Design decisions and why the game engine hurts TOR

I wanted to love TOR. I have been level 50 for several weeks, and tried several alts. I have tried all aspects of PVP and PVE. But it is with sadness I admit I am no longer playing.

In fairness, I had looked forward to this game for many years. Saved up for a new PC purely for TOR, made sure to get the collector's edition, and blindly applied a 6 month sub on the sheer belief I had in this game. After all, Bioware are my favourite studio. What can possibly go wrong?


The Engine
The fundamentals of the problems lie with the choice they made on the engine. It is no secret that the Hero Engine was a little known entity in the MMO market when Bioware announced they were adopting it. True, the engine has been recoded immensely, but you cannot escape the fact that the only major releases with the engine have been primarily Free-to-play MMOs.

I may not have the most powerful machine, but it is more than capable of running just about every game on the market on max. On this evidence, the TOR engine is clearly terribly optimised. I can freely go from 110 FPS, and drop down to sub 30 fps in the space of about 10 seconds of movement. My graphics card fan will randomly go to max speed (which it does for no other game) in some indoor areas, which is worrying in itself. Primarily, this issue becomes worse whenever there are other players around. This can be seen most evidently whenever you go to the Fleet Stations, or even a Warzone (where I am lucky to reach 25-30 FPS). World PVP on Ilum is where it really hit home to me, when FPS finally fell into single digits. There could not have been more than 15 players per side, but the slideshow completely took all fun out of the encounter. The one Operation I did gave me a blue screen once I closed the game. Some people are pretty convinced that there is some kind of memory leak going on, and there does seem to be some evidence to support this as the game performance does seem to degrade the longer you are on the client.

Interviews from Bioware have stated that it is just a minority that have this issue, but this is clearly not the case. Even just a cursory glance at the Customer Service forums shows many are affected by the same FPS issues. Countless Youtube videos complain of the same, and even on social media and gaming sites TOR is getting a bad reputation for it's engine performance.

This was highlighted to me even more, when I tried the Tera beta this weekend. At time of logon, I was surrounded by literally hundreds of people. There was zero slowdown. Graphics card barely increased in volume or temperature. Clearly, the Unreal engine runs ridiculously well. This is borne out by even Mass Effect 2 (and 3) which run flawlessly on this PC and my last. The irony is the general chat channel on Tera was inundated with people amazed how much better it ran on their systems than TOR does. Go figure.

It is why the decision to go with the Hero Engine originally puzzles me so much. The Unreal engine is clearly much better for the job, and Bioware already had a good working knowledge of it from Mass Effect. Frankly, when I have been running TOR I fear that my machine is going to fail on me due to the unneccesary requirements it seems to put the PC through.

If free-to-play MMOs can run better than TOR (and they do), there is a serious flaw here.


PVP

Ilum is a bad joke. Sorry, but it is. The original design of capture points was awful, but at least you could pull that off in a reasonable amount of time. The few times I have been out in Ilum since, I just see people going around in circles looking for spawns of the armaments. Still no real battles going on, except now you'd have to put in several hours of spawn camping or driving around in circles to complete the weekly. Republic seem to wisely avoid the area due to the obvious server faction imbalance we have. (I played Imperial)

As mentioned above, the issue with the engine's performance with multiple players on screen really adds to this problem. Why else would Bioware openly admit they were reducing the population cap on Ilum? Certainly, you are never going to see battles with a hundred players on screen. Again, when other MMOs have achieved this you really have to question if they knew the engine could not handle it, why even bother with a world PVP zone?

There is also a distinct lack of focus for the endgame PVP. Other than grinding to the Battlemaster sets. Then what? I know they are claiming to add a ranking system soon, but why this was not in for launch is beyond me. It will likely end up like WoW's old PVP rating system, that will require to log on 20 hours a day just to maintain a rank.

As for the Warzones, they do feel like uninspired copy/pastes from WoW. Arathi Basin is Alderaan. Strand Of The Ancients is Voidstar. Warsong Gulch is Huttball. They really do feel badly designed the latter of which is completely dominated by Inquisitors and Consulars. Anything with a knockback here has a major advantage, but these two also have sprints and pull abilities. A group of two or three of them actually working together can completely dominate the Warzone.

