Update on the High Resolution issue (BW response)

[Dakia]

I really have no issue with WoWs graphics. In fact I think they work perfectly for the "feel" of the game. Even after coming back to WoW a few times after 6 months of unsubs I would be reminded of how cool and slick the graphics were. They were cartoony but that is the point, thats what WoW is and always has been.

Don't get me wrong, I love WoW's graphics as well. They fit the theme of the game and immediately made it fit with WC3. My friends always bashed me for playing WoW when Lineage II's graphics where so much better.

[Deleted]

it took WoW very long to update their graphics. and its not even all done. eventually it will happen i guess for swtor
i can live with it. i think the majority probably prefers added content over graphics anyway
and its not like the graphics are horrid

[ZeroWashu]

Having played earlier in the Beta and getting used to my Trooper, when I re-made him at launch, I actually re-made him quite a few times because I just felt like he didn't look like I remembered. I thought I was just being crazy, but this definitely explains why I was having such a hard time. The textures just look like mud.
.

Not mud, my character looks like my sisters Ken Doll from the seventies, right down to the painted on hair.

There is a thread on the official site where people are trying to determine the excessive zone loads that occur and the theory is that some images are sent each time you zone. There is a rendering engine now in the client which is a known copyright enforcement mechanism. This game certainly isn't a resource hog and it certainly has gotten easier on my hardware since beta.

[Poodles]

Graphics aren't content and performance will always vary from Dev machines to end-user hardware. They never said that everyone would run it as such. I understand the frustration, but I don't think that there is anything here that could possibly warrant legal action.

Actually, it would be quite easy to take legal action in this, it's just fighting a powerhouse like EA.

Regardless, money talks, and this is going to burn them bad I think.

[Synche]

As someone pointed out already, if they had kept the high res textures in the game, yet it played like crap on powerful systems everyone would be up in arms "Y U NO PLAY GOOD ON 3k MACHINE?!?!?!?@!"

Guess what, the majority of people play on modest budget PC, usually between 800-1200 $ and would only use Medium settings anyways. Who cares. I don't play any game for the graphics (although they are a nice bonus sometimes) and am perfectly fine with their explanation.

How more trans-apparent do you want them to be when they just explained the issue TECHNICALLY for everyone...

Actually, it would be quite easy to take legal action in this, it's just fighting a powerhouse like EA.

Regardless, money talks, and this is going to burn them bad I think.

Anyone who thinks that they can use any legal action against them is kidding themselves, however feel free to waste $$$ if one would wish to. I really wish where this sense of entitlement for this generation comes from.

It is a good game, nitpicking about a small issue like this will do nothing .

[WarFalcon1]

Actually, it would be quite easy to take legal action in this, it's just fighting a powerhouse like EA.

Regardless, money talks, and this is going to burn them bad I think.

How would it be easy to take legal action against them?
"You see I don't like the graphics, so I shall sue you?"
Are you kidding? They never promised this was the best looking game ever.

[JustintimeSS]

Actually, it would be quite easy to take legal action in this, it's just fighting a powerhouse like EA.

Regardless, money talks, and this is going to burn them bad I think.

I'm not following. If you could explain how anything in beta can be used against them after release I'd appreciate it.

On the topic of screenshots -

Remember that screen shot of 2 droids that looked amazingly HD? It's looks exactly the same in the game right now. Chances are most screenshots we saw were cut scenes and some cut scenes look better than others.

The game looks good for an MMO. They didn't lie to anyone or trick anyone into buying their game by luring people in with promises of HD Ultra graphics.

You people just don't resub ok? If you don't like it, don't buy it or don't continue buying it. It's as simple as that. There is no grand legal debauchery.

[Armond]

My first experience with MMOs was Guild Wars. Everything since then has looked fairly terrible.

If your inability to understand why we can't get cinematic-quality graphics during not-cinematics makes you unsubscribe/not subscribe after your first 30 days, go give Guild Wars a try. It's obvious that all you care about is the pretty, which GW has in spades.

[konaman]

Pretty I don't care about but blurry textures I do. My sith assasin's pvp set looks like crap because its blurry as shit.

[gatorfan]

The funny and most obvious part of an MMO is that you LOOK AT THE BACK OF YOUR TOON'S HEAD 99% OF THE TIME!

The textures on the back of the head don't matter a lick. And then in a Warzone, I don't think you're stopping to admire the texture quality of the opponent's face while they are ROFL stomping you because you are lagging your way into not being able to combat him.

Please think rationally for a moment what you're griefing about. I mean seriously, you have realistic looking trees, ground, and buildings that a game like WoW still doesn't have 7 years in.

[Kezaren]

That whole technical explanation is fine I guess, even though it really only exposes just how lame the engine is, which isn't a good thing to deflect blame upon, because they're still the ones responsible.

The only problem I have here is that for some reason, Bioware (ironically) decided to take a choice away from me. They're saying that, despite what I might think I want, they know best; they've decided that I shouldn't get the high-res textures because that might make the game run poorly in certain situations. But why do they let me pick which screen resolution I want, then? Draw distance? Shadows? Why let me have any graphics options at all? It doesn't make any sense that they give me all these ways to tweak the game's graphics and performance, yet hold back perfectly good high-res textures on the grounds that I don't know what I'm doing.

