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

[Tiron_Raptor]

I got your point all this time... I just don't like singling out "one little aspect" of the overall issue of "Clunky Feeling"... which is labelled Character/Avatar Responsiveness.

 

My entire point to you is in GREEN: EVERYONE HERE UNDERSTANDS THIS. That is why we're p***ed at you. Stop talking about it, its a small, fraction of the overall issue.

 

It's the most harped on fraction of the overall issue, and the one that least affects actual gameplay. I don't like people sitting and saying it makes the game unplayable when it actually doesn't.

 

It's highly annoying, but ONLY highly annoying, and by far the least important of the things presented here. Every single other problem discussed is far more critical, yet this seems to be the one most people twig on and complain about. That bothers me. A lot.

 

They need to fix the bugs that are actually affecting combat itself first.

 

And if you understand it...why the heck do you keep contradicting me about it? Seriously, every post you and all the other thought police have made up till now practically you've been trying to refute what I was saying and claiming it wasn't the case. Even when you've said you understood it, you've then said something after that which contradicted it.

 

What I want you to understand now is that there is a factual coding issue in both the Engine Code as well as Feature Code. This leads to the ability delay problems as well as the Client/Server Sync/Latency.

 

 

ON TOP OF THAT:

 

You have the combat design decision that Bioware took (Code) to prioritize Animation > Gamerplay Response. Thus the Smuggler Video.

 

I've said in nearly every post that there are bugs in the code. I've said flat out that they set it up to try to make the animations look moar prettyful.

 

Everything you want me to say I've said repeatedly, while you sat there and denied every point I was trying to make, reflexively and apparently without thinking.

 

Hell, I've changed my mind several times about things through the course of the thread as new evidence was presented or pointed out better.

 

You? Didn't even consider rethinking yourself. You stuck to your dogma and lashed out at any suggestion that it wasn't entirely, 100% complete and accurate. You refused to even consider anything but what you already believed.

 

Your closed mindedness and ignorance are NOT my fault.

 

Maybe you should run for president of the US as a republican, you'd fit in pretty well.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[Khoranth]

Possibly, but I think that in order for that kind of combat system to be equal and have versatile animations and abilities for different classes it'd easily get way too complex to accomplish.

 

They don't have to be equal if we are disregarding PVP, just reasonably close. There is no combat log.

[Xcore]

It's the most harped on fraction of the overall issue, and the one that least affects actual gameplay. I don't like people sitting and saying it makes the game unplayable when it actually doesn't.

 

It's highly annoying, but ONLY highly annoying, and by far the least important of the things presented here. Every single other problem discussed is far more critical, yet this seems to be the one most people twig on and complain about. That bothers me. A lot.

 

They need to fix the bugs that are actually affecting combat itself first.

 

And if you understand it...why the heck do you keep contradicting me about it? Seriously, every post you and all the other thought police have made up till now practically you've been trying to refute what I was saying and claiming it wasn't the case. Even when you've said you understood it, you've then said something after that which contradicted it.

 

 

 

I've said in nearly every post that there are bugs in the code. I've said flat out that they set it up to try to make the animations look moar prettyful.

 

Everything you want me to say I've said repeatedly, while you sat there and denied every point I was trying to make, reflexively and apparently without thinking.

 

Hell, I've changed my mind several times about things through the course of the thread as new evidence was presented or pointed out better.

 

You? Didn't even consider rethinking yourself. You stuck to your dogma and lashed out at any suggestion that it wasn't entirely, 100% complete and accurate. You refused to even consider anything but what you already believed.

 

Your closed mindedness and ignorance are NOT my fault.

 

Maybe you should run for president of the US as a republican, you'd fit in pretty well.

 

How am I contradicting myself in any way? You have been trying to de-rail a very long thread to become basically nothing but Client/Server Latency issues... seemingly. Completely ignoring that it is just one of the problems tying into the entire point of the thread, which is to define this issue of Disconnect between Player and Avatar.

[Khoranth]

Everything you want me to say I've said repeatedly, while you sat there and denied every point I was trying to make, reflexively and apparently without thinking.

 

Hell, I've changed my mind several times about things through the course of the thread as new evidence was presented or pointed out better.

