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The sober approach...
Meridion
Member UncommonPosts: 1,495
Wow...
I reinstalled it, free to play preferred because I spent my 30 days a year ago...
It's hard to describe.
I can turn the pace down now as this game is a sidekick and will stay a sidekick for me.
But as I went back to it, I could remember the marketing, the hype and the launch a lot clearer than last december. And one thing struck me in the face like a truck. Almost like "willing suspension of disbelif" must be a drug that numbs the brain when you're excited for a game launch...
Star Wars: The Old Republic is - from a technical standpoint - a wreck.
I purchased a new PC during the year, I7, GTX680, all the good stuff, and upon entering SWTOR I set everything to high, and it performed ok (after having huge troubles last year), but damn, in the light of recent releases like GW2 or Planetside 2, it looks extremely bad. Indoor stuff is blocky, modules stuck together, the world is small and lifeless, there are glitches everywhere. There are on-rails zones with zero choice of diversion...
It really made my jaw drop. I - honestly - said to myself "how on earth could I fall for this a year ago", the game, even now, is terrible...
I mean sure its free now and I don't pay a cent, but paying for this game feels like a really streched expectation now...
In fact, it feels like STO did in 2010.
And I really don't get how games like GW2 can offer that extreme difference in content quantity and quality with just the box price.
Are developer teams so hugely different in competence? Compared to mobile phones or PC distributors the quality and "bang for the buck"-differences in MMORPGs seem extreme these days.
M
Comments
GW2 cost a lot less, and was largely funded by GW1. SWToR cost a lot more and wasn't funded by another game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Honestly, serious question: Where did that money go then? I know voice over is expensive and all, but I just can't imagine it taking such an incredibly immense share out of the ressource tank that i leaves behind an engine and world design like _this_...
It's hardly comparable to anything I've played, since absolutely everything, from Aion to Rift to LotRO to WoW to AoC to anything ran better and looked more alive than this game...
Please don't take this as negativity (although it might look like it), I'm more of "In awe" right now, playing this game and literally shaking my head...
M
GW2 has a far superior graphics engine, while SWTOR's is sub-par, no arguement there. However, SWTOR has a far superior game design & immersion factor, when compared to GW2 (even though SWTOR's worlds are in-fact, lifeless). I definitely spent more time playing SWTOR than GW2, even though I take issue with SWTOR. Either game isn't really that good though, overall, so the comparison is perhaps meaningless (it's like comparing 2nd or 3rd string sports players, each earned the priveledge to be where they are, but are not the best of the best) .. but here we go!
Both games have a single-player, "I alone saved the entire world / galaxy / universe!" self-centric theme, which ends up just making yet another standard themepark throwaway type game. GW2 is very anti-social, and SWTOR at least tried to integrate meaningful player experiences, here and there. GW2's social interactions is deplorable ... no /who .. emotes I can count on my fingers .. everything is just about auto-grouped. Lame. SWTOR has roleplay, and GW2 does not (just doesn't have the tools, so any roleplay feels very shallow in GW2).
Then there is the company behind each game, and SWTOR has the worse of the two. EA seems more interested in raw cash than taking the necessary steps to make players thrilled to play. Their new Cartel cash shop is not really helping ease anyones realizations about EA's greed.
So to tie this all back to the original statements about the graphics engine, SWTOR's graphics engine is really bad (it can't even handle minor open world PVP). It was one of the main factors that made me play only off and on, while making my RL friends & guildies flat out quit. Customer service was my #2 complaint, but that is handled elsewhere. IF the next Star Wars game would just come out with a graphics engine similar to GW2, with stellar non-themepark gameplay non GW2, non WoW, that would trully be a hit, to me anyways. Because if a Star Wars game came out with GW2 gameplay alone, I wouldn't play it at all, after experiencing the eventual boring nature of dymanic events .. (oh and by the way, I saved the galaxy again today .. what did YOU do?)
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
I have never played nor plan to play GW2. Therefore, I can not speak from my own experience as to how GW2 looks or plays. I can share what friends of mine have shared with me. They have played both. While they liked GW2 for a while, they came to the conclusion that it was just as shallow as many of today's releases. They also told me that the story in SWTOR was much better and well done. However, both games lacked "end game" that is compelling according to them. If GW2 lacks end-game then I would have to agree that GW2 and SWTOR (or many games out now) just are not worth the time nor money.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Honestly, serious question: Where did that money go then? I know voice over is expensive and all, but I just can't imagine it taking such an incredibly immense share out of the ressource tank that i leaves behind an engine and world design like _this_...
It's hardly comparable to anything I've played, since absolutely everything, from Aion to Rift to LotRO to WoW to AoC to anything ran better and looked more alive than this game...
Please don't take this as negativity (although it might look like it), I'm more of "In awe" right now, playing this game and literally shaking my head...
