Ability Delay -- Character Responsiveness (This will make or break SW:TOR)

[Abetterone]

I also would like to see more of a response from the developers on this issue.

 

Having raided in WotLK heroics, I understand the need to have a tight combat system. I miss the way it felt to have my rogue's abilities set up and executed so precisely. It was truly a pleasure.

 

In this game, I thought the problem was just a new class that I would have to get used to, and that was why I was having so much trouble in PvP especially. It was only until I read this thread that I put things together and realized that my mounting issues were part of the same overarching problem.

 

I hope this get's resolved quickly. It may only deeply affect a small amount of the player base that wants to really excel with the combat system. However, that small group has a profound impact on the success and failure of the game. Watching amazing PvP and PvE videos created by professionals encourages casual gamers to try to raise their game. These are the people that created websites like shadowcraft and elitist jerks. Without this small minority, websites like this will be few and far between. These are the people who inspired me to start raiding. They should be heard!

 

-Hench, lvl 30 Sniper

 

This guy is has a good point

[rocketeerabc]

I can confirm this problem, this is the same problem that crippled warhammer. Admittedly it is less pronounced, and this game doesn't have as much pvp focus so i don't think the consequences will be as bad.

 

That being said BW, the amount of people realizing what the problem is is small, most casuals who don't even read forums just feel "something" is wrong. You will loose players over this, and they won't even be able to tell you what it was that bothered them because its very hard to put in words. Nothing is as bad as loosing customers over a problem they can't properly articulate, it leaves you with no way to gauge the seriousness of the problem and wether you should commit resources to fixing it.

 

 

Just let me tell you, this IS serious. And even people affected by it often do not realize that it is this problem killing their enjoyment of a game. Also it doesn't help that your most serious direct competitor, that most MMO gamers also tend to be familiar with is quite simply doing it better, either step up or give up that part of the market.

 

Also this is one of those things you don't get a second chance on. If someone quits your game cause of the combat system he won't be coming back, unlike someone quitting over misssing content. Atleast thats what happened to WH and AoC.

[Rezoo]

I must have posted in beta about this 300 times. Keep this thread alive and show your support. The utterly idiotic animations being a bounding box for abilities and gcd is my #1 mots reviled thing in this game.

 

Also your should "fire off" your abilities on mouse RELEASE not PRESS, which compiles the problems with "ability lag".

 

3 is lightning strike, 4 is shock: I press and release 3, cast time begins, I press and hold 4, the millisecond my cast bar hits 0.0 i release 4 and shock goes off. regardless of where my arms are, what little animation you have going on. kill it and start the new one. Seriously, There are no words to describe how utterly important it is to get this fixed. It's the one area of the game you interact with 100% of the time. to do anything but move you must have the ui. If the ui is crappy and unresponsive, everything else will suffer from it too. PLEASE SET THIS TO TOP PRIORITY!!!

 

release vs press isn't the issue. They need to make it so your shock spell, even when spam pressing it, that it will NOT interrupt your spell cast. In WoW you had to macro /stopcast before an ability for it to interrupt a cast.

 

Casts interrupting eachother is the reason why instant casts are interrupting eachother.

[hulduet]

Despite my other "problem" i have now encountered all the issues that the OP has posted in the game as i've played through all classes to test them out.

 

To the people who have the same issue as me, someone pointed out that it's a combat animation issue, most likely only visible once your fps drops down below 20. It's a swtor problem, or rather a problem with their engine, doubt we'll ever see that fixed tho.

 

If everything adds up that would explain the "delayed" animation which has no effect on the combat itself! It just looks really weird. If we had a combat log we would most likely see that everything is perfectly fine. For example the combat animation in my example probably takes 0.8 seconds to play, once it has played through the damage is dealt to the enemy. If the enemy dies from my damage before i even see it, i won't see the damage appear at all(lol)!

 

I'm guessing if they fix a few of the real problems my problem would automatically be solved as well.