 

You? Didn't even consider rethinking yourself. You stuck to your dogma and lashed out at any suggestion that it wasn't entirely, 100% complete and accurate. You refused to even consider anything but what you already believed.

 

Your closed mindedness and ignorance are NOT my fault.

 

Maybe you should run for president of the US as a republican, you'd fit in pretty well.

 

Haven't the D's been bashing the leading R candidate for changing his positions too often?

 

What is it with you liberals? if a R changes his mind you attack the R for flip flops, if an R doesnt change mind he is close minded and ignorant.

 

Hypocrite much?

[JediMasterShake]

What is it with you liberals?

 

 

Seriously? Could these forums get any worse?

 

For the love of God, man.

[Khoranth]

Seriously? Could these forums get any worse?

 

For the love of God, man.

 

 

I normally don't talk politics, but his last comment was irking, after being flooded with so much recently by D's with R hatred over M.R. changing his mind alot.

[skotish]

I had to bump this to the front page sorry folks ,having played pvp for the 1st time tonight i lost count the amount of times my abilities just never executed i was gob smacked at how broken this is in a fast environment shame really as i enjoyed hope its sorted soon BW

[riedeas]

Thank you for creating this topic..

 

This isn't really gamebreaking but it's what causeing me most greif in the game and i start to notice it more and more.

 

I seriously hope that their next big patch is going to be focused on on this issue, general ui lag/clunkyness and just overall performance. Content i can wait for, clunky/buggy/laggy combat? not so much.

Content means nothing if the combat/gameplay feels bad..

[Asnine]

I normally don't talk politics, but his last comment was irking, after being flooded with so much recently by D's with R hatred over M.R. changing his mind alot.

 

Are you serious? While a lot of criticism does come from Democrats, most of that is coming from fellow Republicans right now.

 

 

Get a clue.

 

 

Also, this ability delay thing is really, really annoying.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Asnine

[Khoranth]

Are you serious? While a lot of criticism does come from Democrats, most of that is coming from fellow Republicans right now.

 

 

Get a clue.

 

 

Also, this ability delay thing is really, really annoying.

 

 

Sorry, fact is,The D's have been running M.R. hate adds more often recently then the R opposition. It's obvious to everyone M.R. is going to win, they are preparing.

 

Don't get me wrong, i have no problem with the D's and these attack adds, it's good strategy, just a problem with that goofball and his ridiculous comment.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Khoranth

[Tiron_Raptor]

How am I contradicting myself in any way? You have been trying to de-rail a very long thread to become basically nothing but Client/Server Latency issues... seemingly. Completely ignoring that it is just one of the problems tying into the entire point of the thread, which is to define this issue of Disconnect between Player and Avatar.

 

There've been a few occasions where you said you understood the whole bit with the server being what does everything ...and then immediately after said that things were going off late, apparently based on when the animation started and the damage text appeared on your client.

 

My entire point is and always has been that because of the lag in the animations, the ability has ALREADY 'gone off', where it counts anyway, before you see it, and that because of the delay you can't rely on the animations or display of damage to indicate when something happened.

 

And no, I have said that SOME of it is client/server latency issues, and then after looking into a bit changed my mind. There is a difference between client-server latency and client-server synchronization. The former is just networking and processing lag, and shouldn't be a problem all that often. Latency is just *part* of the problem with client synchronization.

 

I have said I don't know how many times that there are things in the code(I even listed a few) that could also affect it, and at least three or four times that I thought something in the code probably IS, because the problems sync problems are too consistent, too regular to just be latency. The latency is always going to cause some of them to happen some of the time, but not NEARLY to the extent we're seeing.

 

That titanic hitch in the IA video between the castbar ending and the heal going off, for example. That's definitely the client waiting to get the heal information from the server, but it shouldn't be nearly that long or that regular if it's just latency. Either the castbars on the client are shorter than on the server, or something in the code is delaying the signals on one or the other well above and beyond just network lag. Could be netcode, as I've said six times or so, since that's a fairly common cause of this sort of problem, and something that Bioware doesn't really have much experience with.

 

And what I've been trying to do? I've seen way too much of 'here's this thing, that thing, this other thing, and these things over here, they're all ability delay, bioware needs to fix them'.

