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

[smexymage]

Dallas Dickinson acknowledged at the cantina tour that their system does not perform well in large groups and stated that there are several things in the pipeline to address this but was unable to provide any sort of ETA.

[Alec_Fortescue]

It's just when you use an ability via keybind, very often the ability won't be used (character may appear to "hesitate" with finishing it. Just look at the Blade Storm sometime) and global cooldown will be triggered instead. This can happen even twice in a row and can result in losing buffs (losing 1.5 second on Merciless Slash during which we could've extended the buff) and even worse. Curious thing is that it is not happenning when you click on your abilities! Computers doesn't have much to do with it. It's happenning with a solid spec and even 23 ms here. And I am on my own ship hitting the dummy. The least laggy and demanding area to be in! Edited November 20, 2012 by Alec_Fortescue

[Eszi]

Dallas Dickinson acknowledged at the cantina tour that their system does not perform well in large groups and stated that there are several things in the pipeline to address this but was unable to provide any sort of ETA.

 

No eta from bioware???? How unexpected

[FerrusPA]

"Large groups" = More than 5 people, apparently.

[neocoma]

Dallas Dickinson acknowledged at the cantina tour that their system does not perform well in large groups and stated that there are several things in the pipeline to address this but was unable to provide any sort of ETA.

 

Same old story? Still? After like 11 months? Gee ...and I thought they were clever enough to fix basic gameplay issues ASAP. Guess I was wrong. How can this be without ETA and not top prio?

[Rayla_Felana]

Same old story? Still? After like 11 months? Gee ...and I thought they were clever enough to fix basic gameplay issues ASAP. Guess I was wrong. How can this be without ETA and not top prio?

 

They have introduced a few engine optimizations which should be noticeable, for example I can turn on high shaders with Bloom, with little lag, whereas before it would send me into lag hell.

[Soluss]

They have introduced a few engine optimizations which should be noticeable, for example I can turn on high shaders with Bloom, with little lag, whereas before it would send me into lag hell.

 

Which broke alot of other performance issues for other people.

[smexymage]

One thing they did state that I should have mentioned was that these updates would be small background things that would be mentioned in patch notes, there are several in the works but don't expect this one big in your face kind of fix, it will be small and progressive, kinda what they have been doing to date I guess.

 

I know the game can be rough and inconsistent but they are making improvements.

[fourthx]

These issues must be hell to debug, I have a core2 duo and nvidia 620 budget card and I have 0 delay on any of my characters. This game has an odd relationship with high end rigs or something.

[VanderII]

Ability Delay now is terrible after patch 1.5 Ability Delay is increased!!!!

[Caligari]

Ability Delay now is terrible after patch 1.5 Ability Delay is increased!!!!

Same for me. I never had delays and lag like this prior to 1.5. Well, except for the beta weekends, but that was a whole different story.

[Godfather]

Just adding my voice to this.

I've had ability delay problems since day 1 on SWTOR. I've had a small break in the summer and now i came back to see that things are pretty much the same and even worse after 1.5.

I press an ability, the animation begins and halfway it resets and starts over. This is a total game breaking issue. It makes combat seem so clunky and slow. Yesterday was the worst day, sometimes it took over 1.5 secs to cast an ability (especially Blade Storm, Jedi Guardian).

 

I hope this gets fixed soon. Personally i think it should be "Number 1" on the fix list!

[Astronium]

Just adding my voice to this.

I've had ability delay problems since day 1 on SWTOR. I've had a small break in the summer and now i came back to see that things are pretty much the same and even worse after 1.5.

I press an ability, the animation begins and halfway it resets and starts over. This is a total game breaking issue. It makes combat seem so clunky and slow. Yesterday was the worst day, sometimes it took over 1.5 secs to cast an ability (especially Blade Storm, Jedi Guardian).

 

I hope this gets fixed soon. Personally i think it should be "Number 1" on the fix list!

 

Its working fine for me, One thing I can say, spamming keys will make you character jerk about it you have abit of lag etc. One thing that helped for me was lowering the delay in the options to 0.25 instead of the basic 0.5, there is a slight delay still yes, and it is visually noticeable... But its smooth enough for me to atleast enjoy the game, however if they can improve it, they really should because it would make the game feel and look much better.

[Godfather]

Its working fine for me, One thing I can say, spamming keys will make you character jerk about it you have abit of lag etc. One thing that helped for me was lowering the delay in the options to 0.25 instead of the basic 0.5, there is a slight delay still yes, and it is visually noticeable... But its smooth enough for me to atleast enjoy the game, however if they can improve it, they really should because it would make the game feel and look much better.

 

I know what you mean. I have done extensive research before posting. It is the same for me either i press an ability just once or spam it. It doesnt seem to affect it. I really hope for a fix soon. It would be the best day in swtor for me.

[Zweijsters]

I never really post on the official forums but I feel this thread needs to stay relevant.

 

I've also played since launch, and I always hoped that they would continue to attempt to fix this problem.

 

This is the single most important issue for me personally. I get my enjoyment out of playing classes to their maximum potential but fake global cooldowns (skills not fireing but the gcd going on cd) and overall delay in execution of abilities really prevent this.

 

Now that we're almost a year into this game, and have had this acknowledged as an issue, I'd really like to know if this is still on the agenda or not.

[Heezdedjim]

I fall into the category of players not hardcore enough to know what to call the problems, but who just think the way the game plays feels crappy. It's worse now than it ever has been, as far as the clunky, random, disconnected feel of the interaction and combat, and that's even in PvE. It's gotten so bad now that the game just randomly decides to ignore inputs; like how when I am running, sometimes the character will just stop running for a second or two, then start again. This isn't "lag," like when you turn a corner on fleet and the entire game freezes for five seconds. This is where the "stop running" animation plays, the character visibly halts and stands there, then the start running animation goes and it starts running again, all while I am continuing to hold down the mouse buttons or W key.