[rocketeerabc]

Just thought of an annoying example. When i kill a npc on my JK with riposte the damage arrives ... well late. You see the animation hit, activate another ability only to see the damage of riposte arrive and killing the mob, gz you just wasted a ability and some focus. Edited January 4, 2012 by rocketeerabc

[Gurkburkenen]

Despite my other "problem" i have now encountered all the issues that the OP has posted in the game as i've played through all classes to test them out.

 

To the people who have the same issue as me, someone pointed out that it's a combat animation issue, most likely only visible once your fps drops down below 20. It's a swtor problem, or rather a problem with their engine, doubt we'll ever see that fixed tho.

 

If everything adds up that would explain the "delayed" animation which has no effect on the combat itself! It just looks really weird. If we had a combat log we would most likely see that everything is perfectly fine. For example the combat animation in my example probably takes 0.8 seconds to play, once it has played through the damage is dealt to the enemy. If the enemy dies from my damage before i even see it, i won't see the damage appear at all(lol)!

 

I'm guessing if they fix a few of the real problems my problem would automatically be solved as well.

 

Problem has nothing to with FPS.

[ShakklesGanes]

/signed

[POPsi]

Heck, even some other MMOs that were designed as F2P were able to manage to implement this flawlessly, while this one.... it's simply wrong. Big thumbs up for this thread, keep up guys.

[DeathDeathDie]

I never played WoW so I will compare this to Final Fantasy 11 online. Playing that game I had never experienced any ability delay when your cast bar was 100% complete you were able to run without interrupting your spell actually you could start running at 95% and you still wouldn't interrupt your spell. The second your timer was up on a job ability you were able to instantly use it again. The second the timer was up on a spell you were able to use it again. Using a weapon skill was instantaneous when you had the TP to do so. And our macro's often looked like this:

 

input /equip head "Shr.Znr.Kabuto";

input /equip neck "Thunder gorget";

input /equip body "Kirin's Osode";

input /equip hands "Hachiman kote";

input /equip ring1 "Flame ring";

input /equip waist "Warwolf belt";

input /equip back "Smilodon mantle +1";

input /equip legs "Shura haidate";

input /equip feet "Hachiman sune-ate";

input /equip ear1 "Triumph earring";

pause 1

input /ws "Tachi: Gekko" <t>

pause 3

input /equip head "Ace's helm";

input /equip neck "Peacock charm";

input /equip body "Askar korazin";

input /equip hands "Askar manopolas";

input /equip ring1 "Sniper's ring";

input /equip waist "Swift belt";

input /equip back "Cerberus mantle";

input /equip legs "Byakko's haidate";

input /equip feet "Fuma sune-ate"

input /equip ear1 "Fowling earring";

 

consider how fail it is to be able to change pretty much all your equipment and fire your weapon skill with no delay when in SWTOR you don't swap any equipment you just hit the ability on your hotbar. In fact you will notice that there are pauses put into that macro specifically because there is no game delay between any actions that would be considered instant. The players actually had to put pauses into their own abilities so that their equipment would stay how they wanted it until that ability was carried out.

 

Bosses had abilities that you needed to stun they often took 4 seconds to cast and failure to interrupt would result in substantial damage if not wipes. Player see's monster use X ability in combat log player was casting something else player hits their rest key cancels their spellcasting gets up and starts casting stun monster is stunned all of which happened in 3 seconds including the 1 second it took to cast stun.

 

Compare that to SWTOR I press 3.... nothing, again... 333333333 3333333 and I missed a chance to retaliate because of game animation for the millionth time. I bring this up because FFXI was out even before WOW was and it didn't have this issue and quite honestly it is embarrassing that a game that launched in May of 2002 in Japan and October of 2003 in North America didn't have this issue and a game that was essentially launched at the end of 2011 has this issue.

Edited January 4, 2012 by DeathDeathDie

[AlexRose]

Still supporting out fight against windmills.

 

Edit:

Just to clarify why: I think they already made up their mind. They are just trying to find a way how to explain it so they dont lose subscribers. The "heroic combat" is the deal. Learn to play our way - fair enough but no thanks I will play a game the way I like to play it or I wont play the game at all .

