GreymaneAlpha
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Posts posted by GreymaneAlpha
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It is insanely frustrating to try to target players in PvP without the ability to target by nameplates. I'm getting tired of trying to click fast-moving little characters so that I can heal them, giving up and trying to instead read their name and then find their name on the operations frame.
Why. the hell. can you not. target. by. nameplate?!
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On a related note: I don't understand why draw distance is so ridiculously high for terrain / backgrounds. It seems like something basic that you should be able to scale back--though obviously players should be drawn at a further distance still.
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I want to touch on a few things you stated as I wholeheartedly agree and feel the need to elaborate. When you mentioned that developers of WoW came from EQ, I would also like to touch on the fact that every time a new expansion rolls out, even dating back to early development, Blizzard has ALWAYS invited top raiders to come and check things out. I remember there being reports that Blizzard was flying world ranked guilds to come help test and provide feedback for future content.
That's one of the most baffling things about SWTOR: the seeming lack of input from hardcore players from other MMOs. "Cinematic combat" is probably the most damning example: anyone that had ever played any MMO competitively before would have been appalled at the idea of giving animations precedence over actions. It's such a mind-blowingly stupid thing to do that it just completely confounds me.
Coming from WoW, I expect that when a cast bar finishes, the ability goes off. I should not have to stand for another half-second in a warzone while my healing animation finishes and the server deigns to tell me that the ability had completely gone through before I can start moving again. If I try to mount, I should be mounted and able to move WHEN THE BAR IS FINISHED. Not a second later when the mount appears. In warcraft, you float around for a half second moving at your mounted speed. Does it look silly? Maybe. Does it feel natural? Absolutely.
Or Force Wave: who the hell thought that it was a good idea to have a clutch AoE knockback ability on a two-second hidden cast time?!
Even very basic lightsaber attacks: sure, I guess it's cool that when I hit my sage's crappy auto-attack, three animated swings lead to three hits at three distinct times. Or rather, it was cool for about two minutes. That's the kind of thing that impresses idiots watching youtube videos from E3. Once you try to hit someone in PvP you quickly wish had WoW's combat system, where damage occurs WHEN YOU HIT THE BUTTON, not a second later.
The engine is very poorly made to have all these various 'bugs' that the developers keep finding for responsiveness....but even if they find every bug and optimize every routine, there will still be the throttle limiter of "cinematic combat" that will make the game forever feel awkward. And this WILL impact the long term survival of the game. And for what? So that a few more super-casual noobs will buy the game when it comes out but never play to 50, never pay for more than a few months, and probably never buy any future expansions?
Any experienced, competitive MMO player would have vetoed the 'cinematic combat' idea, if there was one on the development team. Mass Effect 2 players, however, probably would have thought it was a fine idea. I think we can guess which players were on the development team.
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Because if they had another feature, even one that only kind of worked, they would have faked up a demo of it.
I mean, that's how demos work; you use smoke and mirrors to over promise what you can actually do currently with the idea that you'll get that functionality working eventually. So if they didn't show it, there's a good chance that it's not there.
And of course, as I mentioned earlier, the big problem with a BioWare UI change is that it's timescale is much longer: it has to be tested over and over, and it has to work on every system, and it has to not have bugs, and it has to get patched in to the client, etc.
Adding an add-on is much simpler, and BW cedes responsibility and (more importantly) blame for community-created add-ons.
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Additionally: why the hell can you not target someone by nameplate? It's absolutely impossible to try to target someone running around by clicking on their character.
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*********** brilliant.
It's like an episode of robot chicken
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What I would really like to know: how do the developers feel about "cinematic combat" being partially responsible for ability delay and general game awkwardness. When I hit an ability that's instant I expect something to happen instantly, not to have to finish the previous animation, start the animation for the ability I hit, and finally have an action performed.
