Star Wars Galaxies

Originally posted by Avos

 

Originally posted by Obraik

Originally posted by Avos

Obraik, you aren't paying attention and you are once again blindly defending this game...

Frames Per Second are indeed measured on YOUR computer, however they are the result of NUMEROUS factors that are both server side and client side. 

Some people in AoC can hit 70 Frames Per Second, while others 20 Frames Per Second. 

Like I said, poor server technology, poorly written code, and a number of issues will have an impact on how the game performs.  To say that your individual computer is the only thing that matters when it comes to how smoothly the game runs is absurd.

I'm not sure how it's so hard to understand.  The server connection has nothing to do with your FPS.  FPS is a meter of how fast your graphics card is rendering the graphics.  No graphics come from the server at all, it all comes from your client.  It would be correct to say the client is inefficent at rendering graphics and accuse that of causing low frame rates, but it's incorrect to say that the server is influencing your FPS.

 

Dude you just don't get it.

If you think that the server, the code, and all that goes with it has NOTHING to do with how the game runs on YOUR cpu then you need to study up on the subject.

FPS = Frames Per Second.  That is the measurement of how many frames YOUR cpu is registering per second in that game.  There are hundreds of factors that can cause that to speed up or slow down.  The client and the server talk to each other.  How do you think all that stuff spawns when you get close enough?

Fine, we all know you work for SOE but that doesn't give you the right to lie about everything related to the current status of this game. 

The combat being sped up 5X has an impact on YOUR FPS.  Poorly written code has an impact on YOUR FPS.  Dated server technology and old drivers have an impact on YOUR FPS.  Server stress and reaction has an impact on YOUR FPS.

Seriously, ask your boss Blixtev if you don't believe me.

Yep, certain client to server and vice versa operations are TCP based rather than UDP based. To explain, anything that's TCP based is sequential, that means it must arrive in the order that it's sent out, but UDP can be put in after the fact in sequence by the destination because each UDP packet is tagged where it should be placed. TCP is mostly used in real time operations whether it's a "must be live" video feed like what you might find on Internet2 or whether it's real time data communication (like that found on IRC clients who DCC files to each other), the time scale for such operations is very small and must be achieved within it. UDP is just any old operation that is not too time sensitive such as compressed audio or video streams, and even some downloading systems like Bit-Torrent which use HASH tables to maintain a file without issue.

In the case of MMOs TCP connections out number the UDP ones in regards to operations since your location, movement, and state changes of your characters and other characters (NPC and PC) are time sensitive. You can't "die" before you've been attacked. You can't "fall" before you jumped off the cliff. So the server's TCP systems maintain that sequence within the time scale allowed (the acceptable lag). That's where frame rates come into play. Say you zone into a busy part of a game and that given server is bogged down in its TCP socket queue (where there's no more slots left in it), what happens then? Well it depends on how the netcode for both client and server are designed. If it's designed from a default state in mind, then the client sits and waits until time out. How it sits and waits often depends on a number of factors decided at design time of the developers, but generally speaking in a sit until time out situation for an MMO, that means lock up the client until then, usually leaving all operations inaccessible (movement, state changes, and etc are all unresponsive for that given time). Sometimes it includes locking up the client renderer as the renderer itself becomes 'starved' for more data to render/paint onto the screen.

I've seen it before in FPS games where the server would go down in a big death match or whatever and the game would literally lock up and then crash to desktop because the renderer was starved for data as its source of data was gone and the developers didn't feel it necessary to make a default case to get it out of it in a timely and "safe" manner.

So to Obraik, yes sometimes a client can just sit and spin its wheels like nothing matters, but that's if the developers put in the default case(s) necessary to make it a "safe" wait and hold [until time out]. Otherwise, it can lock up and that includes a total loss of frame rates. Therefore, your argument is not categorically correct in the case of how games and netcode works. I really wish you defer to those that do in the field rather than to your intuitions.


-- Brede

Edit: Also, some clients that I am familiar with like the Secondlife client often have three kinds of frame rates: client, network, and physics. In the case of Secondlife clientside frame rates are dependent on both network and physics, but to explain them briefly... Clientside is as the same suggests, it's what your client through your hardware can do. Network is a number of things not entirely under control of the servers related such as lag time and reliable packet transmission. And physics frame rate is entirely server side in that the physics engine that Secondlife uses is operated by the server and the results are sent to you remotely whether it's the particle physics or object physics. The latter two cause most of the loss in frame rate in Secondlife especially when a large number of players come together and a large number of scripts meddle with the physics engine in a given place too. Together or alone these factors cap the average frame rate for Secondlife even in top of the line systems to about 25-30 FPS even in a place where there's not much of any people or physics interactions occurring.

SWG by comparison is much simpler as there is no physics and no major script mechanisms involved in its operations, but the fact that it depends on the server to queue up the next objects in a scene (that's what you see and sometimes don't see in a given frame of your client...) that means all frame rates by the client are "soft" capped by the server's ability to respond ("soft" being something that could be as low as 30 fps or even lower, it depends on how default case(s) is/are handled).

Lemme break out my credit card for $15 a month for a game that is "not that bad". I just love to give undeserving folks my money because the product has the Star Wars label. $180 a year for a game that has no expansions, no future except cut and paste instances, no respect for any progress made in the past, and the worst reputation in the MMO space. Umm, pass!!!

Originally posted by akevv

Lemme break out my credit card for $15 a month for a game that is "not that bad". I just love to give undeserving folks my money because the product has the Star Wars label. $180 a year for a game that has no expansions, no future except cut and paste instances, no respect for any progress made in the past, and the worst reputation in the MMO space. Umm, pass!!!

