two healers to match against them could conceivably take a good long time.

 

The points you raise (including those two I mentioned above) are well thought out and good issues to be raising. So thanks for sharing them.

 

EDIT: Actually, one point that I do outright disagree with you on is your criticism of the rate of Dev Feedback. Between the PVP FAQ, the return of the Class Reps, the Q&A they do during the all of the reoccurring livestreams, and the previews/roadmaps we've gotten, I think they are actually doing fine on that front. Whether people like the answers they're getting may be another matter, but I do think the rate at which they're communicating is alright.

Edited April 2, 2014 by DarthDymond

[jankiel]

I have sixty-five open tickets from

 

Mother of...

[slafko]

OP have you tried a SSD? The lag your expierencing is crazy. If your ping is good, it sounds like a packet lose issue. Call your ISP and have them test it.

 

The rest is spot on.

 

SSD will not help you when the engine is bad.

 

The game stops for a few seconds when I open the Legacy tab. Sometimes it lags for a second when bringing up the companions tab. Mission reward terminals on the fleet sometimes take 10 seconds to spawn. Which is silly.

[Jeweledleah]

honestly, just making it possible to queue for several activities at once will do more to improve the queue times then cross server ever could. imagine being able to queue for both ranked and unranked pvp at the same time? I can pretty much guaranteed that pops will immediately improve.

 

that said... cross server queueing MIGHT improve pvp, but it will NOT improve pve - overall. sorry.

 

I don't know what to tell you about lag. some people seem to experience it. others not as much. I have no idea what might be causing it in your case, but it shouldn't be lagging to the degree you describe. loading screens are a different story, but hey.

 

as for pvp matchmaking - it could use work, yes. however, consider also that premades ARE a possibility. not all premades are people from the same guild. and going up against a good premade can be frustrating and very uneven. I do know they at least encourage reporting hacking and they do seem to be at least trying to fix exploits. whether the pace/ effectiveness of the fixes is good enough for you? is a different story.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Jeweledleah

[DarthDymond]

SSD will not help you when the engine is bad.

 

The game stops for a few seconds when I open the Legacy tab. Sometimes it lags for a second when bringing up the companions tab. Mission reward terminals on the fleet sometimes take 10 seconds to spawn. Which is silly.

The engine definitely has problems and what you're describing in your post can absolutely be attributed to its issues. But what OP was describing here:

*Lag*

[...]NPCs sometimes will not speak until a minute or so after I click on them. And sometimes, they may not even speak at all though they are supposed to. In Warzones, my attack animations will not be displayed for several seconds after it starts. Capturing a node in Hypergate will take thirty seconds to change the graphic that I did, in fact, take the node and for the UI to register the point gain. [...]

is way outside the norm, and may be due in part to something going on at his end.

 

Also, OP there is a bit of a workaround for the serious lag that Fleet tends to cause: A lot of it seems to come from the engine's issues with rendering text on-screen. If you turn off character and NPC nameplates, it seems to help a lot. It's an annoying hoop to have to jump through, but it might be the lesser of two evils if you're having consistent lag issues on Fleet.

Edited April 2, 2014 by DarthDymond

[horrorfaneightys]

This is not entirely true, the recent PvP FAQ stated clearly that BioWare is not working on cross server tech and has no interest in doing so at the moment. But yes, that was quite a blow and made me lose also some faith in the future of SWTOR.

 

That is surprising. I understood that it was going to be difficult, maybe even impossible to implement. But I thought they would still at least try to implement cross server queues.

[trancejeremy]

You know, if you have 65 unanswered tickets, maybe you should ask yourself "Does this really need to be sent into customer support?"

 

I have played MMORPGs for probably 8 years now, I think I've sent in 2 support requests.

[Darth_Wicked]

You know, if you have 65 unanswered tickets, maybe you should ask yourself "Does this really need to be sent into customer support?"

 

I have played MMORPGs for probably 8 years now, I think I've sent in 2 support requests.

 

Yep.

 

That many tickets do imply some mild form of OCD and / or sore loser syndrome to say the least.

[DarthMaulUK]

I'm not sure how you can claim that the developers are not communicating. Communication from them right now is as high as it has ever been, if not better. .

 

It has to be. Elder Scrolls is out this weekend and Wildstar in June. So they need to dip in to show they are still interested.

[theUndead]

I rarely post my own feedback about any game. For me, I do not see much of a need. Game developers are going to do whatever they want to do no matter what a majority of people say to them. But on this one occasion, I wanted to leave Bioware some feedback about The Old Republic. I am not really expecting any kind of acknowledgement (though it would be nice to know someone in charge actually listened to me) nor do I want to get in to a big argument with other players about why I am this way about a topic or that way about another. Still, it would not surprise me for this to go unread and simply fall off the forums to wherever forgotten posts go.

