The ability delay: the cause and how to avoid it

[Arkerus]

No matter what ability I use, even sheathing and unsheathing my weapon, there is a 1 second delay from when I press the button (keyboard or with the mouse), before it will fire off. Oddly, the only two things that do not have a delay is movement (w,s,a,d) and jumping (spacebar).

 

This has nothing to do with any GCDs, as the OP suggests.

 

If you are getting a FULL ONE second delay (which I believe you are exaggerating) on every single move, the issue is not the engine or the game. You have deeper seeded problems elsewhere.

 

I see the ability lag like everyone else, but a full one second lag one every single move is a blatent exaggeration of the problem.

[Lmaonade]

Why dont we do like this: Bioware gets this Character Responsiveness changed so its like World of Warcraft. If they dont, people that wants a somewhat higher level PVP, hopefully there will be a arena later in the game and if they fix "Character Responsiveness" SWTOR could MAYBE just MAYBE enter the E-SPORT world.

 

If they dont fix it, everyone will start leaving once they finish their "story" on their character. Exactly what has happend with the other "new" mmorpgs, but without the story part.

this.

 

if they fix responsiveness im going to level all classes and pay lots of money, i promise.

 

if they dont, well you wont see me in general chat crying about ability delay.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Lmaonade

[Tilps]

Reading the descriptions above of how the speeder dismount occurs it sounds like they are missing the following from their design.

 

Full sequence points. When the client thinks something is finished, it should be sending a packet to the server saying as much. At the moment it appears that packets are only sent to the server for starting, so you get race conditions comparing finishing of one thing to starting of another. By sending these finish events the server knows that any subsequent packets should be delayed processing until the corresponding server side finish event has occurred.

 

This eliminates interrupting your own channel bars before they complete on server, but after they complete on screen.

[Zebular]

If you are getting a FULL ONE second delay (which I believe you are exaggerating) on every single move, the issue is not the engine or the game. You have deeper seeded problems elsewhere.

 

I see the ability lag like everyone else, but a full one second lag one every single move is a blatent exaggeration of the problem.

 

It is about 3/4 of a second, to be honest. I counted it this morning, to see if it was any better. Got to "One-one thous...." before they fire off.

 

Again, moving and jumping - NO Delay. It is only when I use an ability or draw/holster my weapon.

[belialle]

that may be true for enemies that i can one shot but it still happens on elites and bosses that require a couple more. this is especially annoying in pvp when i use snipe on a distant enemy and a knight roles up on me and i cant stun him and cast probe before he uses force sweep or master strike.

 

yes i do agree it is out of sync at times like when i walk into an empty room in an instance and then get rolled by the ten battle droids i ambled past before my game said they were there.

Ah, OK. I do see what you are saying here, and I can see how this would be frustrating if I had to deal with it all the time. I will say that I never thought of this as being connected to the character's animations, though. And for me at least, the delay is very, very short. Nowhere near 1.5 seconds. It feels like less than 0.5 seconds, but my inner clock isn't really so finely tuned, so I could just be talking out of my *** so far as that goes.

 

As a melee Operative, this is not something that I run into, really.

 

 

EDIT: I do not have any sort of delay when it comes to sheathing/unsheathing my weapons. The animation for that begins from the moment I hit the hotkey for it.

Edited January 5, 2012 by belialle

[Tiron_Raptor]

No matter what ability I use, even sheathing and unsheathing my weapon, there is a 1 second delay from when I press the button (keyboard or with the mouse), before it will fire off. Oddly, the only two things that do not have a delay is movement (w,s,a,d) and jumping (spacebar).

 

This has nothing to do with any GCDs, as the OP suggests.

 

As I have said repeatedly, the animation has little or nothing to do with when the ability goes off: it's a cosmetic only, strictly client side bit of prettyness for your amusement.

 

Your client isn't, in fact, the game. It's just an interface to the game. Every single bit of it is just a UI: even your character itself.

 

The actual GAME...is on the server. There are no graphics, only a series of datastructures ruled over by algorithms. Timers, but no animations.

 

All your client does is send requests (not commands, REQUESTS) indicating what you're trying to do, and displays what the server tells it is happening. The word of the server is law: if the server says one thing and your client says something different, the server has already won.

