New Ability Bar Cooldown effect

[KPhor]

I play a JK, each GCD makes all bars flash wildly. I have no way of telling which ability is on CD on which is not, unless I stop pressing buttons for a while so I can check the display. Not really helpful.

 

Also the graphics is so unprecise, the last seconds you cannot really tell if an ability is available or not unless you stare hard. But in fast pace combat, you don't want to focus on your action bars, you want to throw a quick glance and get the information you need. And this is yet impossible in SWTOR.

 

 

As for the cooldown, please give us an option to chose from different styles, as of which there could be e.g.:

1) The old version

2) The new version

3) (Big) Number display counting down on on the actionbar/ability

 

I prefer 3).

I want to know when my abilities are available instantly. I don't only want it to be shiny on screenshots.

 

 

 

Sadly, I have to agree, the UI in SWTOR is one of the worst I've yet encountered in MMOs. It's not informative, all important imformation are so tiny, you cannot really see anything instantly.

 

Can't wait for the day of addons for this game, and "bartender", "omnicc", "pitbull", "aloft", and "omen" make it over here.

 

- M

[Guarrand]

Might be just me, but after 2-3 WZ's i got used to it and it works perfectly for me.

Far better then the always highlighted icons where you had to guess if the CD was gone or not (specially the last few seconds).

 

Good job BW.

[Ravenbia]

How can you not see whats on GC? And for your information this UI looks the same as in WoW except we dont have the combat log and without addons.

[Varteras]

I have no problem with the way it is now personally. One thing I don't quite understand are the people complaining about headaches and nausea. A game with explosions, blaster fire zipping by, glowsticks whipping around and through the air all very often in your face as well as many scenarios forcing you to constantly look around to see what is going on and think about your positioning and the thing that gave you a headache or borderline seizure was the GCD effect? It's not a blinding strobe light. Some people are a little too dramatic. If you are honestly having issues from something like that I would seriously (and I do mean this sincerely) log off and make an appointment with your doctor. I played for hours with no problems.

[Trigg]

Reading this thread before I got on this morning, I thought there was a real issue. The only people this effects are clickers, or people who don't know their class.

You are supposed to be looking at the action, not your action bars...

 

i agree compelety tbh. Not affecting me, i know where my abilities are and i know the rotation i use.

[Partyrockk]

^ button masher

[MJHoyle]

I have no problem with the way it is now personally. One thing I don't quite understand are the people complaining about headaches and nausea. A game with explosions, blaster fire zipping by, glowsticks whipping around and through the air all very often in your face as well as many scenarios forcing you to constantly look around to see what is going on and think about your positioning and the thing that gave you a headache or borderline seizure was the GCD effect? It's not a blinding strobe light. Some people are a little too dramatic. If you are honestly having issues from something like that I would seriously (and I do mean this sincerely) log off and make an appointment with your doctor. I played for hours with no problems.

 

It's like I mentioned earlier, your eyes aren't always staring directly at flashing effects. With the hotbars you're very distracted by its constant strobing and since you now can't tell when an ability if off its CD from the corner of your eye you're having to stare at the hotbars and try to determine which ability is available to use as soon as the GCD finishes.

 

I don't see how going to a doctor will fix an issue that wasn't there before the patch arrived. Any doctor or optician would tell you to avoid staring at flashing objects for too long whether you have photosensitivity or not.

Edited February 8, 2012 by MJHoyle

[Wartunkar]

Hey bioware - do not take all these very dramatic complaints to seriously, just listen to what they have to say!

 

I think you have made a GREAT game. This is by far the best mom i have played, and i love it. I play a marauder. I completely understand that totally new games that are so vast in ice as this, can have a lot of bugs, miscalculations crashes and so forth.. That i can totally live with, until you smooth out the bugs.

 

BUT this i cannot.. It is completely unacceptable that you have made it so, that ALL abilities are blacked/completely faded during the global cool down ! As a marauder, I'm on global cool down pretty much all the time. I build up rage, and i rely greatly on the highlighting of abilities during global cool down to predict/queue which or the attacks i need to perform when the global cool down comes off !

 

I think you have done a great job with this job, and i love it - but i can't play like this. Its completely basic mmo-fact, that all attacks are not blacked out during global cool down, since this is when you need to predict your next move after the global cool down comes off, and you should be able to judge which abilities are ready for use!

 

I don't give a damn about flashing or animation, just give me my predictability back!

[vandana_]

i like flashy things. stop the complaints!

[StrikeOfLight]

i like flashy things. stop the complaints!

