Atrocious jumping controls/mechanics.

[Aharx]

I actually kind of like the Datacron portion of this game. It's a nice change to the MMO world. As time consuming as it is, the Tatooine Datacron's provided some of the most fun I've had in an MMO while not grouping/questing/etc. When I got the one on the hot air balloon I was playing on a PVP server. I had a blast fighting for the hot air balloon. It took a couple of hours to get that one but I remember everyone was having a great time PVPing to get onto the balloon. Once everyone agreed to actually get onto the balloon it was quite fun.

[Ankhetbast]

I'm having this issue while doing the Raid on Arcanum. I read and follow all the tips and tricks, yet still, most of the time instead of a nice jump, my toon does this little half hearted hop with just enough forward momentum to make me have to start over. It's beyond frustrating.

 

~another person who grew up on Mario

[Dallayna]

If you can't make the hops to get datacrons, I'd bet $1000 that you are both.

 

- Part of the new generation, that feels you are 'entitled' to everything, for no effort.

- Didn't play any Mario Bros because you are part of this generation.

 

 

The main thing is, you have no hops.

 

Or 3. Honestly disabled enough that my fingers just don't work that well anymore. Well enough to play, and play quite decently but when it comes to jumping and platforming? Yeah... Not so much.

 

As the OP observed, if I could still play platformers, I'd still be playing those instead. I switched to computers for a reason.

 

And, I did Arcanum. Once. Only once. (The husband had to actually come in and reconfigure my keys so he could get me through it. Then I had to take back over and reconfigure them back once he got me through.). Never. Again. Which is a huge disappointment to me to be honest because right up until then the seeker and macronocular missions had been my favorites.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Dallayna

[Tamanous]

If you want to jump a short distance with more control: Turn off sprint.

 

If you want maximum distance: mount up when allowed and jump.

 

If you want to fall off edge without going too far forward: Turn around, turn sprint off, jump straight up and tap back slightly and just enough to clear edge.

 

Physics sort of suck in this game so never just run off a edge expecting forward momentum. The game sometimes stops all of it and you simply fall straight down. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. If you don't want this always jump over ledges/edges to maintain forward momentum.

 

Always remember to stop hitting movement keys before you land and never over correct yourself.

 

If you have lag ... God help you.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Tamanous

[Thylbanus]

I'm HORRIBLE at platformers but I didn't have any trouble with getting all the Datacrons. I looked at it more as a mental puzzle than a jumper. You have to figure out WHERE to jump before you go ahead and jump.

[Muljo_Stpho]

I grew up with Mario but I also wouldn't be so quick to compare it to Mario or call that a reason for doing better at it.

 

It wasn't immediate but after a little while and a little bit of struggling with some of the jumps I eventually figured out most of the hints that have been stated in this topic. I can't say that I'll definitely get everything on the first try, and I haven't even attempted to really go around and collect every datacron yet anyway (I've picked up many of them while leveling various characters but I'm sure I missed many more). But I've gotten to a point where the jumps really aren't such a big deal for me.

 

I figured out what works. I practiced the timing of hitting jump and forward in quick succession and not overdoing it because I found that that provided exactly the right jump in most situations. By the third or fourth Imperial character to reach Tatooine, the Mos Ila datacron (which had been giving me the most trouble out of any of them) had become manageable within three attempts for me.

 

When I tried to do the heroics at the end of the macrobinoculars quest line (group eventually fell apart at the end of the second heroic without actually defeating The Shroud) the rest of my group *****ed and moaned when we realized that most of the first heroic was a jump puzzle... and there I am just thinking "this isn't so bad, I've definitely seen worse in this game", eyeing up my jumps, and hopping from car to car. I thought that mission was pretty cool, actually.

[GalacticKegger]

Hand-eye ftw. I can do it fairly easily while my wife has a hard time getting the cunning datacron on Hoth. Which is why she heals and I tank.

[Drudenfusz]

Nice thread necro, wonder why this and not another of the dozen or hundrets about that topic, but maybe I should be glad that we didn't got new thread on this.

 

I never liked the jumping physics in SWTOR, I think it is quite bad. Sure, I can do most jumps by now without much trouble, having figured out all the flaws, still jumping feels clunky and I still don't get how anyone could think it is any good or why we got plattforming tasks with such terrible jumping in place. Sure, one can do it, but it is painful to do it.