 

The client tries its best to approximate what is happening on the server, but due to the simple fact that it takes time for signals to travel between your computer and the server, it's always going to be just an approximation. The client tries to cover it by anticipating certain things that it thinks will happen: when the server sends back a message indicating it DIDN'T happen, the client abruptly, even violently, corrects its display to match what the server says.

 

The trick here is that the client is just showing you what is happening on the server. Nothing you see in your client actually matters. The only thing that counts is what the server believes to be the case. The server doesn't wait on your client.

 

So the animations? Completely superfluous. Has nothing at all to do with what's actually happening. They're literally only there to look good. And the server? Doesn't even know they're happening. They don't matter to it, it'd be a waste to send them when '<Player> uses <ability> targeted on/at <whatever>' conveys all the important information.

 

So you press the button. The client sends a message to the server saying you used whatever ability, and shows your GCD and/or cooldown starting and your resources being used, anticipating that the server's gonna come back with 'yeah okay.' If the server instead comes back with 'uhhh...no', the cooldowns instantly reset to unused and the resources reappear in your bar.

 

For whatever reason, it's NOT starting to simulate the attack animation at the same time that it does the cooldowns and resources. It waits a bit, and then plays the animation. Possibly waiting to be sure the attack succeeds before starting to show it, which is purely cosmetic. They can't really do that with the UI itself, because the UI has to be as close to what the server believes is the case as possible. The animations, on the other hand, don't matter one bit either way.

 

So what's the problem? You're looking at the wrong thing. You're watching the inconsequential, meaningless character animations instead of the much tighter and more accurate UI. By the time you START animating the attack, you have actually already succeeded at making the attack, and any damage done has already been applied to your target.

 

On the server.

 

On your client, they play some games with it to make it look better.

 

But what happens on your client doesn't mean anything, it has no bearing on the game itself at all. Only what happens on the server matters.

 

So when you push the button, and you see your character standing there for a bit before actually animating the ability, you're not seeing the ability being 'delayed' and 'going off way late'. Your GCD already cycled fully and is available again: the ability has already 'gone off', your client just hasn't shown you the effects yet. if you use another ability now, it will go off just perfectly and have full effect, even though your character just lifted his arm to fire the rocket.

 

The key thing that really indicates that there's no 'delay' is the fact that the animations ARE smooth as a general rule: if there was a substantial 'delay', while going full tilt and hitting abilities as soon as the GCD is down, you'd get way ahead of the animations. You'd either end up with animations getting clipped off on a regular basis...or them stacking up in a queue, getting way behind what you were using, and end up going through a few even after you stopped using abilities if the battle was of any length.

 

The 'animation delay' is merely a cosmetic effect with no bearing on the gameplay, and does not prevent you from using your abilities at the full level permitted by the game design in any way.

[andrelle]

 

As I have said repeatedly, the animation has little or nothing to do with when the ability goes off: it's a cosmetic only, strictly client side bit of prettyness for your amusement.

 

 

Are you a Bioware developer? No offense, but how do you know what the issue is? By mere observation? Have the developers posted what the issue is, or is this speculation about what it could be?

 

Your knowledge of CS and client-server architecture are not in question. I'm just wondering if this is all speculation, and then the rest of the thread more speculation on top of speculation?

 

I haven't noticed anything, really. Guess I'm easy to please, or ignorance is bliss.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Are you a Bioware developer? No offense, but how do you know what the issue is? By mere observation? Have the developers posted what the issue is, or is this speculation about what it could be?

 

Your knowledge of CS and client-server architecture are not in question. I'm just wondering if this is all speculation, and then the rest of the thread more speculation on top of speculation?

 

I haven't noticed anything, really. Guess I'm easy to please, or ignorance is bliss.

 

No, I'll admit to it being somewhat laced with speculation based on my observations.

 

My observation is that when you use abilities as fast as possible by watching the GCD, all the abilities go off, all the animations play, in order, all damage is received by the target, and interrupts work as expected even in the middle of an animation or channeled ability.

 

In short, if you just stop paying attention to when the animations go off entirely, it turns out it works smoothly, exactly as you'd expect.

 

With the exception of a few specific bugs that cause some abilities to just flat out not work right. There's a difference between not working right and being 'delayed' though.

 

Unless bioware wrecks the animations by tightening them up, the only thing that's going to put a stop to all this is the implementation of the combat log. Because then you'll be able to see straight up that, animation delayed or not, everything worked just fine.