 

picardfacepalm.jpg

[Lakhesis]

This is horrendous.

 

I'm finding the game virtually unplayable now.

 

The flashing is distracting, obscures what abilities are available to me, obscures where CDs are up to, and is possibly the most un-easy on the eyes scheme I've ever come across. I'm reduced to either waiting until after the ability gcd is finished - and the after-flash has gone too - or else blindly spamming whatever button I guess should probably go next.

 

I really don't see what was wrong with the previous version. I actually liked it.

 

I honestly do not understand how on earth anyone could ever have seriously believed this version was an improvement. Or, even if they somehow liked it, that they wouldn't have thought that a very significant number of people would loathe it.

 

I've been really enjoying swtor even with all the bugs & imperfections but, now that I (somehow) got through the instanced class quest I started prior to experiencing the flashing for the first time, I'm done doing anything that requires me to use abilities. And considering what what'd been encouraging me to play SWTOR rather than wow was primarily my enjoyment with the questing, that prettymuch negates the game for me.

 

So, and I have never said this about any mmo before, and I only say it now because I actually like this game and want to keep playing, I'm done with swtor until I can play it without the ability flash.

 

If it's not fixed by the time my sub's up for renewal then maybe I'll leave it ticking over or maybe I won't - I left my Rift account ticking over for months after their P2P-misidentification latency issues stopped me playing that. But this issue has reduced the game down to playing the AH & crafting for me... and frankly, that side of the game isn't that compelling yet. You won't hold my sub for the 6+ years of uninterrupted subscription one of your competitors' mmo's has purely based on your crafting system...

[Gobrot]

Get a headache from bars flashing but not from flashing due to lightsabres, guns being fired, lightning effects on screen etc? Strange people are strange I guess.

[Trigg]

^ button masher

 

um no, it's dificult to "mash buttons" when you use hotkeys like Ctrl+space ctrl+e ctrl+f and then 1 through 6 with a few others like e, f, q etc. it only takes like a day max to become efficent at it, plus as i'm at work pretty much 10 hours a day i only have a couple of hours a day to play so i'm not even 50 yet. still questing, using defensives to survive bad situations etc.

 

beat the sorc questline on Voss at lvl 44 against elites 3 levels higher than me without breaking a sweat. No way i could of done that while clicking with the amount of movement involved.

[aethyrium]

While the flashing is annoying, it's primarily things like HiB not being visible during gcd that people are complaining about. doesn't have anything to do with being a clicker or not. Doesn't have anything to do with staring at your bars. the only visual cue we had for HiB was the fact that it was lit up. with that taken away, the UI has removed a visual cue to glance at. naturally eyes are on the action, but we still need a visual cue.

[Varteras]

It's like I mentioned earlier, your eyes aren't always staring directly at flashing effects. With the hotbars you're very distracted by its constant strobing and since you now can't tell when an ability if off its CD from the corner of your eye you're having to stare at the hotbars and try to determine which ability is available to use as soon as the GCD finishes.

 

I don't see how going to a doctor will fix an issue that wasn't there before the patch arrived. Any doctor or optician would tell you to avoid staring at flashing objects for too long whether you have photosensitivity or not.

 

I don't know what class you're playing where your hotbar looks like a disco ball at a roller skating rink but I wasn't seeing bright flashes. I was looking at my bar quite often and felt no different from the original hotbar, to the one before this patch, and now this one. The GCD is not blasting light into your eyes. I get frequent migraines and I have light sensitivity neither of which were affected by this new GCD effect. If I have yet to get a migraine from this I doubt that anyone who doesn't already suffer from such things is getting a headache or feeling sick after 10 minutes. Again if they are I would see a doctor.

[StrikeOfLight]

Get a headache from bars flashing but not from flashing due to lightsabres, guns being fired, lightning effects on screen etc? Strange people are strange I guess.

 

Well, dozens and dozens of people, me included, are getting headaches, feeling dizzy, and nauseated since last patch.

 

Logic would dictate that the UI is the cause. (Unless the game is so bad people are becoming ALLERGIC to it...)

 

Not sure what more to tell you, except that the flashing UI lies directly on all fields of one's peripheral vision except the top. Peripheral vision disruptions like this are notorious for causing a motion sickness effect, which in turn cause migraines, dizziness, and nausea.

Edited February 8, 2012 by StrikeOfLight

[ArmchairMagpie]

After playing 5 hours with it yesterday I can honestly say that nothing has been improved by this change. I am still watching Rage bar and time left on cds via tooltip in order to determine the validity of the each button's state.