 

Before I get in to it, a little about me: I've been playing video games all my life. MMOs for about fifteen years now. I am by no means the worst player but neither am I in the top ten. I try hard even if I do not always expect to win. I have been a subscriber of ToR since 2012 with the Collector's Edition and have bought all the expansions since. I may get burn out from time to time. I do play a couple of other MMOs but I always come back since I love Star Wars.

 

So, first, what I really like about the game. I love the story lines. They're great. And the voice acting, for the most part, is really good. My companion's AI is really good and since companions have a story as well, I can get attached to them and feel part of a team. GSF was an excellent addition and though it took a few tries, huttball is one of my favorite Warzones. And since I am an avid roleplayer, all of my characters have their own background stories.

 

But sadly, there is the other side of the coin. In the last few months that I have been playing the game, a number of issues have appeared that have disheartened me about the game itself. There are a range of issues so I'll list and group them together as best as I can.

 

*Lag*

In my untechiness, I cannot state with any real confidence just what kind of lag I experience. Whether it's server lag, connection lag, driver limit lag (if there is such a thing,) or whatever. ToR lags. Sometimes, it is worse than other times. But it is always there. Run to a new section of the main space station on the fleet and the game will suddenly pause and then start going again often with my character having changed direction through no command of my own. While players themselves are drawn in slowly, I can wait a good twenty to thirty seconds before a quest turn in machine will appear and can be accessed. NPCs sometimes will not speak until a minute or so after I click on them. And sometimes, they may not even speak at all though they are supposed to. In Warzones, my attack animations will not be displayed for several seconds after it starts. Capturing a node in Hypergate will take thirty seconds to change the graphic that I did, in fact, take the node and for the UI to register the point gain. Planet load times are long. On occasion, even the astromech computer interface icon on the loading screen stops spinning which makes me wonder whether the game has locked up or I have been disconnected. In fairness, I've tried the usual fixes for this. I've turned down my graphic settings to bare minimum, turned off all programs running in the background, including anti-virus, and made sure all my device drivers are up to date. My computer is rather high-end on specs so running the game is no problem at all and a colleague has told me that my pings to the game servers are "more than adequate" to run the game. Yet still, the lag persists.

 

*My tickets are full.*

I have had this happen to me on a couple of other occasions. My tickets will fill up and I can no longer create any new ones. At the moment, I have sixty-five open tickets from 3/18/2014 for things like bugs, reported players, and other issues. Of those, I have received three confirmation emails. I don't know if that is how backlogged your GMs are. But I have come across other items that I should let you know about (like getting stuck in a particular wall in the Civil War WZ,) but I cannot because I can open no more tickets. The last person I spoke to from Bioware about this was that it was a problem within the UI itself. Bioware was aware of this problem and was working to fix it. That was in the summer of 2013.

 

*Hackers*

I never know for sure whether someone is hacking in the game or not. But I never just assume that because I see someone do something weird that they are hacking. However, in the last few months, I've noticed a number of odd incidents that seems awfully suspicious and have had other players say "That is a real hack." For example, the issue I mentioned above about how in Hypergate the game takes thirty seconds or more to show the fact that you captured the pylon has many people telling me that this is a clear indication that someone in the game is using a speed hack and is bogging down the server responses. If you are playing the Denova WZ and the game stutters every few seconds during combat, that means someone is using a hack for instant kills. People who recover from a stun at the very instant they are stunned or appear to be reeling from a stun and can still Throw the Huttball aren't just lucky many times in a row. And it's not just Warzones. I've seen players of Starfighter getting accuracies of 72% or more. It is usually the same people every time. And those are the same names people say again and again are using an Aimbot hack. Do I know for sure? No, I don't. And I would love to turn these folks in. But my tickets are full and I cannot create any more. I will not name names (but boy, could I,) but these kinds of players are taking the fun out of the game for me. I cannot compete against someone who uses a hack to two-shot me or move so fast that I cannot target them. And I don't want to download and use the very hacks they are using. Though it is a really easy matter for me to find these hacks. I could even list sites that allow you access to them. But again, I will not do so. Also, many of the weird things I see, like stunned players still passing the Huttball, might be lag. I can never really tell.

 

*Queue times*

Oh, brother. Queue times can be atrocious. Depending on what level you are, you could spend twenty to thirty minutes in queue for a Warzone. It is not uncommon to spend forty-five minutes to an hour (or more) waiting for a flashpoint to find a group. The group finder is great. And I thank Lucas's beard that we have it. But the queue times need to be addressed. Yes, I've read the articles about the Hero engine and the developer statements that cross server queues have a significant technological hurdle to overcome. But the last time I heard anything about this was in June of 2013 on these very forums. Which brings me to...