[Fireline]

So everyone playing SWTOR, hoping for a change should leave SWTOR and go back to wow? Because its the only game with a great Combat system in it ?

 

Why dont we do like this: Bioware gets this Character Responsiveness changed so its like World of Warcraft. If they dont, people that wants a somewhat higher level PVP, hopefully there will be a arena later in the game and if they fix "Character Responsiveness" SWTOR could MAYBE just MAYBE enter the E-SPORT world.

 

If they dont fix it, everyone will start leaving once they finish their "story" on their character. Exactly what has happend with the other "new" mmorpgs, but without the story part.

 

an mmo such as SWTOR or WoW can't be e-sports, wow didnt have success there neither.

 

The simple fact is that these kind of MMO games aren't easy to pick up and learn, something for e-sport has gotta be easy to pick up and watch, like knowing the abilities etc.

 

You have to consider a viewer that doesn't follow anything about the game, doesnt know abilities or anything really. an fps game, moba games or RTS games don't suffer from the same, because they are easy to pick up and learn with a good commentator.

 

Then there is the fact that builds probably change every other patch, skills change aswell.

 

Put simply, a traditional MMO won't ever have success in E-Sports.

[andrelle]

No, I'll admit to it being somewhat laced with speculation based on my observations.

 

My observation is that when you use abilities as fast as possible by watching the GCD, all the abilities go off, all the animations play, in order, all damage is received by the target, and interrupts work as expected even in the middle of an animation or channeled ability.

 

In short, if you just stop paying attention to when the animations go off entirely, it turns out it works smoothly, exactly as you'd expect.

 

With the exception of a few specific bugs that cause some abilities to just flat out not work right. There's a difference between not working right and being 'delayed' though.

 

Unless bioware wrecks the animations by tightening them up, the only thing that's going to put a stop to all this is the implementation of the combat log. Because then you'll be able to see straight up that, animation delayed or not, everything worked just fine.

 

So, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, with a few minor exceptions things are working as intended, its perception? There is a delay, but its the way the player perceives the delay?

 

The only thing I notice is, if I as a BH fire off the Death From Above ability, and while it is firing, I click on another ability, the first ability ends abruptly and the second one goes off immediately. Which I think is what you stated in your original post. But I should expect this behavior, because I interrupted the first ability with the second, correct? In any other case, I really don't think I'm having a problem with one ability delayed before it fires. Or, I'm not perceiving it.

[Kurenar]

My personal speculation is that they're having the client delay starting the attack animations until it receives the success message(with the damage attached) from the server. There is a VERY noticeable delay between using an ability and the animation starting, and that would account for it.

 

As for the REASON they might do that... I suspect it has to do with the 'hiding the network latency effects' thing, ironically! WoW generally uses relatively slow projectiles for spells that have projectiles, and the damage done by bolt spells doesn't show up until the bolt hits...unless it times out because you're outrunning the bolt.

 

Because the bolts are so slow, there's plenty of time for the client to start simulating the spell at the end of the cast time, get the damage message from the server, and hold it until the spell hits, at which point it displays the effects.

 

SWTOR's projectiles are generally...quite fast. There's less time for the client to receive the damage between firing the projectile and the projectile hitting. So they delayed the start of the attack animation a bit to make up for it.

 

Your passion is admirable in trying to demystify the underlying causes of these multiple issues we lump together and call "ability delay", however they are issues nonetheless. I personally agree there seems to be server-side acknowledgment required prior to animation firing, and that the perceived latency can be mitigated by allowing the client to begin the animation before the server response. What I don't agree on is that any of this is acceptable.

 

The game is not an FPS, but ask yourself how hit synchronization is possible even at moderate latency levels with projectiles that travel near instantly to the target, all in a server-client architecture where multiple parties must agree what happened, when it happened, and where it happened, all in a fraction of a second with little to no perceptible sluggishness to the users.

 

Beyond that, I tend to agree there may be some server load related issues as well. For example, I have a steady 20-30ms in game in all areas, even populated zones, yet the perceived delay changes on a whim, and fluctuates the most in localities with high activity among a handful or more players, such as warzones and fleet locations. Out of curiosity I captured some of the traffic between myself and the BW servers during these times and although my performance and perceived delay fluctuate greatly, latency remains steady with minimal (~10ms max) jitter. All of this could point to server issues as well.