M
When you're looking at a AAA MMORPG, you're looking at a baseline of about fifty million dollars. Heck, five programmers in a field with no buildings, computers or power would cost you upwards of two and a half million for the minimum five years it would take to write the smallest, least feature rich MMORPG possible. They're just expensive. Every person you add to the project adds at least a quarter million dollars. It adds up.
Bioware added like four hundred voice actors and a lot of them were well known actors. They weren't college students who got done with their Shakespeare in the Park rotation. Bioware had more animators and artists than any game I've ever heard of. It's the example above with five programmers in a field to the Nth degree.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yet the animations were mediocre and their art style took direct inspiration from that star wars cartoon
SW:TOR may be the perfect example of numbers =|= quality
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
This again?
Really, in the end the entertainment one gets out of these is entirely subjective. While many find this game to be the epic bore of our lifetime, there are those who enjoy it to no end.
I'm beginning to feel that talking about a game's enjoyment is as constructive as analyzing "humor" and how one level of comedy is superior to the other. Absolutely subjective and entirely pointless.
I am sorry can you please give some examples of how GW2 can "offer that extreme diffrrence" because I found GW2 to be boring end-game non existant and people made it to max level in days. I understand you dont like swtor and you may be a gw2 fanboi but come on GW2 is blah didnt bring anything new to the table except no endgame and only 5 actions at a time. On-rail zones? Zero choice of diversion? This clearly proves you didnt play SWTOR past the starter area. Why come on a forum and look like a fool ? Have you ever heard of heroic area? Flasolpoints? Space mission? Pretty sure those are choices of leveling.The biggest shocker for me when I went back and tried it for "free" was still performance in highly populated areas. Now that the spacestations are no longer ghost towns the performance with a couple hundred people "present" somewhere in the area is even more abysmal than before. It takes allot to slow my rig down, but this game can do it, and look really bad at the same time.
My video card alone was close to 500 bucks 680GTX, SSD drive, 16GB memory , win 7 64bit, 3.4 quad core i7. This is not your average computer. This is the worst perfoming MMO Ive ever played when you get a group of people together in one place, they still havent cracked that nut, and at this point they never will
Open world performance when no one is around me is over 100FPS at times, but this is NOT a single player game. There is still some broken network code in there, and character optimization that still need to be done.
Good luck Bioware, but then again your new "market" could probably care less about performance, some people are just happy getting 15 to 30FPS. Anyting less than 60 and I walk away.
I understand your point but I have to disagree. Isn't discussing one's opinion what this site's all about. Although I agree wit what you are saying, it is subjective but I disagree with it being pointless. I find it intersting to see other's opinion and more importantly when their opinions come very close to mine makes me feel I'm not imagining what I see or feel.
I had mixed feelings about SWTOR when I played it. I was overjoyed about weilding a light saber again, but then, when the newness of the game wore off, I saw it like the OP did for what it really is. Lifeless planets were the bigest dissapointment for me. Any MMO I've played, including some F2P games had more life on their planets then SWTOR. You have to be kidding me that they didn't think players would notice that. The game is fun, but sadly, could have been so much better.
Yeah planets are really lifeless. Actually they are too lifeless for it too be an accidental omission, its that glaring. Maybe they had their own subteam for it which got disbanded early on in the game. Something like "team artwork, team mechanics, team voice actors, team pvp, team abilities and team atmosphere and bunnies", and someone went and said "whuts atmosphere? we don't need that, put those people in team pvp and have them make a big open zone for pvp, we'll call it ilum".
Edit: Personally im tired of the WoW-iness of the talent trees. For example i was looking at playing a healer ... lets see we have the discipline priest ... the shaman and the druid .... wait what? Didn't i quit THAT game years ago?! I get flashbacks just looking at the trees, why couldn't it have been ... more different? FFS WoW probably is more different these days from its BC days than SWTOR, and if that isn't screwed up i don't know.
We told them in beta early on the worlds felt lifeless and was one of the many, many, problems that people would have with the game. They ignored us....
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Lol so weird! My computer is much worse, and I NEVER drop to 15/30 fps on the fleet except when first loading in.
Crazy!
as to the post, it's been said before many times.
The reason why TOR's worlds are lifeless is very simple.
When designing most games, from Bioware's single player RPGs to Skyrim, the first thing you do is plan out the world. Map out and draw concepts for every single level/zone/region. Then you send those designs off to your (texture) artists, who individually recreate all the assets needed for levels. These are then put into the game in (generally) the exact way originally planned, they are 'slotted' in as it were, and therefore the game looks like the artists' original vision.
With SW:TOR the artists were told to 'make 100 doors' or 'make 50 wall tiles' or 'make 10 types of speeders' or 'make 6 different rock textures'. Instead of being a direct document to follow, the artists simply used the concept art as 'inspiration' rather than a design document. Adding to the problems was the fact that textures were all *outsourced*, made mostly in EA's Shanghai or Singapore offices (or so I recall).
