My milkshake brings all the Sith to the yard

And they're like, it's better than yours

Damn right, it's better than your's

I could teach you but I have to charge

they will not do that because alot of people play swtor are using old pc that will not run on frostbite

if people can play bf3 they will be able to play swtor on frostbite, it doesnt have to run on ultra settings. i wouldnt be shocked if ea/bioware have ahad a team coding the game to frostbite since release but they needed the game out to get some coin back.

Frostbite(n) is not designed for MMOs, it's designed for single player/small encounter games.

Not that it could not be adapted in the future to be MMO capable, but today's MMOs require a lot more to an engine then is presented with Frostbite.

Separately... this MMO is launched... heading into it's second year of play and stable. You would have to literally pull the plug to rip the MMO apart to integrate a new engine. That's not going to happen, not because it's not possible (it is) but because it has no solid return on investment by doing so. MMOs do not compete/differentiate primarily on their graphics (regardless of what some players want). A new MMO engine will arrive perhaps with the introduction of a new MMO. The old days when an MMO simply bolted a 3rd party engine to the front end and went live are gone.

Frostbite(n) is not designed for MMOs, it's designed for single player/small encounter games.

 

Not that it could not be adapted in the future to be MMO capable, but today's MMOs require a lot more to an engine then is presented with Frostbite.

 

Separately... this MMO is launched... heading into it's second year of play and stable. You would have to literally pull the plug to rip the MMO apart to integrate a new engine. That's not going to happen, not because it's not possible (it is) but because it has no solid return on investment by doing so. MMOs do not compete/differentiate primarily on their graphics (regardless of what some players want). A new MMO engine will arrive perhaps with the introduction of a new MMO. The old days when an MMO simply bolted a 3rd party engine to the front end and went live are gone.

Well technically we only know what the frostbite can do because of what it has been used for, it is currently being implimented in a sort of mmo in the form of c&c and its being used for the bulk of all new games including the new dragon ages and the new mass effect that the rumor factory are stating is going tobe an mmo, we can see what frosty 2 can do and the extremes it can be pushed to with bf3 and we are currently sat on frostbite 3.

At the end of the day we have no idea what dice have done with this engine or future itterations it can be used for as the only people who can get knees deep into it are ea as they dont let anyone else use the engine. On that note it wouldnt be the 1st time a game goes to a new engine.

They'd have to rebuild the game from the ground up to convert it to a new engine, tens of millions of dollars and years of work.

Never going to happen.

They'd have to rebuild the game from the ground up to convert it to a new engine, tens of millions of dollars and years of work.

 

Never going to happen.

Look at it this way, cash up now and cheaper running costs in the future or higher running costs in the future. If this were a stand alone rpg i would agree with you but as its a game with an expected lifespan of atleast a decade i see the money argument leaning towards get a better engine and pay less later.

The problem is not with the graphics part of the engine - its the networking code. There is a reason why we dont have 16+ raids and warzones. The engine simply cant handle it - and by engine I dont mean the Hero Engine since the version BioWare bought had zero multiplayer functionality. All the network code is done in-house at BioWare and changing to a more "modern" engine like Frostbite will only re-introduce the same problems unless they step up and actually optimize their network code.

The Hero Engine can do much more graphically, but the style art chosen for Old Republic is why everything has a cartoonish look to it. Not because of engine limitations (people in Beta was playing with high resolution textures - the ones we only see in cinematics now - with zero performance issues).

True, DICE are very good at engines and network code, BioWare have always been terrible. So even if they were to starting using Frostbite, I'm sure they'd break it.

Bioware are already using frostbite on 3 games.

perhaps in the future EA can find a cheap and easy way to do this, maybe.

This is the crust of the bisquit. The engine we have today is so integrally wired into the entire game operation.. there would be no cheap and easy way.

Hence.. any discussion based on return-on-investment begins with a very large investment coefficient.. and hence swamps the return coefficient in the analysis. The degree of difficulty for "return" to exceed "investment" is quite high. It's a bad risk vs return if looked at from a project management and implementation standpoint. Not to mention all the stuff that would get broken along the way that is not broken now (or not broken enough to need emergency fixing).

No.

Not everything belongs on the over-glorified Frostbite engine. Not even Battlefront. But they'll do it anyway because the masses all favor the "SUPER COOL, EDGY REALISTIC LIGHTING GRAPHIX!!!!!11111" engines.

Is it a good looking engine? Sure, i guess. Does it belong and fit every universe and feel? Definitely not. Especially not Star Wars.