 

 

 

It's an unfortunate reality that the more the client is allowed to enforce the game's communication protocol the more susceptible it becomes to exploits and hacks, but in the long run people are more willing to turn a blind eye towards the shady minority of cheaters than they are to stay content for very long with sluggish gameplay. The overall quality of experience for the majority will win out every time.

 

[andrelle]

 

It can be eliminated outright by...not hitting the button until the GCD's actually finished. If the ability is already off GCD, the ability action queue is not used and there is no delay. If you hit it PRECISELY when the GCD is finished, you can actually get it so tight that the icons never light between the end of one GCD and the start of the next.

 

In short, if you're experiencing 'ability delay', you are hitting the ability too soon.

 

 

I think I see exactly what you mean, which is how I understand the behavior to be. If I hit the ability too soon, I see a 'delay'. If I wait for the cool down to complete before I kick off the ability, I have no issue.

 

But if I wish to queue abilities, what is the best time to use to avoid the 'delay'?

[Kurenar]

Reading the descriptions above of how the speeder dismount occurs it sounds like they are missing the following from their design.

 

Full sequence points. When the client thinks something is finished, it should be sending a packet to the server saying as much. At the moment it appears that packets are only sent to the server for starting, so you get race conditions comparing finishing of one thing to starting of another. By sending these finish events the server knows that any subsequent packets should be delayed processing until the corresponding server side finish event has occurred.

 

This eliminates interrupting your own channel bars before they complete on server, but after they complete on screen.

 

Good in theory but bad for gameplay experience. With this model everyone would be complaining about "damage delay", as their client waited for the server to calculate and return acknowledgements for everything after they perceive it should be complete. The most successful games just create the illusion of responsiveness (as the OP has stated before) by allowing the client to start animations on key press event while waiting for the official 'ok' behind the scenes.

[Tiron_Raptor]

So, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, with a few minor exceptions things are working as intended, its perception? There is a delay, but its the way the player perceives the delay?

 

The only thing I notice is, if I as a BH fire off the Death From Above ability, and while it is firing, I click on another ability, the first ability ends abruptly and the second one goes off immediately. Which I think is what you stated in your original post. But I should expect this behavior, because I interrupted the first ability with the second, correct? In any other case, I really don't think I'm having a problem with one ability delayed before it fires. Or, I'm not perceiving it.

 

Pretty much, yeah. There is a slight, but perceptible, delay between hitting an ability button and your character starting to perform the animation for the selected ability.

 

From what I can tell, the majority of the complaints of 'ability delay' are people misinterpreting this as the ability 'not working' immediately, but taking a second to activate. It's really just a cosmetic thing done to make the animations and whatnot look better, that has no impact on performance or your ability to play to your full potential.

 

The rest is a few scattered bugs that people are misclassifying as 'ability delay' when they in fact they each only affect a few specific things. Which could actually be slowing down the process of Bioware finding them and fixing them, as they have to disentangle them from 'Ability Delay' to figure out what they actually are.

 

Your passion is admirable in trying to demystify the underlying causes of these multiple issues we lump together and call "ability delay", however they are issues nonetheless. I personally agree there seems to be server-side acknowledgment required prior to animation firing, and that the perceived latency can be mitigated by allowing the client to begin the animation before the server response. What I don't agree on is that any of this is acceptable.

 

The game is not an FPS, but ask yourself how hit synchronization is possible even at moderate latency levels with projectiles that travel near instantly to the target, all in a server-client architecture where multiple parties must agree what happened, when it happened, and where it happened, all in a fraction of a second with little to no perceptible sluggishness to the users.

 

Beyond that, I tend to agree there may be some server load related issues as well. For example, I have a steady 20-30ms in game in all areas, even populated zones, yet the perceived delay changes on a whim, and fluctuates the most in localities with high activity among a handful or more players, such as warzones and fleet locations. Out of curiosity I captured some of the traffic between myself and the BW servers during these times and although my performance and perceived delay fluctuate greatly, latency remains steady with minimal (~10ms max) jitter. All of this could point to server issues as well.

