BioWare: "most" people aren't having SWTOR performance issues

By Robert Purchese Published 10 January, 2012

It's a "smaller" group with low-end PCs.

"Most" Star Wars: The Old Republic players "aren't really having performance concerns", game director James Ohlen assured Eurogamer this afternoon.

He estimated that around five per cent of the MMO's million-plus player base had problems. Those problems being plummeting SWTOR frame rates, as reported earlier this week.

Ohlen said these problems were often related to gamers with low-end PCs.

His response came when asked whether there was a deeper SWTOR performance problem than BioWare was letting on. So far, BioWare has been content to issue a stock workaround each time low frame-rates are questioned on the SWTOR forum.

"The thing is, for the most part, 95 per cent - oh I can't give you the exact percentage - most of our players aren't really having performance concerns," James Ohlen told Eurogamer.

"However, we know that it's important that there is a smaller group of people usually with lower end machines that are having problems in some areas. And one of the most important things for us to grow our service is to continue to bring in more players, including those players who only have low-end machines.

"So we have a client team, a team of programmers, whose entire job is to optimise the code, find out where some of the issues are, and then fix that up.

"Most of the performance issues are localised though," he added. "They're things that we can track down. I would call them bugs."

BioWare has been speedily rolling out bug fixes for SWTOR since launch. These hot fixes will often be separate to content patches, which will take weeks to assemble.

SWTOR's tasty opening cinematic.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (59) Latest comment 4 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • _LarZen_ #1 5 months ago

    I have a i7,16gb ram,SSD and a GTX590 gfx card...getting as low as 20fps in imperial starfleet space station...
    Edited by _LarZen_ at 10/01/12 @ 17:38

  • DurzoBlint #2 5 months ago

    Hi, I work for BioWare and do I have a bridge for you

  • Rrralphster #3 5 months ago

    About 5% of a playerbase read and/or write on forums. Coïncedence?

  • soviet_ #4 5 months ago

    Shit performance when there's more than a handful of players on screen and that's with a beast of a rig, no way should I be dropping to 20-30 fps.

    PvP runs like a dog, ability delay is awful and fps is more choppy than usual.

    Still no hi res textures or AA.

    Top it all off the game only looks decent, nothing spectacular and it canes my machine. Shit engine or shit optimisation, either way it's their fault and you know they won't fix it
    Edited by soviet_ at 10/01/12 @ 17:50

  • wonderdog #5 5 months ago

    i have an i5 8gb ram and a gtx560 and i am having bad lag on the imperial fleet as well.

  • George-Roper #6 5 months ago

    Oh dear, that's not a great response to the community. I know for a fact that players with i7s, 8gb+ ram and 580s are having major issues in PvP and cities.

  • TYPICAL_RANDOM #7 5 months ago

    I saw the headline and i would just like to say honestly
    ( I haven't played the game but )
    ! THAT'S WHAT THEY ALL SAY !

  • Chelladox #8 5 months ago

    Oh Bioware. Be honest. You failed at properly optimizing your game and you know it.

  • Shikasama #9 5 months ago

    Ah, good to kow. I was worried it was their rubbish rendering engine.

  • cukydoh #10 5 months ago

    General performance maybe. I have a mid-high end system and in all fairness I don't have any major issues when playing the main game. I do however have insane issues in any PvP scenerio. Completely unavoidable and EVERYONE else in every match I've in says the same thing.

    Calling bullcrap on that Bioware.

  • login_name #11 5 months ago

    This is total bullshit. Both my wife and I have frame rate issues in various places including the ship, which is basically just a couple of empty rooms (i7, 8gig ram, GTX580s).

  • DrStrangelove #12 5 months ago

    I have an i5, GTX560ti, 8GB RAM, and have no problems. Never tried this game though.

  • Nikm #13 5 months ago

    I have an i7 with 6 GB ram and GTX560 TI I get odd FPS drops sometimes when I load indoor envioments.. I can fix it by toggling between windowed mode and full screen mode even if I tap back to windowed mode.

  • xdethrok #14 5 months ago

    I have an i5-2500k at 4.5 GHz. I have a N570GTX. I have 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM. I'm running the game off of a 120GB SSD that has nothing else on it but the game.

    Please, BioWare, come at me with your "low-end PC" excuse. Explain to me why I'm having FPS drops randomly on planets, stuttering, and absolutely terrible FPS on the Imperial Fleet.

    And for the love of God, do not give me an excuse regarding driver issues and the like. I know what I'm doing with my PC, and clearly, you do not know what you're doing with that game engine you bought on an impulse.

    I'm really hoping someone at BioWare sees this message.

