"The stutter", why I won't be playing DDO or LotRO

Elapsed

I'm happy to see the official forums are already full of reports of the game stuttering and performing badly.
http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2302
http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1975
http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2151
Sadly I can't join them to continue my crusade against the DDO/LotRO/AC2 engine because you have to be a subscriber.

The game engine is crappy. It looks good I admit, but it stutters everytime an object loads into the scene. I and others complained about the issue during beta. I find it extremely annoying, it makes me sick when the frame rate drops to 0 frequently for split seconds. Also it takes me out of the experience.

You say the game is just released? Give it time? You're wrong. DDO is based off the AC2 engine. AC2 had the exact same stutter problem. I and others complained in AC2 and it wasn't fixed. Either it can't be fixed or Turbine doesn't see it as a major issue.

It's also not my or others hardware. The problem occurs at all settings. I think Turbine severly under estimates the issue and how it will cause people to quit.

Yes, this is a semi-pointless rant but I just hope one day Turbine will wiseup because I thought DDO was good but I couldn't get past the horrible performance.

apocalance

The only way I know to get rid of the stutter, for the most part, is get a 10k RPM raptor drive. Yeah, that shouldn't be required, and it isn't, but it does improve the performance of the game. I don't currently have one but will most likely be getting one in the near future. After playing WoW for so long, you start to expect great performance from your MMO, I guess Blizzard did something different with their graphic system to prevent the chop people are speaking of. It reminds me of playing SWG running in to theed. That was really bad sometimes. Perhaps a faster hard drive would have fixed that as well? /shrug

Umbrood

Well it is not the hardware then, cause your system beats mine Jag, only by a bit but still.

I can not speak for the retail US version but the in both the EU beta and US stresstest the game ran flawlessly on high settings, I did go to medium in taverns on occasion though.

In fact I did not hear much about graphic problems at all from anyone while playing.

Could be related to all the people online perhaps? But I do not see how that could influence dungeons.

Of the 15+ betas I have been in the last 6 years or so DDO is by far the most bug free and polished release yet.

Does not mean we should not expect more though and just because "everyone else does it", is no excuse to release with bugs, but still.

zethcarn

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Originally posted by Umbrood

the last 6 years or so DDO is by far the most bug free and polished release yet.
Does not mean we should not expect more though and just because "everyone else does it", is no excuse to release with bugs, but still.

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that's because they had 3 or so years to develop 1 city and a handful of dungeons.  How hard is that?

Elapsed

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Originally posted by apocalance
The only way I know to get rid of the stutter, for the most part, is get a 10k RPM raptor drive. Yeah, that shouldn't be required, and it isn't, but it does improve the performance of the game. I don't currently have one but will most likely be getting one in the near future. After playing WoW for so long, you start to expect great performance from your MMO, I guess Blizzard did something different with their graphic system to prevent the chop people are speaking of. It reminds me of playing SWG running in to theed. That was really bad sometimes. Perhaps a faster hard drive would have fixed that as well? /shrug

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Yep it would run smooth on a Raptor or a flash or RAM drive.

WoW, and other awesome engines like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 have spoiled me. I expect the game to look AND perform good, maybe that's too much.

Someone on the official forum said the problem is video RAM filling up: http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2905. However, I doubt this is the complete problem. If I enter the game for the first time and I'm in the harbor with a bunch of people the game still stutters as I move around. So "flushing" the memory with each scene would not work as he suggests since there should be nothing in it previously.

A year or two ago when the official AC2 forum was up, there was a similar post. Someone did a test and found that AC2 did a ton of more hard drive reads than compared to WoW.

It angers me I can't post on the official DDO forums so I can scream at Turbine and everyone else. "WE SAID THIS YEARS AGO IN AC2 AND IN DDO BETA. TURBINE IS WORTHLESS."

apocalance

Well, a friend of mine bought a raptor and said his chop dropped significantly. He didn't change out anything else on his box except to add that raptor, install the game and the pagefile on the raptor, and try it out. I highly doubt it's video ram.

Shayde

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Originally posted by zethcarn
Originally posted by Umbrood
the last 6 years or so DDO is by far the most bug free and polished release yet.
Does not mean we should not expect more though and just because "everyone else does it", is no excuse to release with bugs, but still.that's because they had 3 or so years to develop 1 city and a handful of dungeons. How hard is that?

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QFE

Anyone know if they're still using the crappy engine for LotR? I was gonna get it but I guess this would save me some cash.

Elapsed

Yes, LotRO is using the same engine as AC2 and DDO. They simply call it the "Turbine Engine." Perhaps Turbine will correct this with LotRO (and DDO) since there are a lot of people complaining on the DDO forum. I don't know why more people didn't complain during beta, maybe they believed it would be fixed (of course I knew better since I played AC2 and saw my complaints go ignored for years).

Yukkione

It's easy for WOW to have a good frame rate when it has cartoony graphics and low polygon count. Still waiting for an MMORPG with high end graphics and no stutter or lag.

Kem0sabe

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Originally posted by Yukkione
It's easy for WOW to have a good frame rate when it has cartoony graphics and low polygon count. Still waiting for an MMORPG with high end graphics and no stutter or lag.

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First time i see someone call the AC2 engine high end. Its as crappy as a gfx engine can get i terms of stability.

Elapsed

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Originally posted by Yukkione
It's easy for WOW to have a good frame rate when it has cartoony graphics and low polygon count. Still waiting for an MMORPG with high end graphics and no stutter or lag.

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You don't give WoW any credit for being much vaster, and tons more people can be on screen at once. Do you think Turbine's choice to go with instances was perhaps partly driven by engine limitations? Smaller areas, cutting off the amount of people in a scene.