Edited January 4, 2012 by AlexRose

[Andurial]

I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this.

 

hitting my instant attacks, consuming a GCD, only to have no dmg go out is freaking frustrating. It's the most frustrating when after the 3rd cast of my instant attacks my character STILL does NOTHING. Once I love slight to the left or some direction does it work, but by then the target has already broken out of it's daze or immobilize so some of my attacks won't work. Even blade storm which is a ranged attack needs to be cast 3 or 4 times occasionally before it finally connects.

 

This needs to be fixed ASAP. I understand this is the first release. I work with Office 365 for a living and upon it's release it had some issues, but that's ok I understand. Just don't take too long in fixing this because it's annoying in both PVP and PVE.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Andurial

[blackcerberus]

Still supporting out fight against windmills.

 

Edit:

Just to clarify why: I think they already made up their mind. They are just trying to find a way how to explain it so they dont lose subscribers. The "heroic combat" is the deal. Learn to play our way - fair enough but no thanks I will play a game the way I like to play it or I wont play the game at all .

 

more like theydont know how to fix their crap, so they will try to pretend its there on purpose

 

an already frustrating class to play like the Jugg becomes 100x more frustrating with skill delay on every ability + animations bugging every so often.

 

I had to ravage a mob 3 effing times for ravage to actually do damage. the first 2 it just displayed the whoooole animation but did absolutly nothing

Edited January 4, 2012 by blackcerberus

[Kerplode]

Wahhhhhhh zero point 5 seconds wahhhhhhhhhh i'm so impatient wahhhhhhh

[AlexRose]

Wahhhhhhh zero point 5 seconds wahhhhhhhhhh i'm so impatient wahhhhhhh

 

herp derp, where do I click... wait ... ah here...look cool animation weheeee

[Siem]

Still supporting out fight against windmills.

 

Edit:

Just to clarify why: I think they already made up their mind. They are just trying to find a way how to explain it so they dont lose subscribers. The "heroic combat" is the deal. Learn to play our way - fair enough but no thanks I will play a game the way I like to play it or I wont play the game at all .

 

I think this is really what it's going to come down to.

 

Unfortunately, there are a ton of people crying about quality of life features like LFD, dual spec, more graphics options, combat log, etc that take the focus away from the core issues.

 

Those things can be added in time and are more convenience than necessity. A solid, tight combat experience is a necessity.

 

At the end of the day though, I'm beginning to think this is a much more complicated programming issue that they're probably not willing to address with all the other crying going on.

[Mindslyde]

Combat in this game is a total disaster. Unless you are keyboard turning clicker who maybe wouldn't notice the difference. Edited January 4, 2012 by Mindslyde

[Isgarot]

I think (and fear)that they will adopt the warhammer style for this bugs .... just ignore it for years ...

 

And the lack of comunication on this matter from beta till now except for a generic "We are LOOKIN into this " ... point that way..

 

But warhmmer dont end good ... pls just keep us informed BW

Edited January 4, 2012 by Isgarot

[Isgarot]

Still supporting out fight against windmills.

 

Edit:

Just to clarify why: I think they already made up their mind. They are just trying to find a way how to explain it so they dont lose subscribers. The "heroic combat" is the deal. Learn to play our way - fair enough but no thanks I will play a game the way I like to play it or I wont play the game at all .

 

This will work only for funboy ....any normal player dont hung in this ... it will be a suicide ....

 

What i think is that they are going to do nothing ...

[Arkimor]

I've said for awhile now that Bioware is backed into a corner.

 

They can't come out and say "We screwed up, we're sorry, we'll totally fix it!" because that's not how you do business (regardless if you think that's how one SHOULD do business). So they're stuck with either the stalling tactic (which is all we've seen from the amazing post of "Yeah....it's there".....because we didn't already know that) or a "working as intended" approach that will make them look like they're saving face by basically casting aside any responsibility and putting it back on the players. Of course, the third option is just fixing the damn thing and not saying anything except a one-line spot in the patch notes to the song of "animations altered slightly to enhance PvP;" which is about as daft as one can get; but nothing less is expected from Bioware at this point, sadly.