I won't even get into the imbalance of classes, but when you hire the remnants of Mythic to do your PVP it would be obvious you would end up with a broken system like Warhammer's.


Operations

I really did not like the design of the encounters. It really feels terribly outdated and again copy/paste from WoW raids of 6 years ago. (Run out of fire, and get out of LoS... yawn) After years of hardcore WoW raiding, there is nothing here that most of us have not seen before. And indeed, that WoW did infinitely better. I just cannot muster the enthusiasm to raid this content for hours on end like I used to.

There are also some pretty terrible bugs evident in them. For example, on approach to the Gharj encounter in Eternity Vault the entire team dropped to death for no apparent reason. This repeated itself multiple times, even down to people dying on the speeder bike and even while outside of the instance on the fleet! Why this sort of thing can hit the live servers, especially after it was supposedly fixed beggers belief.

Whilst we are on PVE content, Flashpoints are overly long. The main reason is trash. The amount of trash on the latter FP's (Directive 7 I'm looking at you) really kills the fun for me. When we take near two hours just to clear an instance, the balancing is horribly wrong. You could clear two raids in that time in WoW for example. It's just padding, and it's irritating.

But then, when you have the same lead designer for flashpoints/ops as whom does the PVP I am not particularly surprised it is lacklustre.


Patching

Which leads me onto patches. The old adage that patches bring more problems than they fix is still very true and seems to be considerably worse for TOR.

There have been three absolute clangers already. The Ilum turret incident, the screen flicker/mini loading screens, and the mouse button crashing. If you look at the credits list, Bioware evidently has a large QA team. My question is, what on earth are they actually doing for obvious things like this to be pushed out onto live servers?

Then there is the priority that things are done. For example, the extreme screen flickering rendered many people unable to play (for epilepsy fears etc) and it took well over a week for this to be fixed. And more recently, the UI change that has rendered the UI to look like a strobe effect when on global cooldown. Yes, these things can/will be fixed. But when it can affect the health of your subscribers, you really need to be making a higher priority for such things. Yet we see mini patches changing things such as emoting on speeders, or adjusting Legacy XP for people beyond rank 20 - which likely effects very few people.

I understand the desire to want to patch weekly, but they really need to ensure first that what they patch actually fixes what the notes promise, and secondly that the fixes are properly prioritised.


Armor

Armor for the most part looks terrible. Especially on the Empire. The amount of hoods on the Republic side is startling by comparison. Sith really got the short stick in that regard. Admittedly they are aiming to overhaul the mod system to allow more variety, but currently most 50's look near identical in either raid or PVP sets. But then, there really is little else to use orange wise. Most are really not that impressive visually, given they are just recolours of greens.

Having played in the beta way back, I know that a full on appearance tab and/or dye system was suggested constantly to avoid just this happening. No-one wants to look a clone. So why did Bioware not listen? And more importantly, where are all those tens of armor sets we saw in some of the early developer videos?


Travel

It's infuriating. For example, on one occassion I offered to help a guildie with a quest on Voss. I was on Belsavis. "I'll be right there." Ha! Fleet pass on cooldown, and quick travel. So I had to mount up, ride to a taxi point. Fly back to the spaceport. Get on a shuttle. Go through the space station. Go through my hangar. Load my ship. Go to the map. Pick my location. Walk out the ship. Load Voss. Walk through the station. Drive to the taxi point. Fly to the distant zone. Then mount up, and ride for another 5 minutes to the other side. All in all, must have took me near 20 minutes to get there.

It really is ridiculous. I hate to constantly cite WoW, but I will again. It was tedium like this that made them introduce flying mounts, portals, and gathering stones.


Companions

Whilst their AI overall is ok, they still do some pretty silly things. (Breaking CC etc)

My biggest gripe is with Bioware's pre-launch spin on them though. There was much noise made about how they could sub for a missing player and replace the healer etc. In most circumstances this is simply not the case. So many fights require constant movement, such as running out of markers on the floor that they simply become a liability. It wouldn't be so bad but when you actually try to cancel them from combat they move toward you so SLOWLY that even if you react in time to make them move they still get splatted.