Then, instead of slotting in the pieces as the maps would usually demand, the LEVEL DESIGNERS in Austin ended up actually decided how everything fit together. These are people who's job it is to put together pieces and design for optimal quest flow, but they are NOT artists. However they were forced to take on this role because of bad planning.
For *this* reason we have endless corridors and bad textures, for this reason we have poor effects and graphical systems. Because they made the assets first, and designed later.
OK I know that some people have problems with SWTOR performance but I assure you it is not a common experience. I have I7 3.3 with GTX 580 and regular hard drive and in really populated areas like fleet and DK which where I was two days ago had 2 instances and about 370 players there and my FPS was 60. No lag, smooth performace.
In fact never had any problems with SWTOR performance and I have all features maxed and playing in resolution: 2560 x 1600.
So these are isolated incidents but sure very laud.
Sith Warrior - Story of Hate and Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxKrlwXt7Ao
Imperial Agent - Rise of Cipher Nine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBBj3eJWBvU&feature=youtu.be
Imperial Agent - Hunt for the Eagle Part 1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQqjYYU128E
Hmm we must have someone who was part of the making of SWTOR....Yeah doubt that. I personally like the graphics of TOR, they are not the best but far from the worst. Its the art design (or jusr the people again who never played) that some dont like.The MMO game was developed by a team that was good at single-player story games. What a shock that the engine for large-scale action sucks, and the large-scale PvP was terrible. I bet 90% of the beta testing was done on the single-player story part of the game. Heck, with all the voice-overs and time spent on making the story and side-quests, what a shock, right?
Indeed, all the reviews were how the "story" was going to be a gamechanger for MMO development. Well, it's interesting and refreshing, but it doesn't make it a good MMO. In fact, it's such a single-player experience that some would argue it makes it a worse MMO as a result.
Even the multi-player story sections like dungeons, people demand that you spacebar through the dialoge....what a waste of resources and misreading of what players wanted. Players want content as well as a living zone that they can affect. They also want meaningful PvP that has an affect on the world they play in.
Too bad so much money was spent on part of the game that actually makes it a single-player game instead of an MMO. The game will never have meaninful large-scale PvP because they would have to use a new graphics engine, and that's not going to happen. Instead if you like replaying the same warzones and dungeons over and over, then this game is okay. It's not a bad game, but it isn't very dynamic, and that's what keeps an MMO alive.
If you took a short but sharp look at my post history you'd well know that I posted some pretty negative posts on Guildwars 2 only weeks ago (for which I also got some of this mindnumbingly stupid 'yia lololol can zee u never played game lolol'-flak).
So for the record, I've played SWTOR to level 50 almost a year ago and maxed two characters out in GW2. And while I don't play GW2 anymore (because I too think the endgame content is a joke, the death of the trinity a mistake and the game generally antisocial), the graphics, world-design and animation quality is aeons ahead of SWTORs.
It looks five times as good as SWTOR while running on a rig from 2007 flawlessly with animations that could be taken right out of a hollywood movie...
___________________
And for the record - again - if you wanna do the 'what's the better game?' circus you gotta flame LoTRO (subbed since 2007) or EvE (subbed since 2006) to offend me, since both games are absolutely and genuinely better in every respect than SWTOR AND GW2 (and all the other crap I crunched through and spat out after 3 months)...
M
You know, I actually agree. And while I can see other games that misplaced ressources and produced crappy results (Like sub-par animations in LotRO or meaningless PvE in WAR) I never ran across a game that so obviously failed at the most basic concept of MMORPG: World.
M
a lot more people have performance issues than just a few lol . There is like a 30 page thread on the offical forums from people that constantly crash to desktop and suffer from memory leaks. SWTOR is a trainwreck when it comes to performance and this has been spanning multiple patches. They do not even address most of the issues with the game honestly and just keep pushing out patches that continue to break stuff further or just release cartel market garbage. I used to be a fan of this game but honestly i cancelled my sub and moved on because they are the most trash company ive ever did business with in the gaming industry and i honestly hope they fail as they deserve it with the decisions they continue to make.
Also Guild Wars 2 is not a good comparison because the playstyle of guild wars 2 is not that fun for everyone including myself. two different concepts completely and IMO neither of them are any value to the genre at all.
It's EA that attempted to convince the press, fans, and anyone using their official forums that the problem wasn't widespread. Some notable interviews where from people who DID have problems:
BioWare claims SWTOR performance issues are being blown out of proportion
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/01/11/bioware-claims-swtor-performance-issues-are-being-blown-out-of-proportion/
Star Wars: The Old Republic is no Witcher 2, Skyrim, or government-created missile targeting program. It doesn’t exactly look like it should be the Death Star to your rig’s Alderaan. And yet, many players have reported framerates that can barely keep their heads above 20FPS on machines that eat the aforementioned titles/missiles for breakfast. So, what’s the deal? Well, BioWare’s not entirely convinced there is one. With a wave of the hand, game director James Ohlen told Eurogamer that these aren’t the performance issues you’re looking for.