 

There will never be an apology, there will never be an explanation; all we can hope for is a fix; but if you're like the majority of this thread, you aren't holding your breath.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Arkimor

[Radagastimus]

Lets remove the GCD and apply an animation length cast times with cast bar and tooltips that tell how long the cast takes time and complaints will be reduced quite much i suspect. Since this will "remove" the delay what animation applies to certain abilities. After all when using healing spells in wow and especially with low level shaman there is latency of the cast time before heal applies and an animation that lasts that cast time

 

Now this thing above is not the real problem here, it is only peoples incompetence to adapt to system which does not show cast times but the real problem is latency between button pressing and actual ability starting to fire and the delay between certain abilities where character just seems to stand still doing nothing. This issue is which makes the gameplay feel stiff at times.

 

And remember bad players only can play one game or games that work the same way, Truly great player can adapt to different systems of mechanics and is competent in all of these or if not tries to learn instead of complaining why it does not work like the game he/she is used to play

 

 

Now there is still issue present but it seems many dont realise what the real issue is and where is the real delay that makes gameplay feel like walking in tar at times.

 

Also have you considered that if actual ability seems to work but there is no damage it just misses like in many other games?

Edited January 4, 2012 by Radagastimus

[Radagastimus]

At the end of the day though, I'm beginning to think this is a much more complicated programming issue that they're probably not willing to address with all the other crying going on.

 

Programming issues usually are indeed very complicated. i have some experience on very small softwares that include writing bills, invoices and such thing. Now changing something on one part of software usually affects many other parts of software as well and produce cascade reactions which make things usually very hard to fix in even the simplest litle mistakes. Not to say that sometimes it is almost impossible to find a simple syntax terror inside a program. Now add to that that software like SWTOR is quite large it only has more connections to ther parts of software and fixing things and telling customers anything more than "We are looking into it" is simply not possible. They could by all means tell us again "We are investigating still" but that wont ease your mind does it

[Nathanking]

Y U SO SMART? Y U NO WORK 4 BIOWARE?!

 

Cause you have no idea what you're talking about. If you know what can make or break a 1-million subscription MMO, why aren't you in charge of your own?

[Isgarot]

Lets remove the GCD and apply an animation length cast times with cast bar and tooltips that tell how long the cast takes time and complaints will be reduced quite much i suspect. Since this will "remove" the delay what animation applies to certain abilities. After all when using healing spells in wow and especially with low level shaman there is latency of the cast time before heal applies and an animation that lasts that cast time

 

Now this thing above is not the real problem here, it is only peoples incompetence to adapt to system which does not show cast times but the real problem is latency between button pressing and actual ability starting to fire and the delay between certain abilities where character just seems to stand still doing nothing. This issue is which makes the gameplay feel stiff at times.

 

And remember bad players only can play one game or games that work the same way, Truly great player can adapt to different systems of mechanics and is competent in all of these or if not tries to learn instead of complaining why it does not work like the game he/she is used to play

 

 

Now there is still issue present but it seems many dont realise what the real issue is and where is the real delay that makes gameplay feel like walking in tar at times.

 

Also have you considered that if actual ability seems to work but there is no damage it just misses like in many other games?

 

so just invert the command ... you have to press left to go right ecc... yeah after some time you get used to this ... but this dont mean that its right ...

 

if i have a bar that said to me that my ability will fire in 3.2 sec i adapt to it .... but if a skill dont fire at all its a problem i cant adapt to this becase its casual, if a skill took more that the bar show, and i dont know how much i cant get used to this ....

 

PS.. heal on self cant miss .... but they dont do heal sometime but plays the animation and trigger gcd...

[AlexRose]

deleted Edited January 4, 2012 by AlexRose

[Hamstaxo]

feels like delay gotten worse since patch ..... if this is possible