What's worse is they then implemented instances such as Colicoid War Game where you have switches or turrets that you have no way of getting the companion to interact with. You are basically stuffed, and the promise of using them is basically destroyed by their own design. Myself and my partner were quite enjoying the challenge of trying to duo instances with companions, but it was design decisions like this that lead to disappointment.


The Story

The main pillar of the game, and arguably the main strength of the whole title. Even here though, there are problems.

The main class stories, are miles better than the planet quests. They have more decisions to be made, and arguably better characterisation. By comparison, the planet side quests really seem to follow the same formula as the quests they represent. "Oh, thank god you are here. All our team was killed. Only you can do this!" is the general theme of just about every quest. The issue I have with this, is the same that Bioware themselves made when talking about crafting. "Darth Vader does not craft boots." Indeed, nor does he go around picking up random quests from foot soldiers like some common handyman. Admittedly, there is not much one can do to get away from the usual MMO kill quests, but for me the story on the planets does feel extremely tacked on.

Prior to release, I was one of the advocates that story would make a large change to the genre, and for the class stories it certainly does. But on your second playthrough, the desire to hit the spacebar becomes overwhelming. Was too much focus put onto story when so many other MMO aspects of the game, notably the end game, were so unfinished?

It's pretty clear where most of the budget went to. In my mind though, the story really does not stand up to either Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Or even the original KOTOR. Maybe it is just the disjointed nature of an MMO, but in retrospect I do not think it adds as much to the game as many had hoped. Certainly, once you hit max level the story very much takes a back seat. Once see you see what is left over, that is when you really start to see the glaring holes in the rest of the game.


Social

For a game that relies on people to play with each other, the toolset we are given is horrendous.

Firstly, no speech bubbles. It is very easy to miss people speaking to you in 'say' as there is no real difference in font or colours. Certainly, for people on an RP server this kills alot of immersion as well.

The guild system also leaves a lot to be desired. No guild bank, no event system, no real tangible benefits as there is no guild reward system ala WoW or Rift, nor any guild tabard/emblem/flag.

The social areas are pretty sparse and poorly designed too. I mean, no seats? As I have already gone over in regard to the game engine, Bioware repeated the Dalaran mistake and made fleets for everyone to seemingly gather at the same place. This would be fine, but the engine really struggles, and sitting in the cantina in the fleet is an invitation to give yourself a blue screen.

Whether you agree with the server community theory or not, the lack of an LFD tool is criminal. As a result, we are left with people spamming multiple channels (often in the wrong or inappropriate places) trying to find groups. When they inevitably don't, they logoff in frustration - thus adding to the problem. For the casual player, who has little time to play, they need a quality of life feature like this to make experiencing the content possible. I can fully understand why people are quitting, as if they cannot even find a group for flashpoints they will never see the Operations. So why bother?


Space Combat

I'm not going to get into a massive debate about the merits or benefits of rail shooter versus open world exploration. In fact, I found them kind of fun the first few times through.

My main issue is this. When you look at all the problems the game has had getting everything complete for launch, I cannot fathom why there was a focus on putting this in? Why spend resources on what is essentially a mini-game, when the main engine clearly has so many issues?


Conclusion

Through fear of wrecking my machine, currently I am not playing the game. Certainly I am keeping an eye on 1.2, but my optimism for most of the above points being addressed is quite low. Beyond changing the actual engine, I'm not so sure the core of the Hero Engine will ever be able to perform to what Bioware envisioned. As such, I will most likely end up cancelling my sub to TOR.

This greatly saddens me, as I am a huge Star Wars and Bioware fan. I am really looking forward to Mass Effect 3, and should they ever do an MMO for that universe I pray they have the foresight to use a proven engine. They also cannot ignore the criticisms that have rightly been levelled at them both above, and in many other threads like this on both these forums and others. If even I am bored, I can only imagine what is going through the mind of the average MMO enthusiast.

I think at this point, the only word I can describe the game with is disappointment. Prior to launch, alot of commentators were stating that the end game was a desperate mess and that they had only focused on the story. And to be honest this is borne out once you actually hit 50. As others have said, it may just be best to take this game for what it is, and play it as a single player experience just to see the stories. As an MMO, it really does fall at many hurdles. It is like they have lived in a bubble and not taken on board many of the complaints and improvements that the MMO market has addressed over the years. E.g. WoW reduced the amount of trash in raids, Rift's public quest system and dynamic events, DC Universe's excellent character customisation. But with other games coming very soon in the MMO market, such as Tera, Secret World and Guild Wars 2, TOR really needs to up it's game.