 

*Developer communication.*

I completely understand that a developer's time is limited. There is a lot to do and not enough time to do it. When I first started playing, the developers talked to us on a monthly basis. Suddenly, that just stopped. Granted, monthly talks are difficult and time demanding for the developers. But since then, communication dried up. Before a new content patch, the developers will make a video talking about what is coming up. But that is not communicating with us and answering our questions. How about once every four months you answer a couple of player questions? Just something that says "Hey, folks! We do hear you! Keep sending us your feedback and we'll try to respond!" That has been missing for more than a year now.

 

*Team balancing*

Sometimes, the WZ finder does not seem to balance the teams out. One side will have three healers while the other side has no healers. In GSF, one team can accumulate thirty two kills in less than three minutes while the other team has yet to hit five. Arenas can, and are, often four versus three, or four versus two, four versus one, or even just four and no opposition. 4 vs. 0 should cause the game to abort. Not award a free win. Oh, it's nice to get! But geez, I'd rather play than get a free victory at no cost. As for the thirty kills in two minutes, that may be attributed to the aforementioned Aimbot hack in GSF...although I have never been able to shoot someone who was directly behind me either.

 

I'm not trying to grief anyone or get special favors. I just want to play a fair game and have fun. Even if I lose a close game, it can still be a "GG." But so many things are going against that fun that I am starting to consider quitting. And that's sad. The Old Republic has great potential and there are only so many places you can pretend to be a Jedi without being arrested. I sincerely hope someone at Bioware reads this and addresses a few things. Having my own house on Korriban is neat and all. But if I could play a warzone without having to hit my Rapid Fire icon more than once before I see the laser firing would be a lot nicer.

 

I will bump this at least twice if only to satisfy myself that it has at least been visible long enough for someone out there to see it. It's that important to me.

 

I do thank you for your time.

 

Very good constructive post here. I am truly sorry the game did not live up to your standards mate. Hopefully it does in the near future.

[jedip_enguin]

You're losing faith over stuff thats not BW's fault, OCD ticket raising, badly configured PC's and imagined 'hacks' are all on you my man.

 

Cross server queues would be nice for the pvp crowd, but BW have said no.

 

Team balancing is garbage, I wont dispute that either, but its also partly due to the small size of the PvP crowd (you can only make teams with what you have in the queue)

 

Dev communication has been better lately than before, just because they're not saying what people want to hear does not invalidate that.

[Hyde_v]

If the developers are chatting like some posters here have said, I must be missing them. Granted, I do not always come to the Star Wars forums. But if the developers are having in-person chats and there are transcripts floating about, I was completely unaware of them. The last I saw of developer interaction was when there were Q and A sessions linked off the main site's front page. I was not aware they were talking to players still. Perhaps a link to these or a mention in the occasional email I get would have helped.

 

When I encounter a bug, I make a ticket. If someone constantly drops the f-bomb in chat, I turn them in. I reeeeally do not want to get in to the whole "turn-on-your-filter" discussion so do not go there. But yes, I do open a lot of tickets. I do not see how the developers will hear about issues with me sitting in fleet chat going "Yo, Bioware! I got stuck in a rock on Denova and blasted 'til I died."

 

I can try turning off nameplates and see if that helps any. I do not believe that the graphical or sound issues are on my end though. I have several other graphically intense games I play and my computer plays them as smooth as butter. Believe me when I say that my ISP is no help in isolating connection issues. I know this for a fact because I used to work for them. Everything comes from my own research or the gurus that I know.

 

Again, I don't know that people are hacking. I just know that I'm seeing some strange things. 75% accuracy in GSF? That's amazing. But hit a target that is behind them and kill it in one shot? I dunno. A player recovers from a stun so fast it was as if the stun never hit them? That's pretty darn fast. 32,000 damage in one hit? I didn't think our stats were high enough to create such numbers. But more and more people are saying the same players hack. Heck, some even freely admit they hack in open chat. I cannot compete with people who do some of the things I've seen lately. And player skill doesn't figure in to it when a character without a teleport ability can move from the pit floor to the top level in Huttball and catch their own pass.

 

As I said, developers do as they will and they do not have to listen to any player for any reason (though it would be foolish to do so.) I do not expect my concerns to be addressed or even taken in to consideration. But I was quite vocal for several months that the game needed more chairs for us to sit in. Suddenly, chairs started to appear. You just had to buy packs from the Cartel and hope one appeared before you could actually sit in one. /shrug

[Arkerus]

You have some general gripes that are normal. Some that have a good basis to them. The video and rendering lag on the fleet can be annoying.

