Thanks for this well written post. I agree to it completely.

Can you get it into your head that the people who are analyzing the bugs in this game and complaining about them on these forums are the people who, in the long run, will make the game better for people like you, who don't do the aforementioned things? Show some appreciation please. +1 for this thread, this issue needs to be resolved. I would love this game to succeed, but I'm afraid it might not.

I think there are a lot of reasons for "hating" on SWTOR on these forums, and none of them is the one you imagined. Some of the people who complain really wanted to love the game. They have been looking forward to playing since it was announced, they preordered - but they're disappointed with what Bioware delivered. As for being afraid of SWTOR's "formula" becoming the standard of MMOs... I think you missed that it already is. It's the same formula that themepark games like EQ/WoW/AoC/WAR/LotRO/etc. have been using in one variety or another. I personally am bored with that formula. I expected SWTOR to be significantly different, but it isn't - it's just WAR/LotRO/WoW/AoC/EQ/etc. all over again, this time in the Star Wars universe. Maybe GW2 is going to be really different. We'll see.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but since there's no search feature... From the devblog http://www.swtor.com/blog/why-unify-color-chest-piece-gone-and-whats-next: "As implemented, Color Match had a subtle but ultimately perverse effect: from the moment it was turned on, the player would perceive far less diversity in their loot. In some cases, to be honest, there are only so many differences we can create between two pairs of boots apart from their color scheme." Seriously? They are saying that they've removed the feature because it led to players noticing that there wasn't enough diversity in armor models? /facepalm

Please have a look at this little scenario with me: You're in a group, doing your strategy and anticipation thing. You cast heals on your group members, one heal after the other, with little breaks inbetween. Now you don't look at the GCD indicator, nor the cast bar. Instead, you watch your character's animation to know when it's okay to cast the next heal. Everything's just fine. To give this a little more structure, let's say in the above situation, you're casting an arbitrary amount of spells with a combined cast time of X within a timeframe with the length N. On paper (in the tooltips), these spells have either a cast time of 1.5 seconds (GCD) or longer, depending on the spell. Then, in the above situation, you'll probably have X < N. Now, you get to the boss, and your group is taking much more damage. You can still anticipate, strategically casting your heals on your group. However, now the damage is so high that in order to keep your group alive, you need to have be actively casting heals 100% of the time. X = N. My question to you is: how can you do that, if you cannot rely on the information that you receive from your UI's GCD indicator and cast bar?

So how is spamming bad and waiting good? Explain please.

Your analogy couldn't possibly be any more flawed. It's as flawed as any that I have ever read by the people saying that you cannot compare a game that has been existing for years to one that has just launched. I'm tired of it. WoW was far from the product it is today when it launched. It was bugged, it was flawed, it had issues. Does SWTOR need to have these issues as well? Your 13 year old will have to go through the same training that Kobe Bryant went through, and he'll have to experience all the hardships of this training. SWTOR doesn't need to be as flawed as WoW was. It's not a human being that needs training, it's a product made by a company that should have analysts working on examining the competition very closely when it comes to making design choices. Bioware had the rare chance of being able to look back at seven years of World of Warcraft and learn from it. Yet sometimes, I think they were so enamoured with their own product, they didn't even bother to look outside. They have emulated lots of elements that WoW has - but they have also emulated elements that WoW once had - and which were removed or changed later, because they turned out to be not perfect after all. Now, why does Bioware have to go through that at all?

I think they developed it alright. Judging from that article, their main focus seemed to be that combat animations, especially those in lightsaber combat, looked "realistic". From what you can read in this thread though, it seems they didn't put enough resources into researching and developing a smooth combat experience regarding the controls. Visuals got prioritized higher than responsiveness.

/facepalm If was going to reply to this in a serious fashion, but then I decided not to feed another troll.

Good post. I agree.

Thank you for clarifying... from the hardware point of view that makes sense. They did, however, adjust their graphics engine slightly from expansion to expansion to allow for more advanced effects, for example the water rendering that was changed at some point. Still, WoW can run on hardware that SWTOR wouldn't run on.

It would be a start if they'd modify all animations that are too long or too short now so that the animation's duration matches up with the GCD or the ability's cast time.

"WoW was designed for the lowest common denominator" I've seen that come up a number of times now. Can anyone elaborate on this? I'm curious how you arrive at that conclusion.

Good is what you like, and bad is what you don't like. We get it.

If PvP in WoW is widely regarded as a joke, how come WoW is the only fantasy MMORPG that has a substantial following among professional competitive gamers, including tournaments with quite a lot of money for the winners? Care to elaborate?

I think we should all get used to the fact that Bioware doesn't think it's necessary to communicate with their players.