Let me be the judge of how much my computer can handle, and let me be the one to decide how blurry I want the textures to be. The high-res textures are already in the game, for crying out loud! This is crazy.

[mirodin]

That whole technical explanation is fine I guess, even though it really only exposes just how lame the engine is, which isn't a good thing to deflect blame upon, because they're still the ones responsible.

The only problem I have here is that for some reason, Bioware (ironically) decided to take a choice away from me. They're saying that, despite what I might think I want, they know best; they've decided that I shouldn't get the high-res textures because that might make the game run poorly in certain situations. But why do they let me pick which screen resolution I want, then? Draw distance? Shadows? Why let me have any graphics options at all? It doesn't make any sense that they give me all these ways to tweak the game's graphics and performance, yet hold back perfectly good high-res textures on the grounds that I don't know what I'm doing.

Let me be the judge of how much my computer can handle, and let me be the one to decide how blurry I want the textures to be. The high-res textures are already in the game, for crying out loud! This is crazy.

I think their reason has more to do with people going on the forum and raging because they high-end machines can't handle the high-rez textures. Anyway they could have just let the players chose and make a note that high-rez textures may cause performance troubles in some areas.

[gatorfan]

I think their reason has more to do with people going on the forum and raging because they high-end machines can't handle the high-rez textures. Anyway they could have just let the players chose and make a note that high-rez textures may cause performance troubles in some areas.

I was in Beta early when the Hi Rez textures were enabled and your machine would literally come to a crawl when in the presence of more than 10-15 players. This is analogous to GM giving you a car that could drive in a straight away at 200 mph but if you took a turn you would flip, roll over, and combust on contact. But hey, if you want an option that they know will kill your comp, yeah that is removing your "choice".....but it never was a choice to begin with because it's not practical or realistic hence why it was taken out during the beta process.

[Doylez]

I was in Beta early when the Hi Rez textures were enabled and your machine would literally come to a crawl when in the presence of more than 10-15 players. This is analogous to GM giving you a car that could drive in a straight away at 200 mph but if you took a turn you would flip, roll over, and combust on contact. But hey, if you want an option that they know will kill your comp, yeah that is removing your "choice".....but it never was a choice to begin with because it's not practical or realistic hence why it was taken out during the beta process.

Then why not enable the High res textures for the player character only and use the low res textures for everyone else?

[Sargerus]

More and more i'm convinced that EA rushed the game so it could be released before MoP/GW2

[Neji]

How is that even an argument to begin with considering wow is running on an engine that is 7 years old where as swtor is suppose to be using a brand new engine. The fact of the matter is though that even with WOW's old engine they are capable of making armor appear very well defined while swtor can't do that.

Hate to break it to you but the HeroEngine is ancient. I saw a demo of it 6 years ago when it was originally designed for a game called Heroes Journey. I used to play a MUD (text based dungeon game) by the company that designed the HeroEngine.

The graphics were dated then and they are dated now - don't expect them to improve a whole lot going forward.

[Kezaren]

I think their reason has more to do with people going on the forum and raging because they high-end machines can't handle the high-rez textures. Anyway they could have just let the players chose and make a note that high-rez textures may cause performance troubles in some areas.

How is that any different from people going on the forums and raging about how their machines can't run the game smoothly due to any other reason? I'm sure there are tons of people out there who already can't get a satisfactory frame rate from the game at its maximum settings, and then tune the settings down in order to get it to run better. That's already going on. The difference here is that if I were able to choose high-res textures, and found that even my computer (which can handle Crysis 2 at max settings with the high-res texture pack) can't run SWTOR decently anymore, then I'd choose blurry textures again, and we'd be back where we started, only it'd be my choice, so it'd be fine. Ugly, but fine, because I would be choosing frame rate over textures, not having that decided for me.

[Verth Aeyta]

Honestly I can barely tell the difference between Low and High as there is a very minimal difference in how it affects the graphics the only thing that kills my performance is if Shadows is on... holy balls talk about an FPS drop. But either way the graphics are good enough for me, the gameplay is fun to me and the story is interesting that's all that matters, if this is an issue worth you quitting over then good riddance I say.

[Coke]

This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

I cannot believe that they are calling this a bug.

In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs.

They'll limit you so you don't have to limit yourself.

In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work.

No words.

It's also interesting how they marketed the game with screen shots of the original "high" texture option. Not to mention how the new "high" option is the old "medium", but you all probably know that.

The 3 settings in beta did not work. Medium and High were exactly the same and I have pictures to prove it.

[gatorfan]

Then why not enable the High res textures for the player character only and use the low res textures for everyone else?

And I'd respond with why do this with your own character when you're staring at the back of their head?

The only times you see the front is:

a) During a cut scene
b) When previewing in the wardrobe viewer

So frankly it's a feature the high end player would use only 1% of the time and only 1% of the population would even pay attention to. This is a formula to prioritize to the bottom of the list for dev resources.