 

 

 

It's an unfortunate reality that the more the client is allowed to enforce the game's communication protocol the more susceptible it becomes to exploits and hacks, but in the long run people are more willing to turn a blind eye towards the shady minority of cheaters than they are to stay content for very long with sluggish gameplay. The overall quality of experience for the majority will win out every time.

 

 

You've clearly never seen anyone angry because they reported a gold farmer/macro miner or someone obviously using hacks, gotten a response, and then saw the person they reported in-game again, doing exactly the same thing.

 

People do actually get really worked up about it, especially if they feel nothing is being done. This is why we have things like Punkbuster or Valve Anti-Cheat.

 

And do not underestimate what a person can do if their client controls everything:

 

Dark Forces 2, Jedi Knight multiplayer for example. Hacker extravaganza. The only integrity the client had was a checksum done on the files, which the hackers quickly figured out how to work around. Trying to play in an unpassworded game was a crapshoot, as it was almost inevitable that sooner or later, a hacker would show up and start griefing people.

 

They'd have absurd weapons that would spray entire swaths of explosive projectiles across the map with one trigger pull, that did far more damage than normal. They'd have invincibility too, so you couldn't even fight back. Oh, and they could fly. And that's just the start.

 

I once had a guy lock my character in a glowing sphere. I lost the ability to do anything at all: no weapons, no movement. It just sat there, 'dancing' in a circle, the view going around and around and up and down in a repeating pattern. No way to do anything at all.

 

And how did they do this? By carefully editing the game files, using known techniques that would result in the changes being checksum-neutral.

 

From purely client side mods.

 

Because the server would trust what their client said.

 

Even if the server was your computer.

 

I think I see exactly what you mean, which is how I understand the behavior to be. If I hit the ability too soon, I see a 'delay'. If I wait for the cool down to complete before I kick off the ability, I have no issue.

 

But if I wish to queue abilities, what is the best time to use to avoid the 'delay'?

 

Precisely. From what I recall of my (admittedly rather quickly conducted) testing, it seemed that the delay after the GCD finished got shorter the sooner you queued the ability. my personal experience was that the 1.0 setting, and queuing the ability as quickly as possible, would occasionally fire off the ability at precisely the right moment, or much more shortly thereafter than it did with 0.5.

 

You may want to play around with it some, find what works best for you.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[Kurenar]

Pretty much, yeah. There is a slight, but perceptible, delay between hitting an ability button and your character starting to perform the animation for the selected ability.

 

From what I can tell, the majority of the complaints of 'ability delay' are people misinterpreting this as the ability 'not working' immediately, but taking a second to activate. It's really just a cosmetic thing done to make the animations and whatnot look better, that has no impact on performance or your ability to play to your full potential.

 

The rest is a few scattered bugs that people are misclassifying as 'ability delay' when they in fact they each only affect a few specific things. Which could actually be slowing down the process of Bioware finding them and fixing them, as they have to disentangle them from 'Ability Delay' to figure out what they actually are.

 

 

 

You've clearly never seen anyone angry because they reported a gold farmer/macro miner or someone obviously using hacks, gotten a response, and then saw the person they reported in-game again, doing exactly the same thing.

 

People do actually get really worked up about it, especially if they feel nothing is being done. This is why we have things like Punkbuster or Valve Anti-Cheat.

 

And do not underestimate what a person can do if their client controls everything:

 

Dark Forces 2, Jedi Knight multiplayer for example. Hacker extravaganza. The only integrity the client had was a checksum done on the files, which the hackers quickly figured out how to work around. Trying to play in an unpassworded game was a crapshoot, as it was almost inevitable that sooner or later, a hacker would show up and start griefing people.

 

They'd have absurd weapons that would spray entire swaths of explosive projectiles across the map with one trigger pull, that did far more damage than normal. They'd have invincibility too, so you couldn't even fight back. Oh, and they could fly. And that's just the start.

 

I once had a guy lock my character in a glowing sphere. I lost the ability to do anything at all: no weapons, no movement. It just sat there, 'dancing' in a circle, the view going around and around and up and down in a repeating pattern. No way to do anything at all.

 

And how did they do this? By carefully editing the game files, using known techniques that would result in the changes being checksum-neutral.

 

From purely client side mods.

 

Because the server would trust what their client said.

 

Even if the server was your computer.