  • wonderdog #15 5 months ago

    @JAGUARCD32x when i checked it last night it was at 35fps. just bad lag in the empire fleet on a pvp server, all other planets etc were ok for some strange reason

  • DisneyJon #16 5 months ago

    I dont think hardware is the issue for people with problems to be honest, playing on an i5 laptop, 19" widescreen, 6gb ram, some ATI card from last year, and its running fine bar the odd cut scene, and thats with the settings on high. Dont know the FPS but ultimately its fine to play without a problem. Which is all that matters.

  • Subdominator #17 5 months ago

    Most people don't have performance issues because they are waiting in line to actually get on the server.

  • Inmediasress #18 5 months ago

    I'm guessing it's the usual Bioware denial of anything negative about their games.
    Edited by Inmediasress at 10/01/12 @ 20:08

  • uiruki #19 5 months ago

    It doesn't multithread on the CPU properly, it uses RAM poorly, it takes ages to load - it's a badly performing engine whichever way you slice it. In the beta the particle system was so inefficient it crippled my overclocked GTX 570 in foggy areas. It looks way worse than, say, Rift (which runs on Gamebryo, mind you - an engine known for performance issues) and doesn't perform as well.

    And then we have the UI. The auction house is literally unusable without a pad and pen if you're shopping for anything to do with crafting, for example. Does everything have to be so big that you can only fit two windows on screen?

  • casshern09 #20 5 months ago

    i7 970 3.2ghz (6 cores)
    16GB DDR3 (2000mhz)
    2 x Gigabyte GTX 580's SLI
    Win 7
    Recon 3D Fatality Series Sound Card
    Asus Rampage III Extreme Mobo
    Corsair 1200W PSU

    I am still having fps issues with the game, and the above rig is NOT low-end.
    Also the 80+ page thread on the forums about people with similar machines and the same problems is not people making it up.

    Pull your damn heads out of your ass BioWare. The performance on your game stinks.

  • arcdevil #21 5 months ago

    i7-8gb DDR3 1666- GTX580
    game is unplayable in warzones, massive fps drops, terrible skill delay, kicked to char selection screen after joining a warzone pop.

    James Ohlen can lie thru his teeth all he wants, he fully knows that unless they fix the horrible performance issues of the game (which affect A LOT MORE PEOPLE THAN 5%) they are going down in a blaze.

    Its a shame that nowadays game directors are more willing to lie to protect the game, than to do a good work to start with.

  • Deathbysoup #22 5 months ago

    this is not the response droids you are looking for.

  • Boki #23 5 months ago

    weird. e8500 4GB and a 5850 and have no problem anywhere. Running it on 1980*1020 everything on high with vsync on. Sure sometimes it drops to 30-40fps but never bad enough that it's unplayable. Though I've not been to warzones yet

  • Furfoot #24 5 months ago

    Damage control fail.

    Won't be subscribing after free month if issues aren't fixed with the engine.

  • DrStrangelove #25 5 months ago

    @JAGUARCD32x
    I can understand why that would annoy some people,but come on cant you see the funny side of it?
    If I could I'd give myself a minus ;)

  • Arsecake_Baker #26 5 months ago

    This is absolute bullshit!

    If this idiot took time out to read his own forums, he'd find a thread with nearly 500,000 views and on it's 8th incarnation, nearly 9th!

    To cast aside that many complaints in one fell swoop is tantamount to virtual suicide.

    YOUR GAME IS BROKEN EA FIX IT!

    My high end rig (it's an i7 but i'm not typing all the details here, EA/Bioware have had a hundred dxdiags off me) freezes and stutters all over the place, multiplayer is unplayable and broken object bugs abound, i have never seen a bigger thread complaining about framerate problems in my entire MMO career (that's pretty much all of 'em) especially for big rig users.

    I have unsubbed and i'm gutted, i really love the game and what makes it worse is friends of mine playing on machines with quarter the oomph of mine have been playing without problems, albiet on the lowest settings with all shadows and effect etc off, one of them said "hey it looks like shit, but it works."

    This is a huge huge problem, please do not cast aspertions on me or my machine, look here if in doubt!

    http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=147732

  • Saxo #27 5 months ago

    the fleet station can be pretty bad when there is alot of ppl there, every other place is fine 50-70fps all maxed with MSAA x4 and AF

    Using a phenom II x4 and a radeon 6850.

  • dorkacle #28 5 months ago

    tbh was dis not to be expected? WOW was a mess at the beginnning as well, an im guessing nearly all mmo's are similar.
    Hopefully they'll sort it soon. Haven't played it yet but planning on gettin a decent rig to do so in the near future!

  • Arsecake_Baker #29 5 months ago

    Why the fuck would someone minus my comment?