 

The complication is that there are actually a number of different issues with very different causes and potential resolutions lumped together in this thread.

 

Translation: 'there's so many different things just being thrown together in here that it's hard to pick out what the actual bugs are and what might be causing them, but it's fairly apparently some of them aren't related and will require completely different fixes'

 

What I want? I want more than just 'oh hey it's bugged fix it'. If we really want the bugs fixed, we need to track down each one individually, back it into a corner, and document very clearly what happens, how it happens, and when it happens, for each bug. Doing some experimentation and analysis to try to figure out WHY it's doing what it does certainly won't hurt anything. The more clear and detailed the information we give them is, the more likely they are to find it and fix it, and do it faster too.

 

If we just go 'oh there's poor responsiveness', it could take them YEARS to find it all, let alone fix it, and they could very well 'fix' several things that didn't need it in the meantime in order to try to appease the people complaining.

 

From my perspective, then, the thread has BEEN derailed since I got here. Instead of identifying and documenting the problems to try to get them fixed, it seems to have degenerated into 'it's broken fix it!', while classifying every single problem with any ability whatsoever as 'poor responsiveness'. That doesn't help anything or anyone, in fact it might even make it worse.

 

Haven't the D's been bashing the leading R candidate for changing his positions too often?

 

What is it with you liberals? if a R changes his mind you attack the R for flip flops, if an R doesnt change mind he is close minded and ignorant.

 

Hypocrite much?

 

Actually, I'm a registered independant who thinks that both parties are terrible, and that if either of them is allowed to have too much power for too long, it inevitably leads to bad things.

 

I just happen to live an area that the republicans have dominated since before I was born. I've never once be able to actually vote for county sheriff for example, because there's only been one candidate since I started voting: the republican incumbent(who engages in egregious nepotism, and attempts to punish the people of the county when they vote down the things he wants more money for, by cutting first from the street cops and patrols, while leaving the massive and extremely well paid administration untouched) I've gotten more than a little tired of the 'my way or the highway' stuff that some of the really far-right freakos like to pull lately.

 

Actually my greatest fear right now is that the 'Tea Party' types are gonna end up splitting the Republican party in two when they drive off(or abandon) all the moderates by refusing to compromise at all. The only possible result if that happens with our current political system is that the democrats dominate utterly until the reps get it back together. Either party being totally dominant generally turns out disastrous.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[Xcore]

There've been a few occasions where you said you understood the whole bit with the server being what does everything ...and then immediately after said that things were going off late, apparently based on when the animation started and the damage text appeared on your client.

 

My entire point is and always has been that because of the lag in the animations, the ability has ALREADY 'gone off', where it counts anyway, before you see it, and that because of the delay you can't rely on the animations or display of damage to indicate when something happened.

 

And no, I have said that SOME of it is client/server latency issues, and then after looking into a bit changed my mind. There is a difference between client-server latency and client-server synchronization. The former is just networking and processing lag, and shouldn't be a problem all that often. Latency is just *part* of the problem with client synchronization.

 

I have said I don't know how many times that there are things in the code(I even listed a few) that could also affect it, and at least three or four times that I thought something in the code probably IS, because the problems sync problems are too consistent, too regular to just be latency. The latency is always going to cause some of them to happen some of the time, but not NEARLY to the extent we're seeing.

 

That titanic hitch in the IA video between the castbar ending and the heal going off, for example. That's definitely the client waiting to get the heal information from the server, but it shouldn't be nearly that long or that regular if it's just latency. Either the castbars on the client are shorter than on the server, or something in the code is delaying the signals on one or the other well above and beyond just network lag. Could be netcode, as I've said six times or so, since that's a fairly common cause of this sort of problem, and something that Bioware doesn't really have much experience with.

 

And what I've been trying to do? I've seen way too much of 'here's this thing, that thing, this other thing, and these things over here, they're all ability delay, bioware needs to fix them'.

 

 

 

Translation: 'there's so many different things just being thrown together in here that it's hard to pick out what the actual bugs are and what might be causing them, but it's fairly apparently some of them aren't related and will require completely different fixes'

 

What I want? I want more than just 'oh hey it's bugged fix it'. If we really want the bugs fixed, we need to track down each one individually, back it into a corner, and document very clearly what happens, how it happens, and when it happens, for each bug. Doing some experimentation and analysis to try to figure out WHY it's doing what it does certainly won't hurt anything. The more clear and detailed the information we give them is, the more likely they are to find it and fix it, and do it faster too.