There's basically two types of MMOs: sandbox MMOs and themepark MMOs. Here's a nice article about the topic: http://www.mmocrunch.com/2011/11/26/the-merits-of-sand-box-versus-theme-park-mmos/

Can you please stop this? If you do not experience the problem that's being discussed here, fine. But don't try to convince people who experience it that they're making it up when they're not. Maybe your playstyle prohibits you from experiencing it? This could be the case if you click your abilities very slowly, with two to three seconds between your actions. The problem that many people in this thread are experiencing is that the global cooldown displayed on the ability buttons shows as expired, thus signalling that the avatar is ready to execute the next action, when it in fact is not. This doesn't seem to be the case for all abilities on all classes, but for enough of them to make a difference. If you don't have this problem, and you like the game so much, why don't you go and play it instead of patronizing the people who try to have a serious discussion.

This feeling of disconnect is what is the major issue for me, personally, as well as for many others judging from the replies to this thread. It would be nice if the "L2P" as well as the "LOL WoW" crowds could go and re-read the OP and then see if they have anything of value to contribute, instead of repeating their random outbursts of hate they seem to make in every other thread on this forum.

THIS. I think many people here, especially the ones who cannot understand that a game they dislike (WoW) for various reasons (probably most because it seems to be en vogue to dislike it) is so incredibly successful, don't realize that the main point is not that the unresponsiveness makes the game hard to play but that the disconnect between player and avatar ruins immersion.

Hello there, I rarely post on these or any other game forums, but I couldn't let this thread pass without a reply. I do not work in games professionally, neither as a programmer or designer, nor as a professional game tester or critic. However, I play a lot of games in my spare time - I've played a majority of the AAA titles released over the last 20 years, as well as a plethora of small browser or indie games. On top of that, I played almost all major MMOs that have been released since Ultima Online, as well as many smaller P2P or F2P titles. Naturally, I cannot play every game with the same commitment, and I rarely ever "finish" a game. I play games from all genres and settings, and I like to think critically about the games I play - about why I like or dislike them, and what exactly makes me want to spend more time with one specific game over any other. With this background, I am very glad to read that someone (and judging from the amount of replies to this thread, more than one) was able to identify one of the core issues in gameplay that "responsiveness" is. Unfortunately, since this is an issue that's hard to describe and at the same time might not even occur to people who don't have as much experience playing games. I think you are spot on with your analysis of the problem. SWTOR is plagued by the same disconnect between player and avatar that almost all MMOs other than WoW have. Granted, depending on the game, the issue is more or less strongly developed. In SWTOR it is rather subtle, which in itself seems like an accomplishment on the developer's part, yet it is still noticeable enough to spoil the fun for (some) people, including me. I will probably never PvP in SWTOR because of it. Regarding animation, I want to point out another issue that's closely connected to the responsiveness in combat - movement animation. In many games, you'll see a disconnect between running/walking animation and distance travelled, which leads to a "sliding" motion, like your character is hovering over the ground while making running motions. I think it is not that bad in SWTOR though, compared to AoC for example. Sometimes, it seems to me that game developers don't play enough other games, or aren't encouraged enough to think critically about the games they play and what makes them good. You'd think that a company like Bioware, who set out to make a game that takes more than only the core concepts of WoW (which in turn took from EQ, etc., but let's not go there now) and expands on them, would get the small things right that made their predecessor great. Unfortunately, judging by the issue of responsiveness that you brought up, they didn't. This, for me at least, seems like the underlying issue with many of SWTORs current flaws - many design choices in SWTOR make it apparent that Bioware tried to emulate other MMOs, yet did not go all the way in trying to understand what made the game(s) they were emulating so successful. The obsession with detail is what made companies like Blizzard (or, to give another example, Apple) the behemoths they are today. (For an interesting read on the concept of tweaking vs. original creation, read this article in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell).

It seems to me that you have not quite understood what the people who made these threads are actually about. These threads are NOT about the fact that if you sit in front of your computer all day, you're at the level cap in too short a time. Obviously, the more you play, the faster you reach the maximum level. What they are about is that if your playstyle is what you might call "completionist", meaning that you complete every available mission in the area/on the planet that you're playing in/on, you get so much XP that by the time you're finished with the area/planet, your level will be higher than the recommended level range for the next area/planet in the progression that the designers laid out for us. tl;dr: People aren't complaning about reaching level cap too fast, people are complaning about gaining so much XP they outlevel the content.

I guess this Dr. Ricks has, after researching MMOs all his life, developed a special vitamine formula which you should buy ASAP and consume regularly in order to become a better gamer! Too bad he forgot the link, I'd buy immediately.