The problem is not with the graphics part of the engine - its the networking code. There is a reason why we dont have 16+ raids and warzones. The engine simply cant handle it - and by engine I dont mean the Hero Engine since the version BioWare bought had zero multiplayer functionality. All the network code is done in-house at BioWare and changing to a more "modern" engine like Frostbite will only re-introduce the same problems unless they step up and actually optimize their network code.

 

The Hero Engine can do much more graphically, but the style art chosen for Old Republic is why everything has a cartoonish look to it. Not because of engine limitations (people in Beta was playing with high resolution textures - the ones we only see in cinematics now - with zero performance issues).

My general impression is the same as yours.

Perhaps a significant rework of the network side of things could be done at some point..and would likely provide the best return on investment in terms of play experience. Even this, I'd be skeptical as to how well they could do it since it's probably wired into the bowels of what we call the engine.

This is the crust of the bisquit. The engine we have today is so integrally wired into the entire game operation.. there would be no cheap and easy way.

 

Hence.. any discussion based on return-on-investment begins with a very large investment coefficient.. and hence swamps the return coefficient in the analysis. The degree of difficulty for "return" to exceed "investment" is quite high. It's a bad risk vs return if looked at from a project management and implementation standpoint. Not to mention all the stuff that would get broken along the way that is not broken now (or not broken enough to need emergency fixing).

Well lets do a what if and stab at numbers, totally not gonna be close but meh. Lets say they have a dev team set up for trying to get lets say chat bubbles into the game and other things that are having to alter the engine to try and get it to work how they want, and they cost 2 mil a year.

If it costs 25 mil, which i dont think it would cost at all but lets use that as an example. Now the 2 mil a year does sound alot and the engine wouldnt be worth it for thoses costs, but that 2 mil is just what it costs for that team todo that, that team could be producing new content along with the others which could return 10 mil a year and future development could be introduced at 1/3 of the current costs.

This is all guestimation but you get my point. its like they built a racing car and put a engine from a kit car in it, the engine is quite fine for 200bhp but bioware want it to have 1000 bhp. they have stuck nos on it, its held together with hopes and prayers and when ever they try to turn a corner the old engine kicks them in the head and just goes naaa cant do that.

Keep in mind everyone who works on SWTOR will have to learn a new engine, scripting language, asset pipelines, etc. It isn't as simple as people think.

There is a reason no MMO has ever changed engine after release.

My general impression is the same as yours.

 

Perhaps a significant rework of the network side of things could be done at some point..and would likely provide the best return on investment in terms of play experience. Even this, I'd be skeptical as to how well they could do it since it's probably wired into the bowels of what we call the engine.

I wouldnt be surprised if they are constantly working on optimizing the game. Fact is, its running better now then at launch - at least on my machine. But there is still alot to desire in terms of pure performance when there is more then 4-5 people around you. As a reference, WoW had the exact same problem, but they got it fixed within the first year. And lets be frank here, BioWare has never been known as engineers, but storytellers

Keep in mind everyone who works on SWTOR will have to learn a new engine, scripting language, asset pipelines, etc. It isn't as simple as people think.

 

There is a reason no MMO has ever changed engine after release.

There is a reason why most mmo games companys use an engine that actualy works from day one. Bioware isnt one of them in concern to swtor. ohlen stated this engine was a problem child from basically day one and sky rocketed the costs for swtor.

This thing is so buggy it cant even do speech bubbles, get a q log over 25, more then likly doesnt have an api because the engine would simply have a heart attack if we were putting our own code into it.

Even if frostbite was viable for adaptation into an MMO and the game ported from hero engine it would still look the same.

What we see isn 't the engine, it's the assets it utilizes.

Making all new assets that'd look on battlefield4 level in addition to the engine transplant would basically add up to making a new game, and that's not happening till TOR and WoW shut down to make way for Titan and whatever EAs answer to Titan is.

And by that time frostbite is gonna be old news anyways.

I do hope for a SW SPRPG from Bioware on Frostbite3 asap tho.

not quite, what we see now is limited by the engine in visual terms, that doesnt mean that weather effects, visual effects couldnt be added onto the game as it stands now as a prime example is rain, mist, fog, water effects, shadows, light particles and enviroments with destructable objects in real time not phased changes within warzones in flashpoint/operations. If they can get chat bubbles to work without lag which is a basic function on nearly every other mmo going would be a huge advance to what we have now.

Then you have the costs of what it actualy costs now to develope new content, the time it takes to develope new content as we have no idea what they have todo with the engine every time they introduce something new, do something to a zone.

So whilst yes a new engine wouldnt mean the game would look any different you would sure as hell be able to tell the difference just on how it runs and how things like fps and dif computer specs interacting with the engine itself.