 

If we just go 'oh there's poor responsiveness', it could take them YEARS to find it all, let alone fix it, and they could very well 'fix' several things that didn't need it in the meantime in order to try to appease the people complaining.

 

From my perspective, then, the thread has BEEN derailed since I got here. Instead of identifying and documenting the problems to try to get them fixed, it seems to have degenerated into 'it's broken fix it!', while classifying every single problem with any ability whatsoever as 'poor responsiveness'. That doesn't help anything or anyone, in fact it might even make it worse.

 

What you see on client side is vital, you're ignoring it as you continue claiming that only what happens server side matters. The disconnect for the player is what he sees client side.

 

This is part of the issue.

 

The Smuggler video demonstrates another part which is Feature Coding.

 

The IA video demonstrates another part which is Engine Coding.

 

 

You're ignoring these other facets Client/Server Latency as well as Sync is not the whole story.

[Lawconis]

It's wide consent that Project has a .8 delay on dmg. It backloads damage vs. Shock's frontload. The .8 is almost a whole Global Cool Down for others to react.

 

Don't believe me beyond the other buffs and examples I have given?

 

Cast Project on a monster, monster bites your leg, you take damage, rock hits monster, monster dies.

 

Take same monster, same level, same gear etc...

 

Cast Shock on monster, monster dies. You never take damage.

 

This folks is a game mechanic, flawed by design. I am not talking about animation issues.

[Xcore]

It's wide consent that Project has a .8 delay on dmg. It backloads damage vs. Shock's frontload. The .8 is almost a whole Global Cool Down for others to react.

 

Don't believe me beyond the other buffs and examples I have given?

 

Cast Project on a monster, monster bites your leg, you take damage, rock hits monster, monster dies.

 

Take same monster, same level, same gear etc...

 

Cast Shock on monster, monster dies. You never take damage.

 

This folks is a game mechanic, flawed by design. I am not talking about animation issues.

 

Its not a mystery, its the simple Animation > Ability priority around which the combat dynamics are designed. For our Dinosaur friend, Project is processed server side later than Shock.

[Tiron_Raptor]

What you see on client side is vital, you're ignoring it as you continue claiming that only what happens server side matters. The disconnect for the player is what he sees client side.

 

This is part of the issue.

 

The Smuggler video demonstrates another part which is Feature Coding.

 

The IA video demonstrates another part which is Engine Coding.

 

 

You're ignoring these other facets Client/Server Latency as well as Sync is not the whole story.

 

I'm not ignoring it: I'm stating that the important UI bits aren't delayed, and you can get enough feedback from them alone to perform quite well.

 

The bits that ARE delayed are non-critical to your combat performance in the vast majority of cases.

 

Most of the stuff that is affecting combat isn't related to the display delay: it's just something that's flat out broken, and would be still even if the delay wasn't there.

 

Not sure what you're on about with 'feature coding' and 'engine coding', which I'll freely admit.

 

Its not a mystery, its the simple Animation > Ability priority around which the combat dynamics are designed. For our Dinosaur friend, Project is processed server side later than Shock.

 

If he's getting hit with project when he's not with shock then yeah, obviously. Which is sort of odd.

 

Do they use the same initiation mechanism? I'd assume not, but assuming = bad and I don't know personally. If one is cast time and the other is channeled, or some stupid thing, it might be a clue.

 

I would suggest testing it on other players and seeing what differences play out there: they can play some games when it's NPCs they can't get away with when it's two players involved, because both sides have to have things relayed to them, which'd help clear up some things, particularly on the backend.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[thestackshow]

Ability Delay is gamebreaking and drastically decreases the "quality of life" of this game.

 

Quality of Life meaning it isnt playable for a long period of time because eventually the frustration will be too much to bear. You deal with it now because the game is new, but once the game is older, you wont deal with issues like this if they are not fixed.

[Xcore]

I'm not ignoring it: I'm stating that the important UI bits aren't delayed, and you can get enough feedback from them alone to perform quite well.