It pissed me off in AC2 that players could NOT enter buildings unless they went through a load screen. In AC1 (ONE) there were doors and players could walk in or out without any hesitation or loading. AC2 was a step back.

That's why taverns are instances. Doesn't it seem odd that they are seperate from the outdoors? There's no reason for it in my opinion. The outdoors and tavern could be merged into one instance but Turbine can't do it because the engine can't handle it.

Why ignore HL2 and Doom 3? There are still lots of characters on screen at once that look good an don't lag. The fact that they aren't online doesn't really matter client side, which is where DDO's problem is.

It's hard to find another MMORPG with "high end" graphics to compare to. DDO is the best looking right now. I only played the Guild Wars beta way back but I recall the game looked awesome and performed well. Looking at the screenshots Guild Wars still looks good and is probably the closest competition for DDO. Other than that I tried EQ2 and not only does it look like crap but it also suffers from stutter like DDO. EQ2 people complain of the samething and funny it is failing like AC2.

Yukkione

who said it was high end?

bverji

when the loads are high in the common areas I have expeirenced some stuttering, but in the dungens, the actual game play parts, I haven't had any problems (except for sometime a weird little bouncing effect when you first enter a dungen.

bverji

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Originally posted by -Jaguar-



You don't give WoW any credit for being much vaster, and tons more people can be on screen at once. Do you think Turbine's choice to go with instances was perhaps partly driven by engine limitations? Smaller areas, cutting off the amount of people in a scene.

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While I agree that DDO's engine is of lesser quality Jagure, I think you incorrect in your reasoning in why. More likely that due to the feel and naure of the genre is why Turbine decided to go to instances (DND after all is usally played in small groups) and because of that the requirments out of the engine wasn't as vast as WOW's.

Yukkione

DDO is suppose to be like playing the P&P game. so instancing makes sense. Alot of younger people nefver played a P&P game because turning on a video game is much easier. I doubt it has much to do with the limitations of the game engine. Speaking of easier... that is what explains WOW's popularity. It will be great when more complex/modern games come out and these WOW people go looking for something with more substance.

Odysses

Part of the problem I think appears to be in one of the higher quality settings.   At the end of beta event I couldn't move with high settings @ 1024/768 res.   I dropped the quality down to low and the choice above that.   I was moving fine with no lag with tons of people around.    There is some major glitch with post effect processing somewhere as if I alt tab and go to windowed mode or full screen it will get back on track and not stutter at all.

Elapsed

Hooray they claim they are fixing it again http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?&postid=53648#post53648

There were supposed to be improvements made in AC2 that had little effect and at the end of DDO beta they supposeldy did a lot of optimizations that didn't help.

If someone can admit now that there is a problem and can come forward after the fix to tell me it's fixed, I might actually pick up DDO.

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Minsc

Everyone seems to have forgotten already the performance problems WoW had on release. What was especially surprising is that it wasn't there in beta, so they must have changed something in the final release code that caused the problem initially. They fixed it in the first patch so let's give Turbine a chance to fix this problem as well, honestly it's such a small thing it hadn't even bothered me as it mainly only occurs in busy taverns.

Odysses

I was getting this stuttering all through beta.   I never stutter in instances at all.   Its mostly market place and the Harbor area's.   I think it has to do with the engine loading data of other players because once other players are around i start to stutter pretty heavily.   There was a period in beta I think before beta 3.0 that I didn't seem to stutter as much but that might have been because few players were on.   This is definitely engine related.   Hopefully since DDO should bring in quite a few players they will have an extremely large sample base to get this fixed.    I hope Turbine does make this a very high priority and puts LoTRO engineers on it because issue will appear in that game as well just as it did in AC2.

Teala

The AC2 world builder engine being used in DDO is one of the things that drove me away from DDO.  Turbine should not have tried to bandage that mess and use it to develope DDO.  They should have either written a whole new one from scratch(that works), or leased the license of one of the many other more viable engines out there.

In my review I did of DDO, I said that DDO was seeing the same problems as we saw in AC2, and unless Turbine fixes it, DDO will not be a game worth playing because it just isn't worth the headache.

Elapsed

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Originally posted by Minsc
Everyone seems to have forgotten already the performance problems WoW had on release. What was especially surprising is that it wasn't there in beta, so they must have changed something in the final release code that caused the problem initially. They fixed it in the first patch so let's give Turbine a chance to fix this problem as well, honestly it's such a small thing it hadn't even bothered me as it mainly only occurs in busy taverns.

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AC2 never had the problem fixed in the 3 years it was out. Don't trust Turbine to do anything.

grimjakk

Hm.  Been playing for a week now, and the only "stutter" I see is when loading into a crowded tavern.  I've seen NONE anywhere else in the game.

 

So far...

Pwynn

Well i do not have much stutter problems with DDO but still the game has way to many flaws and lack of content.
After AC2 and DDO i will never buy any game by Turbine again.
I gave them the benefit of the doubt after closing down AC2 right after releasing an expansion but i wasted enough of my money to that company now.

Odysses

Your information is incorrect.   They used the same world builder that there using for LoTRO which is different then what was used for AC2.    The engine is upated from AC2.    Alot of the same problems that were in AC2 have resurfaced in DDO, but the game does play substantially better then AC2 did.   I would expect a month or 2 down the road that the minor bugs should be worked out and the game should play very stable.   The main bug that they need to address is the stuttering bug that was in AC2 when too many people would get in the same area.     If they can fix this bug then I think LoTRO will probably be one of the truly great MMORPG's on the market when it launches.