 

Gold farming, hacking, exploiting will happen either way. It does get worse proportionally as client freedom increases, but you're talking about situations that most people will never see vs. something that most will perceive. We'll probably just have to agree to disagree, but it is undeniable that the most successful MMOs do not suffer from these perceived delay issues for a reason.

[Arkerus]

The more I play tonight the more I agree that this is a "perceived" delay. Animations are clashing and stuttering but the attacks are still occuring (perhaps maybe a little late). However, when playing at 0 sec queue allowed, my animations all play out perfectly.

 

Again, I point at non GCD locked abilities like force kick. They follow no queueing rules and they almost always, always play out instantly but with NO animation.

[flunkorg]

Very good find OP.

At least someone around here is doing something meaningful/helpful instead of mindlessly fighting over baseless arguments.

Edited January 5, 2012 by flunkorg

[Bezit]

I have the queue set to 0.0 which should deactivate it. If turning it off causes animation delay issues then it's obviously not the queue ability option

[gangbot]

What about INSTANT abilities that you have to press the button 4-5 times for them to work? As i understant, things like defensive cooldowns, interrupts, some proc abilities and relics ALL should not be a part of the GCD and for some reason they do not work 100%.

 

The animation starts everytime you press it, as an example i used an AOE taunt in PVP, my toon started the animation then stopped and did it 5 times, looked like my toon kept raising his arms in the air and stuttering then finally it worked and he completed the animation and the taunt went off. While doing this there was not other ability of any sort using the GCD, therefore i can say the issue is not with the gcd and ability queue.

 

Seems some people dont seem to understand what the complaints are about.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=bcVZoutQZD0

^

Just watch his ability bar, and how many times he presses some things which are meant to be instant and while the GCD is not on. Also his break free ability from stuns and CC's tends not to work as we would expect, takes 4-5 presses.

 

 

^

And on this one at 0:13, he uses riposte which procs, he presses it about 5 times and the toon stutters shaking his arm then finally goes through with the animation.

[jedimessiah]

I apologize I didn't read through this whole thread. Just the OP and skimmed a few others but I have my action que set to 0.0 or whatever since like day two or three of playing weekend beta through launch and up until today. I've had the ability/animation delay 3 out of 5 times(estimate) since beta so I don't believe that's the issue. I don't button mash and notice the delay in and out of combat. I'm no expert though and I think players like yourself looking into it is just fantastic! Keep up the good work!!

[TheOnlyKyrenS]

The 'ability delay' is not an animation issue. Activating another ability, including an instant-cast 'interrupt' ability, DOES break channels. The actual cause is pretty simple:

 

The 'ability action queue window' is malfunctioning. It's either not setting the delay before firing properly or the function that activates it is sometimes taking longer than the remaining GCD to process, or some other similar thing. Regardless, the result is the same: if you try to activate an ability BEFORE it is off GCD, it takes longer than the remaining GCD before it activates in most cases. There seems to be a minimum amount of time after something is queued before it can fire.

 

There are two ways to work around this: one mitigates, the other eliminates.

 

It can be mitigated by setting the ability action queue window (in the 'control' section of the options) to 1.0 and trying to hit abilities as early as possible: the later in the GCD they're hit, the longer the delay after the GCD before they fire in most cases. At 1.0, hitting as early as possible, the delay after GCD end is VASTLY reduced, and occasionally eliminated...though not often.

 

It can be eliminated outright by...not hitting the button until the GCD's actually finished. If the ability is already off GCD, the ability action queue is not used and there is no delay. If you hit it PRECISELY when the GCD is finished, you can actually get it so tight that the icons never light between the end of one GCD and the start of the next.

 

Setting the ability action queue window to 0.0 eliminates any possibility of encountering the delay, but also makes it so you MUST wait until the end of the GCD to activate an ability: if you hit it early, even by a microsecond, it simply fails silently and never goes off at all(though it would make spamming the button actually work as expected).

 

In short, if you're experiencing 'ability delay', you are hitting the ability too soon.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself. I realized that there was a queue thing launch and set it to 0.0. I haven't been having any troubles timing.

[Tiron_Raptor]

What about INSTANT abilities that you have to press the button 4-5 times for them to work? As i understant, things like defensive cooldowns, interrupts, some proc abilities and relics ALL should not be a part of the GCD and for some reason they do not work 100%.