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It does work, the problem is in order to have that "Fast paced cinematic quality" combat, response times have to be sacrificed. This is why its taking so long to resolve the issue, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Unfortunately the only "Fix" is
A. Make all abilities channel and root you to the ground.
B. Get rid of cinematic combat altogether
Exactly this. "Cinematic combat" is an absolutely untenable, indefensible design decision. I cannot believe that anyone involved in the decision to prioritize animation over action had ever before played an MMO at a competitive level for either PvP or PvE.
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Because they apparently made the decision to give precedence to animations over actions. And unless they give up on making animations so important, ability delay will continue to exist, and continue to ruin the game for competitive players.
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Just allow us to create macros with the following features:
1: [Help], [Harm], and [modifier:shift/alt/ctrl] contexts
2: [@target], [@mouseover], [@focus], [@targettarget] targeting.
3: One and only one ability activated per click.
4: No cast-sequence. No decision making based on energy/force/etc. No stop-casting.
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Nope, this game does not need mods/addons/dmg meters/macros/whatever.
All those functions are the main reason why WoW sucks.
No. WoW sucks because the content sucks and the game has gotten too old and stale, and the developers gave up on real PvP balance after they realized how hard it was to balance for Arena without changing the 'sacred cows' abilities that various classes had because PvE'ers would ***** too much.
Macros and Add-ons were around when WoW was at its peaks for PvE in Blackwing Lair, Black Temple, Mount Hyjal, Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel. Macros and Add-ons were around when WoW was at its peak for PvP in Arena Seasons 2, 3, and 6, as well as the original server-battlegrounds (if you were Horde) in mid-to-late Vanilla WoW.
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Bartender, Shadowed Unit Frames, and Power Auras.
Plus macros that only allow for context-sensitive casting based on [@mouseover] / [help] / [harm] / [modifier] / [@focus] / [@targettarget].
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BW has said that mods are coming many times. Relax and have patience young padowan.
I have never actually seen them say this. Do you have a quote handy ?
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This game doesn't need to be the other games you've played and left to play this one.
I don't need macros, I don't need boss encounter addons or mouseover healing mods. Perhaps those of us who are playing and enjoying the game as is are the more skilled?
Yes, because clearly it takes much more skill to mouseclick before casting a heal than it does to cast via a mouseover. Wow. What a great argument you've made.
As far as boss encounter add-ons, I agree with you. That's why the API is important. If you don't expose chat or combat log parsing, you cannot have useful boss mods.
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They don't get the benefit of the doubt until they earn it.
Pretty much. I don't even give them the benefit of the doubt on allowing us to move and resize all things. Or add usable focus/target-of-target frames.
What makes anyone give them the benefit of the doubt that features like improved buff/debuff tracking will get implemented by BioWare. And tested. And supported. And will come out before everyone has already left the game.
Or targetting by nameplates (seriously, why the hell can you not target by nameplates?).
And as far as macros? All I want is context sensitive [help],[harm], [mouseover], and [targetoftarget] buttons. If you think that a macro like that somehow "trivializes the game", you have no idea what you're talking about. You don't have to allow castsequence macros. You don't have to even allow relics to be used automatically by macros (though they should, I think).
Basic macros that allow mouseovers, targetoftarget, and help vs harm contexts just allow you to do your desired actions faster, without going through additional hoops. That's it. I do not understand how anyone can think this kind of feature is somehow 'reducing the skill cap', unless you somehow conflate extract mouse-clicks as skill. Which I do not.
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Personally, I refer to it as "a crutch that is barely holding the game up"
zzziiiinnnngggg!
I agree, though. Were it not for leveling feeling shockingly like playing Mass Effect 2 on a computer, the huge problems (awkward combat due to ability delay, awful UI, balance problems, etc) would be completely impossible to avoid noticing for even the most casual of players.
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Also there was a reason BW isn't along mods and macro's.
In World of War-Craft developers at blizzcon did state they had reasons for banning certain mods because it made content ridiculously impossible to tune. Keeping both the none mod players have a fight easy enough that were not forced to use mods while the mod crew had a fight hard enough.
some people say BW isn't learning from the old hat but this shows you its not the case.