 

Also annoying, and new since 1.5, is the thing where I run into range, stop, fire an opener on a mob, and have to hit it three times because the message comes up "can't do that while moving," even though I stopped giving movement commands 3 seconds ago, and the character has obviously stopped moving and is standing still on-screen. And lets not even start on attacking a mob and getting the "out of range" message, and waiting 10 seconds until you finally see the mob has warped halfway across the zone since you started combat.

 

It feels like not only are base mechanics like the animation > input priority out of wack, but they have still never taken the time to go through and do a wholesale optimization pass on all the base code. The result is that the game play is inexcusably bad even on high end hardware (maybe more so on high end machines, because it's so obvious that it's wretched code and not resource limits that cause the stuttering, lag, and herky-jerkiness everywhere). Considering the game has been out for a year now, it's way past time for them to have done some basic cleanup and rewrite to get the fundamentals working right.

Edited November 23, 2012 by Heezdedjim

[deriuz]

I just returned to swtoro. The combat is so bad I canceled, again. The unresponsiveness is terrible, at times I have to hit the button a few times to even get off 1 ability. It is a giant mess and definitely no fun. I don't know what they are thinking, but this issue should have been resolved long ago if not now! Unacceptable game play and that they've let it go on this long is terrible.

[Kobes]

I just returned to swtoro. The combat is so bad I canceled, again. The unresponsiveness is terrible, at times I have to hit the button a few times to even get off 1 ability. It is a giant mess and definitely no fun. I don't know what they are thinking, but this issue should have been resolved long ago if not now! Unacceptable game play and that they've let it go on this long is terrible.

 

I'm pretty sure your the only one with this problem. The combat is nice and smooth now. You might just be getting serious lag or something

[TUXs]

I'm pretty sure your the only one with this problem. The combat is nice and smooth now. You might just be getting serious lag or something

 

I'm positive you're wrong. He's not the only one and it's not "lag".

[Lostpenguins]

I'm pretty sure your the only one with this problem. The combat is nice and smooth now. You might just be getting serious lag or something

Yeah, you're pretty wrong on that. I get it all the time when weaving off-GCD'd with GCD's. As an Anni-spec'd Marauder it's not fun to have your Deadly Sabers created GCD or the animation go off, but nothing happens.

 

It's just bad engine doing bad things that BW can't seem to fix.

[lordtwig]

Just to throw in from the otherside. I have never had this problem, been playing since early access.

 

So if it is a problem, it certainly doens't effect everyone, or most likely even a majority of players.

 

Now I don't want to say that this isn't an important issue for people that do experience these issues, it would certainly be annoying. Also, if it only effects a small percentage of the people (or even a large minority) it would make the bug much more difficult to find and fix. If they can't reproduce the error it could be impossible to find.

[Shai-Huluud]

Just to throw in from the otherside. I have never had this problem, been playing since early access.

 

So if it is a problem, it certainly doens't effect everyone, or most likely even a majority of players.

 

Now I don't want to say that this isn't an important issue for people that do experience these issues, it would certainly be annoying. Also, if it only effects a small percentage of the people (or even a large minority) it would make the bug much more difficult to find and fix. If they can't reproduce the error it could be impossible to find.

 

What do you know that supports the statement - "or most likely even a majority of players." ?

 

I've had this problem for a long time as have many many others (as evidenced by this thread) and it shows up (for me) mostly when speed is of the essence i.e. In an Operation or desperate combat situation.

[Alec_Fortescue]

Very interesting thing is that the double cooldowns are not triggered if one clicks his abilities. Only those using keybinds are affected. It's not lag. It's a key, broken feature. Some clueless CS once responded to someone that it's their on purpose to prevent quick abilities to activate one after another... Considering that he initially thought that the player is reporting the general global cooldown then I wouldn't be surprised that he had no clue about the thing. We all know that they're not playing the game and we've been their beta testers for the past year. It's funny, cuz usually testers test the game for free or are even paid for.

[Lostpenguins]

Just to throw in from the otherside. I have never had this problem, been playing since early access.

 

So if it is a problem, it certainly doens't effect everyone, or most likely even a majority of players.

 

Now I don't want to say that this isn't an important issue for people that do experience these issues, it would certainly be annoying. Also, if it only effects a small percentage of the people (or even a large minority) it would make the bug much more difficult to find and fix. If they can't reproduce the error it could be impossible to find.

I guess basically EVERYONE in my guild must be part of that small percentage. We've all complained about it, but I guess we're just in the minority...

[lordtwig]

What do you know that supports the statement - "or most likely even a majority of players." ?

 

I've had this problem for a long time as have many many others (as evidenced by this thread) and it shows up (for me) mostly when speed is of the essence i.e. In an Operation or desperate combat situation.

 

I have no emperical evidence, just personal experience. If it was a major problem that effected just about everybody then it should be fairly easy for Bioware to find the issue. If it is a bug then they should have been able to fix it already. If it is a limit in the engine (certainly possible) then there really wouldn't be anyway to fix it without re-writing the engine.

 

So either it is an obscure bug that they can not find. Or it is an engine problem that they can not fix without a major overhaul. Either way it would be understandable why nothing has been done about it for a year.

 

If this problem was truely game breaking then they would have fixed it by now. Obviously many people (including myself) don't have this problem or they wouldn't still be playing the game.

 

One final thought. It is possible that I DO have this problem, but never noticed, but I think I would notice a delay that was half a second or longer. The OP is right that even a half second is a major delay in a game.

Edited January 7, 2013 by lordtwig