 

That said, you have 65 tickets open because you are opening tickets that don't need to be opened.

 

No one needs 65 tickets open. I suspect you are using CS for things that are NOT CS problems.

 

A couple of tips:

 

Most people you think are hacking, aren't.

Launguage can be harsh. Time to get used to it.

You may be in need of a general update to your computer. MMOs are different beasts than other games.

 

By opening frivolous tickets you actually DEVALUE the entire system and create a crying wolf scenario where people no longer take you seriously.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Arkerus

[BadOrb]

SSD will not help you when the engine is bad.

 

The game stops for a few seconds when I open the Legacy tab. Sometimes it lags for a second when bringing up the companions tab. Mission reward terminals on the fleet sometimes take 10 seconds to spawn. Which is silly.

 

An SSD does help SWTOR's loading times , planets load a good 20 seconds quicker and the fleet terminals basically instantly spawn. What it doesn't do is help the memory leak , mind you that isn't as bad as it used to be.

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

[Vandicus]

If you post your fps and ms(during lagging periods) we might be able to recommend something that will address your lag.

 

There are a couple hacks in the game that I'm aware of, but if you see something funky in a warzone before the match starts, that's more likely an exploit.

[Hyde_v]

No one needs 65 tickets open. I suspect you are using CS for things that are NOT CS problems.

 

A couple of tips:

 

Most people you think are hacking, aren't.

Launguage can be harsh. Time to get used to it.

You may be in need of a general update to your computer. MMOs are different beasts than other games.

 

By opening frivolous tickets you actually DEVALUE the entire system and create a crying wolf scenario where people no longer take you seriously.

I said I did not want to get in to a war about this. But I will respond to this once. Just once.

 

From the game's Terms of Service:

- Disrupt the flow of chat in chat rooms with vulgar language, abusiveness, hitting the return key repeatedly or inputting large images so the screen goes by too fast to read, use of excessive shouting [all caps] in an attempt to disturb other users, "spamming" or flooding [posting repetitive text].

No cussing in the game. Most people who consistently swear in chat get added to my ignore list. But if I am grouped with someone and I ask them not to cuss and they persist, I'm turning their butt in. And I have every right to do so. If I ever cussed in the game and someone turned me in and I was suspended, well, that's my own bloody fault, isn't it? Rules are rules. Everyone agrees to obey the rules in order to play the game. It is not my fault some folks cannot do so.

 

Opening tickets is how I report things. Stuck in a wall? I open a ticket. Game shuts down while logging in, I open a ticket. Getting an error code? Ticket. NPC is partly inside a tree? Ticket. It's what I am supposed to do unless some developer wants to give me their personal email address to forward things to. This is not some sort of Obsessive / Compulsive Disorder on my part. The ToS also says it is against the rules to abuse the in-game support system. So, I am pretty sure that if I was abusing the system, EA would have banned me a long time ago. And I've been here two years. Blizzard never accused me of abuse when I opened tickets about guards being frozen and not responding or the mob who keeps spawning partly inside a rock and evades all attacks in World of Warcraft. I did not realize that helping out got you labeled a psychopath or gave you the stigma that you were a bad person.

 

My computer is not the issue. I know this. The computer expert friends I have know this. I spent $2500 on this system to max it out in RAM, video card, video card memory, bus, etc. I play plenty of games. The lag issues I mentioned in my original post only appear in ToR. I cannot explain it. But it has been suggested that game servers themselves are the source. I did not accuse anyone of anything. I simply stated the issues I have personally experienced.

 

As for the hacks, hey, I've already admitted I don't know. These could be intended. I know there is a class in the game that can teleport great distances. I know that lag can make it look like someone is still stunned but they actually came out of it two seconds ago in order to pass the huttball. Maybe you can crit someone for so much damage that they die in one shot. If I submit a possible hack and Bioware responds with "This is working as intended," no problem here. This is not me being a sore loser. This is me seeing something strange often enough to wonder if it is legit or not.

 

To be perfectly honest, I do not care what others think about the way I play or that I try to be a "good citizen" in the games I play. Maybe it would better for all concerned if I cussed up a storm, hacked my way to victory, treated everyone that plays ToR like a real jerk, and created hostile posts on the forums and Twitter posts about how the people in the Austin, Texas office suck at their jobs and should commit suicide whenever a problem with the game appears. But I doubt it. Some of us want to help out to make the gaming experience a little more fun is all. I'm so sorry that this means I am worse than some whacko who killed a bunch of people at a Batman movie.

 

Thanks for the time. I think I'll go away now. I seem to have disrupted the forums for some.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Hyde_v