Mod's and Macro's open the door to that issue and in mod country the possibility of getting your account hacked.
Between both of those problems I respect Bioware's wisdom in taking in slowly.
Mods and Macro's are not the be all end all. Petition for better interfaces if you must hell I will sign them I don't like our but Mod's and macro's is not the solution to this problem.
As I mentioned in the original post: it depends strongly on what capabilities are exposed via the add-on API. World of Warcraft, especially early on, exposed too much power to mods. BioWare could easily make things like Recount, Deadly Boss Mods, etc impossible just be limiting their API.
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I don't think he's saying that at all (and, in fact, I happen to agree with him).
True customization (i.e., allowing people to modify the UI however they see fit, and not just via the options Bioware gives us) can eliminate a lot of (and probably most) usability issues.
Exactly. Plus, do you really expect the stupendously huge amount of UI options that BioWare would need to implement to even come close to the customizability of UI mods? Keep in mind that if BioWare adds it, BioWare needs to play-test it, and BioWare needs to officially support it, and BioWare needs to make sure it's bug-free, and BioWare needs to continue improving it.
It's just not reasonable. What is reasonable is letting the community do all that work. Not only will it be lead to more options for the user, but it will lead to less effort for the developers. They're wouldn't just be allowing more customization, they would be saving themselves the expensive and time-consuming parts of coding: testing and bug-fixing.
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"UI customization" is about more than moving a few bars around. This game badly needs mods and macros
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Screenshots or GTHO. What do your action bars even look like?
Indeed.
And macros do not lower the skill cap. They lower the UI-related obstruction, allowing for true gaming skills like situational awareness to shine.
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UI customization. This game needs it badly. But if the only customization is moving and resizing a few frames, as the recent developer preview video indicates, then I'm deeply disappointed.
As the recent catastrophe with the cooldown indicators show, you cannot create a UI that will appeal to everyone. In WOW, the cooldown indicator problem could be easily solved by just installing a little mod that overlays the number of seconds left until the ability is off cooldown. People that don't like the new system install that mod, everyone's happy.
If BioWare is to pointlessly continue without mods and macros, though, this sort of thing will continue to happen. I obviously do not expect the developers to have the range of options available for their UI that user-created mods could give. Hell, I don't even expect a toggle between 'old cooldown system', 'new cooldown system', and 'cooldown system with overlaid numbers'. Nonetheless, BioWare seems to think that they should continue paying people to make the UI better, ostensibly with the intention of making it better for everyone, when they truly would be better served just allowing the users of the game to create mods.
You cannot make a single UI, no matter how customizable you think you've made it (and from the preview video, it does not appear very customizable), that will appeal to everyone. It's simply not possible. Letting users collaborate and create their own UI? That's possible, and at this point in the genre's evolution, it's almost required.
And for the people complaining about how mods ruined Warcraft, or other nonsense: the power of your mod is based on the functions the API exposes. If you don't want SWTOR versions of Recount, don't give mods the ability to parse the combat log. If you don't want SWTOR versions of GearScore, don't give mods the ability to inspect equipment. If you don't want SWTOR versions of Deadly Boss Mods, don't give mods the ability to parse chat logs. Etc.
TL;DR: this game needs mods.
P.S.: This game also badly needs macros (especially mouseovers for healing)
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How bad *** would legacy servers in WoW be?
Everquest still does those all the time. They're pretty popular
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I play the same way and up until reading your post I wasn't even aware you could strafe in space combat...
Seriously bioware? One would assume your keybinds would carry over.
No, the problem is that, by default, turn left/right moves your ship to the left/right while keeping your crosshairs at the same place. But it seems as though you can't rebind these movement keys for space combat independently of movement keys for normal movement.
Thus, if you rebind turn/left right and mouse-turn (like most Arena pros, for example), you're apparently screwed for the space combat.
Ability Delay -- Character Responsiveness (This will make or break SW:TOR)
in General Discussion
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