 

The animation starts everytime you press it, as an example i used an AOE taunt in PVP, my toon started the animation then stopped and did it 5 times, looked like my toon kept raising his arms in the air and stuttering then finally it worked and he completed the animation and the taunt went off. While doing this there was not other ability of any sort using the GCD, therefore i can say the issue is not with the gcd and ability queue.

 

Seems some people dont seem to understand what the complaints are about.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=bcVZoutQZD0

^

Just watch his ability bar, and how many times he presses some things which are meant to be instant and while the GCD is not on. Also his break free ability from stuns and CC's tends not to work as we would expect, takes 4-5 presses.

 

^

And on this one at 0:13, he uses riposte which procs, he presses it about 5 times and the toon stutters shaking his arm then finally goes through with the animation.

 

I don't have time to watch these in full: What I saw of the first one, most of the abilities he was spam clicking on weren't available yet, either because they were on cooldown or because he was CC'd.

 

The second one...i've answered the riposte thing in that vid twice now: it appears to be respecting the GCD, when it shouldn't be. It fails to go off at all, evidenced by the lack of cooldown or focus being used, right up until the GCD ends, at which point it goes off immediately.

 

There does appear to be a problem with at least some of the instant, non-GCD abilities. This is not a delay however: this is a bug that is preventing them from working right.

 

A delay would be if you hit an ability which is already ready to go(ONCE, because spamming obscures if it was delayed or simply didn't go off at all) and it does nothing for a time before finally going off correctly.

 

This is what APPEARS to happen with the animations, except that the animations don't actually MEAN anything, they're strictly there for looks. An actual delay would manifest with the GCD, cooldown timers, and resource consumption. It would make you wait longer than one GCD cycle before you could activate a different ability.

 

I've not seen this happen yet. Anywhere. All I've seen is the animations lagging a fraction of a second behind what you're activating. The ability still activates correctly and on time, still allows you to use new abilities correctly and on time, and even chains with other abilities... correctly and on time!

 

It's just a slight, visual delay that some people are misperceiving as 'slowing them down', when it's really entirely cosmetic and has no effect on their gameplay.

 

There are a few very narrow, specific ability bugs, but I've yet to see one that caused or was caused by any 'delay'.

[gangbot]

No effect on game play? What spamming a break free ability 5 times, and it breaks the stun with 0.1 or something like that left in the stun we completely waste the ability.

 

Explain the first video again, using instant abilities NOT PART OF THE GCD. I know he was spamming the ones on the GCD but thats normal and no complaints about that, i'm talking about when he wanted to use a defensive cooldown or something like that. And when he ws running around not fighting he wanted to force leap someone and that took a few presses of the button.

 

You could say it is a bug with the GCD and instant abilities, or you could say it is a delay because technically the ability is delaying you from using it.

Edited January 5, 2012 by gangbot

[Tiron_Raptor]

No effect on game play? What spamming a break free ability 5 times, and it breaks the stun with 0.1 or something like that left in the stun we completely waste the ability.

 

Explain the first video again, using instant abilities NOT PART OF THE GCD. I know he was spamming the ones on the GCD but thats normal and no complaints about that, i'm talking about when he wanted to use a defensive cooldown or something like that. And when he ws running around not fighting he wanted to force leap someone and that took a few presses of the button.

 

You could say it is a bug with the GCD and instant abilities, or you could say it is a delay because technically the ability is delaying you from using it.

 

Delay: n: A period of time by which something is late or postponed.

 

If there was a delay, it would mean that it activates based on a single attempt at trying to use it, but does so far later than it should.

 

Spamming the button for the ability makes it impossible to determine if it was, in fact, delayed, or simply didn't work at first for some unknown reason. With multiple keypresses, you can't be sure which one of them activated the ability.

 

If it was the first keypress, and it just took that long to do anything, that's a delay.

 

If it was the last keypress before it fired, that means there's some sort of bug that made the first group of keypresses fail to trigger the ability correctly. This isn't a delay, it's simply a broken ability.

 

And do not mistake, there ARE some very broken abilities out there right now. But they are NOT broken because of a delay. They're just bugged, plain and simple.

 

And saying that it's because of 'the delay' actually makes it harder for bioware to find it and fix it!

Edited January 5, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[Satpolpp]

There is a 500+ thread on the exact same topic. If you want to be a thread celebrity you have to come up with something else more original