    Is it because you didn't get to see my pc...aww well here ya go then,

    Intel Core i7-960 3.2GHz
    6GB RAM
    1TB HDD
    NVIDIA GeForce GTX580

    Feel better now?

    I'm angry at EA/bioware because this game cost me £45 and i can't play it On a machine that more than meets the requirement., And this idiot has just swept thousands of us under the carpet in one fell swoop!

    If in future the game is fixed, yes i'll return, till then, i'm out!

  • Hellion83 #30 5 months ago

    Post deleted at 20:12:17 01-02-2012

  • George-Roper #31 5 months ago

    @JAGUARCD32x

    Dont be so sure. 'Free' 30 days are almost up.

  • xdethrok #32 5 months ago

    @George-Roper You've already paid the price for the game though, so they don't care if you continue to subscribe monthly. They've already got your money.

  • George-Roper #33 5 months ago

    @xdethrok

    What?

    Don't be so retarded, their entire business model is the subscription. If 5% of their current players choose to unsub, that's 5% less revenue, per month.

  • Garrent #34 5 months ago

    I have i7, 8GB ram, gtx560 and 5-10 fps in warzones, trust me it not low-end pc. Bioware stop your lies, you are using unfinished HeroEngine, which you grab 7 years ago, and even on heroengine webpage you can read all story about this. Mr James Ohlen I call you liar, you talk about 5%, you mean 5% ppl who run this crap game flawless, rest have problems with fps/connections/launcher and you still trying to connvice everyone that this game is WoW killer. So Mr Ohlen pls go to YOUR forum, click Customer Service and see there like 50% threads there are about fps, rest is about connection and launcher, and very small % is about other things.. This game is fail.. and game director is even bigger fail iv he even dont know whats going on with his game..

  • TheGuvernor #35 5 months ago

    "BIOWARE: most" people aren't having SWTOR performance issues"

    Because most people aren't playin' it - boom boom..

  • flawlesssoul #36 5 months ago

    The HERO engine has some serious problems, ones which are strangely similar to peoples experiences in SW:TOR.

    http://community.heroengine.com/forums/index.php?action=printpage;topic=228.0

    At this point, "most" people are having an issue with being fed bullshit by BioWare, not with their lack of fixes.

  • arcdevil #37 5 months ago

    @George-Roper
    5%?
    lol, try 30%-40% after the free month

  • Garrent #38 5 months ago

    You can see whats going on with swtor here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=PL&v=ABskLQt9Eqg

    This guy for sure have no high-end pc, but even with his spec he should run this close to flawless, for sure not like on this video. Its just another proof that engine which is used by stor is bugged/unfinished.

  • George-Roper #39 5 months ago

    @arcdevil

    Yeah, I was trying to make the point by using the % from the article. I don't doubt there's going to be a substantial amount of players leaving after the 30 days are up.
    Edited by George-Roper at 10/01/12 @ 23:55

  • DarthMorbus #40 5 months ago

    Looking through the comments it's seeming the most common thread with low frame rate issues appears to be nVidia GPUs. I'm running with an ATI GPU and the only time I've seen my frame rate drop below 70 is when I put v-sync on (I was getting terrible screen tear in the cut scenes but I get that in all games to be honest - think it's my TV causing it).

    Now maybe I'm just extremely lucky (could be the case) or it's the overclocking, or the fact that my PC is only used for gaming (it has zero non-gaming software on other than AV) or maybe (and I think this could be more likely) BioWare's code is terribly optimised when it comes to the nVidia GPUs.

  • Garrent #41 5 months ago

    @DarthMorbus no, there is a lot of ppl who also have fps issues with ATI cards, my friend is using hd6850 or 90 dont remember, and he have low fps too. So I dont think its only one type gfx card problem. And this guy on video also is using ATI

  • Wyrm #42 5 months ago

    i5, 8gb ram, HD5770. Runs like a dog compared to the likes of witcher 2 and doesn't look 1/4 as pretty.

  • DarthMorbus #43 5 months ago

    @Garrent I'm only going off what I've read on here, I don't really venture on to the official forums. My mates who are playing didn't have any problems with ATI cards so I went off the evidence I saw in the comments.

    Can't see why it affects some people so much and not others, it's definitely a strange one.

  • Kami #44 4 months ago

    Must say, my experiences with TOR were that it felt rushed, unrefined and a little basic overall. I didn't get far enough it seems to encounter any errors, or serious performance issues.

    But I know my friends who still play reckon there's a serious memory leak in there somewhere that needs to be patched up. Either way, sweeping generalisations are sweeping. BioWare need to drop the act; much like Dragon Age 2, this game probably needed a little longer in development and a little more customer feedback before release.