 

The bits that ARE delayed are non-critical to your combat performance in the vast majority of cases.

 

Most of the stuff that is affecting combat isn't related to the display delay: it's just something that's flat out broken, and would be still even if the delay wasn't there.

 

Not sure what you're on about with 'feature coding' and 'engine coding', which I'll freely admit.

 

You can't make the claim that "the bits that are delayed are non-critical" at all. The grenade is a perfect example of it being critical. The ability is not triggered until the animation of the previous ability is completed.

 

Also my Smuggler, Trinket -> Cover -> Knockback issue displays this as well. This is within part of the feature coding, the way the game handles Animation/Ability Priorities.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Ability Delay is gamebreaking and drastically decreases the "quality of life" of this game.

 

Quality of Life meaning it isnt playable for a long period of time because eventually the frustration will be too much to bear. You deal with it now because the game is new, but once the game is older, you wont deal with issues like this if they are not fixed.

 

...would you care to elaborate on what specific problem(s) you are experiencing, and how it is/they are frustrating you?

 

There's about six separate issues being discussed here, and it's not at all clear which you mean.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[LaManoNera]

I can't believe BW is taking this issue so lightly.

 

It's not really a huge problem on ranged classes. But when playing my JK, sometimes it's really unbearable. Slash will loop 2-3 times and Blade Storm ALWAYS stutters before firing off. It's a huge annoyance in PvE and makes PvP not even worth the frustration.

[Cyrinius]

Yall can chill out, this is suppose to be fixed in one of the few updates coming this month.

[Xcore]

...would you care to elaborate on what specific problem(s) you are experiencing, and how it is/they are frustrating you?

 

There's about six separate issues being discussed here, and it's not at all clear which you mean.

 

The six issues or more discussed are all cause and symptom of what he is experiencing. There is no one single item that will define what he means.

 

Thus a thread called on the overall issue of Responsiveness... the problem you're creating is separating the issues and attempting to pinpoint key and exact causes. This is up to the Dev Team, the best we can do is point towards the individual problems. We can attempt to diagnose but without Bioware's input we can simply not know the exact causes. My problem is that you claim that you can without any idea of the coding issues involved. Every single proposition you make is at best, guesswork through observation.

 

In fact no-one really has any idea of the details on the Engine/Feature/Interaction Coding at all... besides Bioware, or the Engine Devs that they bought it from...

 

 

Its actually up to Bioware to fix it, not you or I... and as far as providing "feedback" there is plenty in both the OP as well as throughout 5 threads now. I believe they understand the problem quite well at this point... from every angle.

 

 

 

P.S.: You have to remember that basically until this thread, it was more like "Um... something is clunky"... /cancelsubscription.

[Descent]

It's just frustrating.

[Xcore]

Yall can chill out, this is suppose to be fixed in one of the few updates coming this month.

 

You can't make that claim, Bioware has stated nothing like that... any response so far from Bioware is either incredibly Vague or simply "We're Investigating".

[thestackshow]

...would you care to elaborate on what specific problem(s) you are experiencing, and how it is/they are frustrating you?

 

There's about six separate issues being discussed here, and it's not at all clear which you mean.

 

When I cast an ability, it takes 0.5 to 1 seconds after I hit the button before the animation starts and it casts the ability.

 

It works the same way with my moves that have a cast time, there is a delay between when the cast bar ends, and when the ability starts.

 

Its impossible to PvP like this.

[Xcore]

When I cast an ability, it takes 0.5 to 1 seconds after I hit the button before the animation starts and it casts the ability.

 

It works the same way with my moves that have a cast time, there is a delay between when the cast bar ends, and when the ability starts.

 

Its impossible to PvP like this.

 

I think the first issue is Client/Server Communication tied in with ability wind up. There is a trooper video that has a .8 sec delay due to Animation wind up.

 

Second is the chaining (rotation) of abilities which is imo 100% Animation Coding.

 

 

Yes I realize that the animation and ability effect are separated etc. thats not the argument. The issue is that their Effect recognition server side is sync'd with animation not input...

 

 

Once again, without Bioware input... we don't not for certain... what we DO know is that its a real problem.