My main fear is that it is already too late. A quick glance at the /who screen shows how few people are actually playing now. And when it takes me over 20 minutes to queue for a warzone at peak times, it is evident that many people have already left. Bioware tried to copy the wheel, and they ended up with a jagged wheel. Sure it works, but it's no improvement on what is already there. With the budget they had though, it should have been so much more.

In light of all of this, I can see TOR going to Free-to-play inside six to twelve months. This saddens me deeply, as I really wanted it to do so well. But I only see a niche market for this game now, and once the more casual audience has completed their class stories I can see them moving on also. It is just a shame that the game engine, and the problems it has created for design choices, has ultimately killed the great potential this game had.

May the force be with you folks. For it is not here.

Good level-headed post. I more or less agree to your points, though I don't think it's too late - as far as official numbers go, the game is going strong and they've put too much money in this to let it go f2p.

I do believe they're keenly aware of their shortcomings, and scrambling as hell to fix the things players keep pointing out. They might not admit they've massively failed in some areas though :P

An LFG tool is coming soon, dual-spec is coming soon, guild features are being added soon - it isn't over yet

And a side note on quest and ops design - this can be argued, but you have to leave yourself room to improve. If you start out with massive innovations in that regard, where do you go from there? I'm sure upcoming flashpoints, ops and quests will have more varying objectives.

free to play in 6 to 12 months.. Ok I'll take that bet.

noted.

see ya.

now that is a long post.

I agree it was a poor design decision to design a game to be an MMO and then make the decision to use an engine which can't handle lots of characters being in the same space.

I've always been baffled at the decision to outsource the engine. They spared no expense on anything else, yet the engine, which is, you know, THE ENGINE; they skimp on it. They bought a half-baked product and ended up having to customize the crap out of it anyway.

Creating the engine is the biggest and most annoying hurdle, I get that. But they should have just created an engine to do exactly what they needed it to do.

It's like building a huge, luxurious home using skilled, experienced builders... and using the cheapest lumber, windows and insulation you can find.

Couldn't agree more Voidskull, a well written post and covers all the salient aspects of where the game seems to fall down on. With regard to the engine, it really comes home as you say when you log onto something like the recent CBT 1 for Tera Online surrounded by hundreds of players and zero slowdown occurs, none at all. This sort of thing really does illustrate well how terrible the current ToR engine is at rendering many players at once whatever your setup.

For an MMo such as SWTOR costing circa $200 million, one has to wonder what the hell they were thinking using an engine that seems at the current time incapable of handling lots of players on screen at the same time, you know the 'multiplayer' aspect together with the seeming inability for the engine to utilize well modern technology and decent setups is saddening. Whether customising the original hero engine just simply results in what we have now or its purely down to the talent of the software engineers working on the project we can only guess at.

Like you I fear that the lack of performance of the TOR engine in multiple player scenarios on even the most high end of setups could mean there will be few people playing this game soon due to the fps issues or when and if they do 'fix' the game engine it will be too late. Lets hope not though, as this game does have potential. They should certainly take on board posts such as yours giving decent feedback of the game we play currently.

Good post and well said.

Well written and all good points. I no longer play, either, mostly due to the travel aspect. I love instances, in all MMOs, for me it's about playing with others. But when that means you literally have to idle in fleet all night in the hope you get a group together, that's not fun.

I want to chime in and say that I agree with everything you've said. Especially this paragraph and the last sentence. I can only say that every bad thing is a blessing in disguise. If this game means that we will finally see the death of so many mediocre and ancient mechanics, then so be it. I only hope that all of the MMORPGs in development or just in the idea phase, scribbled on a cocktail napkin somewhere, take notice of what's happened here and strive to avoid it.

This post pretty much nails it. I mean... There are a few other things here and there, but absolutely every single core issue is here. Good job, OP. Hopefully Bioware reads this, suicides this game, and starts over from scratch. Maybe they would be smart enough to hire you.

I was excited for this game. I played it and I hated it. I really don't see this game recovering so I want it to bomb so hard that no developer EVER considers creating something like this again.