I have to agree with this entirely. I was SO disappointed with Star Wars Galaxies. The potential was there but it just wasn't utilised...actually even KOTOR2 (the last pretty good SW game I played) was shoddy in some places and the plot sort of tailed off...

I felt that the entire interface and such like was just rubbish in SWG and that put me off completely. I cancelled my subscription needless to say...

Does anyone think there's a possibility of another SW online game coming out sometime? One that isn't awful?

Originally posted by akevv

Lemme break out my credit card for $15 a month for a game that is "not that bad". I just love to give undeserving folks my money because the product has the Star Wars label. $180 a year for a game that has no expansions, no future except cut and paste instances, no respect for any progress made in the past, and the worst reputation in the MMO space. Umm, pass!!!

Agreed

I have had some fun in NGE myself but with elements that were reletivly unchanged since Pre-NGE.  The last time I subbed I was bored.

When I first started playing SWG as my first MMO I was playing KOTOR on my XBOX.  When I first played SWG CU, I thought KOTOR was "not that bad" and SWG ruled.

Now....I'm waiting for KOTOR.....Even if it turns out to be BS.  Hope can carry farther than lies.

'Hating' or 'Loving' a game is pretty pathetic, imho. It's just a game and there are things in the world more worthy of such strong emotions.

As for SWG... I had  lot of sympathy for the so-called Vets after both CU and NGE - played the game myself at various time points. But now it's just plain silly. This obsessivness can't be healthy and honestly just looks stupid - after all this time (not saying there was not reason for being angry back in the day of the NGE release). Not being able to let go of something as mundane as a computer game... get a grip, seriously.

To the OP:

Tried the game in May with the 30d Trial - and I must say that it is quite good nowadays. Lots of things to do, and the population on Farstar was quite decent - always found people in the cantina or active players to ask questions, got several guild invites too. Do I think a server merge would be needed? Sure. But the way SWG is designed it's just to difficult to do (housing, for one thing) - imagine all the bitching and moaning about player cities. omg omg... ^^ At the same time granting free character transfers would put those low-to-medium population servers over the edge.

There is just no right way to do this and with all those rumors about a BioWare KotOR MMO... why would they do that to themselves? They can just as well wait it out ...

Originally posted by Avos

 

Originally posted by Obraik

Originally posted by Avos

Obraik, you aren't paying attention and you are once again blindly defending this game...

Frames Per Second are indeed measured on YOUR computer, however they are the result of NUMEROUS factors that are both server side and client side. 

Some people in AoC can hit 70 Frames Per Second, while others 20 Frames Per Second. 

Like I said, poor server technology, poorly written code, and a number of issues will have an impact on how the game performs.  To say that your individual computer is the only thing that matters when it comes to how smoothly the game runs is absurd.

I'm not sure how it's so hard to understand.  The server connection has nothing to do with your FPS.  FPS is a meter of how fast your graphics card is rendering the graphics.  No graphics come from the server at all, it all comes from your client.  It would be correct to say the client is inefficent at rendering graphics and accuse that of causing low frame rates, but it's incorrect to say that the server is influencing your FPS.

 

Dude you just don't get it.

If you think that the server, the code, and all that goes with it has NOTHING to do with how the game runs on YOUR cpu then you need to study up on the subject.

FPS = Frames Per Second.  That is the measurement of how many frames YOUR cpu is registering per second in that game.  There are hundreds of factors that can cause that to speed up or slow down.  The client and the server talk to each other.  How do you think all that stuff spawns when you get close enough?

Fine, we all know you work for SOE but that doesn't give you the right to lie about everything related to the current status of this game. 

The combat being sped up 5X has an impact on YOUR FPS.  Poorly written code has an impact on YOUR FPS.  Dated server technology and old drivers have an impact on YOUR FPS.  Server stress and reaction has an impact on YOUR FPS.

Seriously, ask your boss Blixtev if you don't believe me.

IF you were correct, as soon as I unplugged my network card or the server crashed, my frame rate would drop dramatically.  This doesn't happen.
 

The server only tells your computer where stuff needs to be drawn on screen.  The stuff drawn comes off your hard drive.  Once again, the FPS meter measures how quickly your PC is drawing graphics.  Your computer is either drawing graphics or it's not, there's no inbetween - so waiting on the server to send stuff isn't going to affect your FPS at all or at least, a very minute amount.  Likewise, a low frame rate on your end by no means determines that the server is lagging.  The only way the server can cause your FPS to drop is by telling your PC to draw more items then it can handle but that's still not really the servers fault - it's up to the client to handle the scaling of the level of detail of the objects drawn so it doesn't over-burden your PC.

I'm NOT saying it's not the SWG clients fault your FPS dropped, but the whole discussion started because someone in this thread associated the FPS meter as a direct indicator that the server is lagging, which is false.  If your FPS is dropping, it's because your PC is under specced for the situation you're in or the client software has issues.

This doesn't just apply to SWG, but most if not all MMO's you see in the list to the left.

I've seen an entire guilds client freeze in EQ when every time vox did her deep breath attack.  The packet flood from the server froze the game which disabled all FPS from the client computer.  There are plenty of other examples, but this was my first real experience with it.  Even with cable modems and adjusting the datarate setting in the .ini file, the flood was a time freeze.

Even beyond that I am sure that everyone has had those moments when their client freezes for several seconds and upwards when the servers "burp".  You can here people on vent/teamspeak all say it at the same time, because something at the server level froze the graphics on all the clients.  Perhaps they entire server rubberba