Friday 16 December 2011

SWTOR 2 days later

Ahoy me hearties! Since I've been playing SWTOR for a couple of days now, it's time for a few words on SWTOR client and server performance in comparison with beta, identified bugs and whatever other random thoughts pop in there...

Client performance was pretty good prior to launch and I'm pleased to report it has improved further. I'm running on high settings and get a more than comfortable 30-60 frames per second, only occasionally dipping to around 25 when I'm a particularly manic situation. There are still moments of that memory leak style problem where the game starts chugging and stuttering, but this has only happened twice so far and a reboot cleared everything and sorted everything out. Seriously though I must stress this is a minor gripe and I am extremely happy with how the game runs.

BTW to make those fps numbers mean more, my PC spec is a mere:
Q6600 processor
4gb RAM
GTX260 graphics card
Vista 32 (yes I know.. :P )

The servers have been very stable, I've hardly had any issues other than things getting a little spikey now and again, but compared with other MMO launches it has been very good indeed. Connections to the servers are pretty solid, lag hasn't been much of an issue for me, but obviously since I recently recommended people try out WTFast Lagkiller IF they have problems with lag, I figured I should report my results from the SWTOR live servers. Without Lagkiller running I have a latency fluctuating between 46 and 87ms (which is quite reasonable), but with it on my ping lowers a little and the range stabilises to between 35 and 52ms. So not a monumental change or an urgent requirement in my case, but I'll continue with it as it makes a huge difference for my connection to Star Trek Online (Yes I am still dabbling with that and plan to continue) and since I play SWTOR on a PvP server obviously a slightly smoother connection is nothing to complain about.

There has clearly been a fair bit of work put into how smooth things are with the storyline conversations when grouped and I've hardly had any issues. In fact there's a general sensation that almost everything has been smoothed out and given a little glean of polish, it's hard to list exactly what has changed, it just feels smooth and effortless if that makes sense.

The only real bugs and annoyance I've encountered has been with the guild system. The rosters are broken, randomly listing different amounts of people from one moment to the next. For example at one point last night I know we had 24 people in the guild total and 15 people online, yet the roster listed 2 people, when I checked the show offline box it went up to 5. When i then tried sorting the list by name it went up to 7 people... Five minutes later it showed us as having 3 people. This is a right pain in the arse as I can't set people's guild ranks up because I can't see them in the bloody roster! :P Also officer and member notes do not show up at all for anyone, regardless of changing settings or not. Unfortunately Bioware have done what every developer seems to do when launching an MMORPG and left the guild functionality until last. It's very basic and quite broken. However, with guild capital ships on the way and the promise of other stuff, I'm expecting this to get dramatically improved and to be honest if the only serious bugs are to do with the guild roster, well... that's not too shabby!

So all told it's looking very good. I shall amend my previous "worst MMO launch ever" statement to be:

"The worst organised MMO pre-launch ever, but so far one of the best technically and a joy to play once you're in."

I could also use the word smooth a few more times. Smooth smooth smoothy smooth.

4 comments:

  1. I would like to encourage you to ram every bathrobe wearer who uses mind tricks on people, is a control freak and apparently thinks himself above the law a lightsaber right up the a-hole.

    Good luck creating a Jedi free world. Just needs a better name than Sith, a name which makes for embarrassing typos.

    Well people of course can make do without Lagkiller, but once you got used to it, you can't stand to play any game without the Lagkiller advantage anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I concur. The only issues I've found are guild related.

    Regarding your roster issue, I found that if you clicked on the "Details" button in the roster (which brings up the bigger roster) it sorts itself out.

    Other guild issues I've had:

    - Inviting a person to guild in-game. Assume there should be an option on right-click which is "Invite to guild" but couldn't see it last night. Had to use "/ginvite "

    - Our guild was pre-registered so when I created my first char on our server (Bloodworthy) I got the prompt to join guild after character creation. Shortly afterwards I created a second character but didn't get the join guild prompt afterwards. As I was the only guildie online I had to leave him out of guild.

    I also get the feeling they left the guild stuff til the very end. And these are only minor gripes which a tiny patch could alleviate. Everything else has been as smooth as a baby's backside.

    T.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alas that clicking on details bit doesn't always work. Most of the time it would show me a different list of people lol :D

    ReplyDelete
  4. I find that reloading the UI refreshes the guild list for me. That command is either ctrl+u+u or alt+u+u. YMMV

    ReplyDelete

About Me

My photo
Half man half pixel. Music obsessive, likes a drink, occasional bastard.