    It'll do well as a game though despite the issues, if BioWare and EA don't cause a major public relations issue...

  • Stratix #45 4 months ago

    I have an i7, 8 gig RAM and a GTX 580 and I haven't had any FPS problems at all on this game. Runs at a smooth 60 FPS with vsync on.

    I feel sorry for those that do have the problem, hope they fix it soon.

  • anomagnus #46 4 months ago

    I7, 9 Gigs of ram, gtx 560ti

    No problems, at least as far as i can see.

    But maybe i'm just lucky, because on Skyrim, i think i had about less than a dozen CTDs, and 1 quest bug out as my total number of problems over a 95 hour playthrough.

    Like most things PC, peoples experiences vary.

    Of course, if you're mad keen to hate TOR, then you'll easily take hearsay and forum mongering to be fact, and move to the 2+3=4 route, and everything is shite, bioware are feasting on the corpses of your family, and EA has their cock in your ass.

  • Laythe_AD #47 4 months ago

    A rather solid gaming PC here, and I get rampant FPS drops at times. Add into that the horrible BRIGHT GREEN screen tear from those pylon things that are on every planet and the game is rather frustrating. It's poorly optimised code to say the least, and extra RAM seems to make little difference.

  • nikobe #48 4 months ago

    Bit odd seeing all the comments, had no issues on two machines.

    Intel i5, 4Gb RAM, Geforce GTX 560 Ti all settings max and AA set to 8x (ini file) = 60fps (monitor max) at 1080p almost everywhere.
    iMac 2011 (lowest spec) but 12Gb RAM - settings high except shadows and no AA = around 40fps almost everywhere.

  • OverWind #49 4 months ago

    I'm using a i7, 16gb ram, ssd and gtx580, and I haven't got any issues at all. People in this thread report problems with a combination of those, but considering that I don't have any issues, I don't think it's the 580 that's the problem.

  • Rajin #50 4 months ago

    @OverWind
    maybe your 16 gig(damm thats a lot) is compensating? If you're down 20 fps from 70 or 60 to 40-50 i'm sure you'll care less.

  • Nighthaunter #51 4 months ago

    Memory leak this game has, certain planets worse than others.

  • FortysixterUK #52 4 months ago

    I didn't notice any issues with frame rates.
    I did notice a lack of a dungeon finder tool, and having to wait 3 hours for a group of 4 people to group together was the major contributing factor to me cancelling my sub before the free 30 days was up !
    I'll try again next christmas, if it hasn't gone F2P before that....I'll then try earlier...obviously.

  • niroe #53 4 months ago

    Bioware's solution to a problem, pretend it doesn't exist! Massive framerate issues on a very NOT LOW END machine. They aren't getting a penny more until its fixed.

  • shellyc #54 4 months ago

    I had 4gb ram when SWTOR launched and was having a great deal of trouble with lag, and PVP was not an option, I now have 12gb ram, i5 and a 1gb radeon 4850 and run graphics on low, its smooth, but it would be nice to run it on something above low.

  • technotica #55 4 months ago

    I find it odd that people are saying "no its not true! Bioware is lying"

    When Bioware says its 5% of their playerbase and they may actually have tools to figure out those numbers.

    I mean all of you who are saying that what Bioware tells you is a lie, how did you figure out that not a minority but a big percentage of players have this problem?

    And if you say 'because there are a lot of forum posts about this' now then I don't know what to say because the forum posts (all of them even the ones not complaining) are not made by a majority of the people playing the game.
    Edited by technotica at 11/01/12 @ 12:08

  • Warblade #56 4 months ago

    HaHa ... @Bioware Investors: he's not saying the truth!
    There are heavy lags, even with an X4 645, 8GBs, 6750 1GB and 1,5TB 7200rpms hdd.
    Not only on imperial starfleet space station, but also during missions & pvp.
    Next question: if there aren't any perfomring probs, where's AA, high-resolutions, and other stuff?
    I guess swtor is currently on beta-state, and the public tests some weeks/month ago were more like alpha-state.

  • Spekingur #57 4 months ago

    Are you guys having graphics lag (game lag) or network lag?

    I've got an i5-2500, 8gb ram, AMD 6970 card and a normal WD 2TB HDD. Running on Windows 7. I have had no game lag and occasional network lag (spikes).
    EDIT: Oh and I run everything on the highest possible setting at 1920x1080.
    Edited by Spekingur at 11/01/12 @ 13:33

  • tehehe #58 4 months ago

    Lies and/or denial.

  • merseymal #59 4 months ago

    @xdethrok have same spec except a HD 6870 instead of GTX 570 but not getting low fps or lag whatsoever