“The thing is, for the most part, 95 per cent – oh I can’t give you the exact percentage – most of our players aren’t really having performance concerns,” he said. “However, we know that it’s important that there is a smaller group of people usually with lower end machines that are having problems in some areas. And one of the most important things for us to grow our service is to continue to bring in more players, including those players who only have low-end machines.”
Guild Summit: Interview With Daniel Erickson
From http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19981-guild-summit-interview-with-daniel-erickson/daniel-erickson-interview-part-2
March 14, 2012
Where are you on game engine optimizations? Because I currently get about 5 to 10 frames per second on Alderaan and about 20 in Huttball and I have a PC that can run Crysis 2 at ultra. With no real explanation on what is going on.
Wow. You should do some investigation, because that is not typical. Where we are on game optimization in general is we’ve got some crazy, crazy options that you can turn on in 1.2. I played running around on several of the planets at fully acceptable wonderful running framerates on min spec machines now, which was the thing I wanted to see.
What we got right now is a big texture package pass, and we did it in both directions. So we can say, “Hey, you can take the textures way down, run around, the game works.” We’ve also said, “Hey, you know those textures people keep saying they like so much in the promotional videos? You can turn those on too now.” Because now we figured out how to do it in a small area so it doesn’t try to do it everywhere.
The next big thing we have to hit is effects, and that’s just a standard of what games do is say, “Hey, you know all those crazy crazy effects that everybody else is drawing? Yeah, maybe I don’t want to see all of your lightning storms all at once.” We have a programming team now that literally that’s their only mandate is game run better. Long term target is you should be able to play on your laptop, you should be able to play on your second and third machine in the house. And we are fiercely dedicated to that goal.
Whether they are common or not, I do know I have a lot of frame problems, notably when too many players are on-screen at once (game runs fast when I'm all alone). EA might not acknowledge problems, but they did cap WZ's to 16 (8 vs 8) and Ops to 16, which seems to be the "sweet" player cap before performance starts to deteriorate below what the eye can notice (~24 fps).
EA did spend a whole lot of time trying to convince everyone that the problem was uncommon, and really though, if a company gets cornered like that to keep requiring a defense, then they already lost the battle, as others realize that there is merit to the complaints.
I also personally don't know any RL friends who didn't have performance issues, as more anecdotal examples, for what it's worth. It might sound silly, but at the GTN or an overpopulated area, zooming in and looking straight down helps FPS. This made Illum playable .. look down, hit tab, hit range attack, hit tab, hit range attack, repeat... not very epic though lol.
There was some analysis of this before, and perhaps something of interest is how SWTOR uses more CPU power to handle graphics than it does GPU power. Some people have problems, some don't .. but EA should have tackled this early on to make the game fluid and fun for all, instead of denying that a major problem existed for a significant chunk of their customers (and the interviewers). As others said, optimization complaint threads have been continuing to crop up onto the SWTOR official forums, even to this day.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
It IS a common issue. Its SO common issue that they SHUT DOWN ILUM BECAUSE OF IT.
Aand funny thing, people like you never ever present proof of their "hundreds of FPSs on full ffleet".
Sit on your speeder and drive around full fleet, record it so all can see.
You sure DO sound like PR machine.
I just meant that so many times conversations turn into this:
User A : "Game 1 is so friggin sweet! Game feels so alive and the quests are just so awesome"
User B : "Dude, Game 1 sucks. Game 2 is where its at. Game 1 is a total Game Z clone. Why would you ever play it? Just play Game Z!"
User A : "No way man...Game Z sucks ass! Game 2 blows! That game is soooooo boring."
User B : "Game 2 sucks? Dude do you even play MMOs? I've been playing since UO and Game 2 is closest thing to it. If you can't see that and think Game 2 sucks then you're just playing it wrong."
User A : "What?!?! Do you work for Game 2's company? I've been playing since Meridian 59 and Game 2 is nothing like UO. Game 2 is an overhyped mess. You're just a hater and had too many expectations for Game 1"
User B : "Yeah, I expected it not to suck. By the way you're a dipshit. You are now blocked. Have fun talking to yourself!"
I'm trying to figure out how fully-voiced and animated quest cutscenes are "lifeless" compared to NPCs in all other MMOs who do nothing but silently throw you a wall of text.
The only thing I can agree on is that the performance is punishing. Load times are definitely ridiculous.
But obviously its not the end of the world for SWTOR. The only MMOs with more players are WoW and GW2(the latter of which may end up with less than SWTOR pretty soon).