I think I know what's causing poor FPS for some users (no fix yet)

Have you noticed that every port, entry area in the game has a "walkround", an area that forces you to walk in a great big pointless rectangular fashion, you either go left in a half rectangle, or right in a half rectangle,

Why ?

The Games forcing YOU, to give IT, loading time, so while you are pointlessly walking around that great big wall in front of you, the game is desperately trying to pre-load all the data it needs, lol

But out in the big bad world the game cannot always do this, though sometimes it does play little tricks, it places blocking structures forcing you to give it loading time, but in open area's such as parts of Tat it simply cannot perform this trick, and then it struggles.

All the loading screens, blink screens, walkrounds, everything, everything that forces you to waste time is simply there to give loading time, the Engine simply cannot deliver a seemless, open and persitant World, and tbh it's struggling to provide what little it can, even with all it's little tricks.

And that's why for me (ie my opinion) the game simply cannot be classed as an MMO, there is no seemless persistant world.

So my head classes it as a Single Player Game, and a fun one at that, I'm still having fun.


On another note, I started a new char, a Sith Warrior, he can't even walk up the stairs in the Korriban Acedemy without bugging out on every step, forcing me to Jump up the stairs, this is in a starting area, and starting area's are the most important part of any MMO, it's when people form first impressions, it's critical to success.

In short, I am starting to lose hope, I love the game, but it just feels rushed and unfinished.

I am building a new PC, and if it still runs like a bag of old spanners after that, then it's back to WoW, Blizzard might only be offering fluffy Panda's, but at least those fluffy Panda's will WORK.

And that's value for Money,

If anything kills the game, it will be Value for Money.

TO be fair and a little balanced on this one particular point, WoW has these too - but a lot less of them I admit.

I agree with the majority of what you say though.

I am building a new PC, and I have an old nVidia GTX 8800, 512, which I think is DirectX 9, but not sure, anyway, going to try it with that, see how it runs, I like my old 8800, one of the best cards ever made.

It's like an old sports car, you just can't let it go, lol

I also have an old P4 (Northwood) system, it was ubber good in its day, might put the game on that, just for the lolz

Thank you so much, you're doing me and everyone here a favor. If you could, try the 8800 on W7? I want to see if the forced DX9 of the card works in a Win7 environment. I know I'm asking a lot, but on your new machine, could you install XP on a different partition and see if your new machine runs very well with it? It might just be that your new machine will pump out this game no matter what. But I would love to see the results of your machine in both Windows environments. Would help mid level machines a lot I think.

If you can't, that's cool, I'll be doing a lot more testing today anyway. Hopefully I'll have Dx10 cards on Xp results tonight.

Just finished testing the girlfriend's laptop, which obviously runs worse hardware. I got just about the same performance, both in the same environment of dx 10 card in Win7. It's honestly just as playable, and surprisingly less spikey, on the laptop. Next up I'll do a desktop downgrade to xp to see if that does anything, Will post results hopefully tonight, definitely tomorrow.

Good luck guys, and if if anyone else can test in a forced DX9 environment, PLEASE POST RESULTS. This **** is for serious.

I am waiting on a few bits (damn that postam, he's stuck in a loading screen I think)

But, yeah it's going to be a Windows 7, 64bit system, 8 gig of RAM, Core i3 2120, and a Sata 3 hard drive, spinning at 7200, about the best you can do unless you go SSD, or buy a Raptor (was tempted,lol)

I'll get it all running then consider putting XP on it,

Due to the serious lack of ANY communication from bioware, and the frustration of people posting tons and tons of feedback, I think a rather important aspect seems to often get swept aside concerning this issue.

A lot of posts seem to always end up steering towards the whole "The whole games performance is bad, what can we do to fix it" discussion.

The truth of the matter is this:


For most people, including the 5%, a BIG portion of the game performs JUST FINE!

This means that SOME part of the game is working correctly, because people, even myself, are getting 60+ FPS in these parts of the games. Solid, consistant, GOOD framerates. This means that the problem isnt some overall flaw in the game engine, or a flaw with the caching system, or animations, or even the FX. In general, ALL of these are working correctly, and are working fine.

Its ONLY in specific situations, ones that can be 100% reproduced, that the games performance takes a HUGE nose dive.

Specifically:

1. Warzones
2. Ilum
3. Fleet

The fact that most of us can get GOOD framerates on a huge, open planet, with 20 other players around, as well as mobs, environmental effects, and who knows what else, means that SOME part of the game engine is working correctly.

The question is: Why can people who experience good performance in situations like whats listed above, suddenly get such bad performance in very specific other situations? (ie: warzones.)


Answer? This lies within the code to Warzones themselves. Its nothing to do with the overal general game engine, FX system, caching system, etc. Those in general, work fine. It DOES however have everything to do with a BUG or bad programming for the parts of the code that specifically tie into warzones/ilum that try to make use of the systems that normally work fine.

Biowares solution of an ultra low shader is a huge gimp to the general game engine. As discussed, the general game engine works FINE for most of the game. What they NEED to be looking at is why is broken in specific situations like warzones. Why they seem to be avoiding this course of action, or discussion concerning it makes me think they are completely inept and have no clue what they are doing. It also makes me think that the Forum people who work for Bioware are NOT DOING THEIR JOB and getting the info that many of us have worked our rears off trying to compile for the dev team in order ot make their job easier.

End point:

Stop trying to fix the overall game engine - its fine. Even the 5% get good performance in MOST of the game.

Start trying to fix the BAD code that causes the game engine to have issues in WARZONES instead.

Chances are, fixing that warzone code will have a direct affect on improving ilum (along with their server side fixes.).

Implying the 5% only get these problems in 3 areas is wrong. Currently I can't get more then 6fps In ANY area.

Then you suffer from issues that are different than what the original 5% came to the forums to inform the devs about.

Im not stating that other performance issues are not a problem, or shouldnt be fixed. Im just saying that if you are getting performance issues everywhere in the game, your problem is different than the problems this thread originally set out to solve.

Low performance EVERYWHERE in the game, as painful as it is, comes across more as your system having an incompatibly with the game. Not that your system is under spec, but rather, there is some configuration, driver, bios setting, MB multiplier inconsistancy, faulty ram sector, etc that is directly causing ALL of the game to perform poorly for you.

2 seperate issues, which shouldnt be in the same thread, because it only makes the problem look like a global "anything and everything" scale to bioware, rather than something that is much more precise and repeatable (easier to track down and fix).

Its why all the youtube videos demonstrating the "5% performance problem" are on ilum and in warzones. People who fit this category get good performance in most other areas of the game. Again, this isnt belittling your issue, just pointing out how you managed to find some similarities to your issues in this thread, and associated your problems, with the ones here.

Boy did it. I can live without seeing the FX of the game if it means it doubles my fps. Fleet station went from 25fps to 60fps and pvp was awesome.