 

I personally would like it more simple. Abilities not available are greyed out, abilities which are available are lit up, an ability with cooldown should just have neutral grey overlayed gauge. Once said gauge reaches 0s it should check resource as well and only a combination of all: resource, cooldown left, target condition (self, target, enemy, friendly), should determine the button's state.

[Brambleberry]

I haven't been a huge fan of the native UI. I find it clunky, and inclined to forget what few customization options there are from patch to patch. The latest twist is unacceptable. In a combat situation, I need to be able to keep my eyes on the mobs around me, my compatriots, and the actions of our rather unpredictable companions. I don't need to be staring at my flashing bars, nor to be timing my cds in my head and hoping for the best.

 

I deeply appreciate your desire to make a more responsive combat UI. Unfortunately, I normally choose my next ability during the gcd, and at the current time the flashing affects my ability to plan ahead. I'm afraid that I find the UI less responsive now, and I am reluctant to play as a result. I would prefer that you roll back the changes, if that is possible.

[Jandi]

It literally hurts my eyes. I am physically unable to play the game at the moment. If it's not removed by the 20th (next sub cycle) I have no choice but to cancel. No, this isn't an "OMG I quit!" threat, just me stating a fact.

[Wartunkar]

After playing 5 hours with it yesterday I can honestly say that nothing has been improved by this change. I am still watching Rage bar and time left on cds via tooltip in order to determine the validity of the each button's state.

 

I personally would like it more simple. Abilities not available are greyed out, abilities which are available are lit up, an ability with cooldown should just have neutral grey overlayed gauge. Once said gauge reaches 0s it should check resource as well and only a combination of all: resource, cooldown left, target condition (self, target, enemy, friendly), should determine the button's state.

 

Exactly.. I have no way to determine if my abilities are ready to be executed during the global cool down, whether I'm in range or have enough range. I can see if they're on cool down yes, but i can't plan my attacks during the global cool down since they're not highlight when ready ...

[ReverendSID]

So, just coming up on 24 hours & nearing 1700 posts in this topic alone. A few hundred at least in the ones they've closed & redirected to this one. And so far, aside from one post in the first version of this thread saying something along the lines of "they're talking about it" the only BW posts I've seen are the ones closing the other threads.... Yeah, I'm not getting the feeling that they're really listening.

[hbokhari]

What was honestly wrong with the ability cool down when the game first released?

 

I never had ANY issues with it. Please stop people from having seizures before you get sued for a poor implementation of an ability cool down. It's honestly getting ridiculous.

 

Why do game developers change things that are NOT broken in any way shape or form. Why make a Private Test Server (PTS) if your not actually going to stop certain things from going into the live servers regardless of feedback?

 

WHY BIOWARE?!

[Saiyanbob]

I love the changes. But I agree a toggle for the effect should be added in for those with getting motion sickness or headaches. Even if I believe most of these complaints are from people who star at their bars instead of knowing there key rotation without having to look (and most likely mouse click)

[Kinrain]

REAL TALK, NO BS:

 

It will take someone threatening a full-blown lawsuit over a seizure.

 

And it could happen, too. No seizure warning on box, and now this game has strobe effects that (in my trained medical opinion) are more than enough to cause a seizure in seizure-prone individuals.

 

I and dozens of healthy people are having headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Imagine what a mild epileptic will have.

 

"The British Health and Safety Executive recommend that a net flash rate for a bank of strobe lights does not exceed 5 flashes per second, at which only 5% of photosensitive epileptics are at risk."

 

If your getting 5 GCDs per second then your obviously not playing the same game as me.

 

There is no way that the current ability bar process could cause a siezure in even the worst sufferers of (Grand Mal) Epilepsy and to suggest otherwise greatly undermines your alleged 'trained medical opinion.

 

The effect is not a strobe, simple as that.

[Wartunkar]

So, just coming up on 24 hours & nearing 1700 posts in this topic alone. A few hundred at least in the ones they've closed & redirected to this one. And so far, aside from one post in the first version of this thread saying something along the lines of "they're talking about it" the only BW posts I've seen are the ones closing the other threads.... Yeah, I'm not getting the feeling that they're really listening.

 

I also feel they should do something about this immediately. Bugs, quest bugs, crashed to desktop etc i can live with, but i can't live with this global cool down blackening, since its ruining my gameplay completely. I can't pvp anymore. The first freaking mob i engaged after the patch, i was like "how can i play like this? i have no control during global cool down".