[darthhomercles]

Repost:

 

For all those complaining about precision jumps, here is

Geek's Ultimate Guide to Jumping

 

You think you know how to jump?

"Just press spacebar, duh!" - see, you're WRONG!

 

This game actually has a precision jump function that you need to practice, but once you got it, ALL datacrons involving platforming become very easy.

DON'T: make running jumps, or for that matter, try to move and jump at the same time unless it's really required.

DON'T: keep any keys pressed.

INSTEAD: zoom in, look directly at where you want to jump, then tap spacebar and the forward key in quick succesion. Not at the same time, not too slow, and really just tap it - and suddely the game will make you precisely jump to the spot you wanted to go to.

Practice with a simple box somewhere until you get it, then run through the datacrons thinking "How did I ever manage to fail at this?"

 

Believe me, until I found out how jumping really works in this game, I was like you: screaming at the screen, cursing the devs for being sadistic monsters ... but then I found out that "I was doing it wrong!". And so are you, if you're complaining.

Stop doing that! Start to do it right! And enjoy the success of getting each datacron on 1st attempt from now on.

 

I don't mean to necro a thread, but I was having a lot of trouble with getting the datacrons on Nar Shaddaa until I read your advice. Jumping in this game is anything but intuitive and I still need some practice, but because of your post I'm five datacrons richer today.

 

Thanks!

[Pingonaut]

Great post, I totally agree. Maybe (just maybe?!) BioWare will do something about this, or at the very least acknowledge the problem.

[Aries_cz]

What problem they should acknowledge? There is no problem in game, it is a problem between keyboard and chair.

Jumping to datacrons is meant to be a bit difficult, and you have to know where and how to jump, just like you need to know when to use what ability during operation boss fights or in PvP, or how to dodge and get into position in GSF.

[QuiDonJorn]

Yeah, all of them are really easy to get. Sorry you guys have so much trouble with them.

The only ones I didn't get were just a couple of the aim and cunning ones on Jedi characters, or matrix shards I'll never use. But, I could always run and go get them whenever.

[darthhomercles]

It's just not intuitive, like I said. No one in real life jumps and then moves forward. You either jump in place or move forward then jump. But TOR doesn't work like that. It takes some getting used to.

[RodneyMcNeely]

There is no problem in game, it is a problem between keyboard and chair.

As someone who's gotten every datacron in game on 5 characters (including those atrocities on Makeb) I respectfully disagree.

 

For me the frustrating part of getting the datacrons has nothing to do with the difficulty and everything to do with the horrible physics the game engine puts out.

 

I can't tell you the number of times I've made a perfect jump only to get stuck in a wall or glitched away to some random location. And don't even get me started on how the surfaces in this game "slide" when logic says you should be able to stand on them.

 

On an tangentially-related topic, why can't bounty hunters and other tech users use jet packs/rocket boots/etc. to aid them in jumping? And what about the prodigious leaps made by Force users in all of the movies? Be nice if they added a double jump feature...

[darthhomercles]

Yeah, I ran into some of those physics glitches last night. On one jump I somehow missed leaping from a wide platform onto a raised wall. A few seconds of me looking like I'm falling appears (though I'm still in the same place because there was nowhere to fall to) and then all of a sudden I'm back at the beginning of the puzzle. Huh? That had nothing to do with me. That's screwy programming. The difficulty in finding the datacrons should be in the design of the puzzles, not the mechanics of the game.

[slafko]

It's just not intuitive, like I said. No one in real life jumps and then moves forward. You either jump in place or move forward then jump. But TOR doesn't work like that. It takes some getting used to.

 

No one in RL can jump onto a crate that's as high as they are either.

[AlexDougherty]

Couldn't agree more with this. Funnily enough, I'm playing Nar Shaddaa right now, trying to get a datacron and it's been driving me crazy. I did a google search to see if perhaps I'm doing it wrong - because surely, the controls couldn't be that horrible - but sure enough, I found your post. Please, for the love of all things, fix this horrendous system, Bioware. SWTOR sometimes gets into a grind kind of mentality that takes away from the fun, but this is the first time I've been so frustrated that I've wanted to quit out simply because of the poor mechanics.

 

Yes, they do need to refine some of the mechanics (the space bar being the jump is fine, it's how the game implements it), if the Nar shadaa datacron is the one I think it is, it's ridiculous.

[ghoul_drool]

When I first started playing a year ago, all those jumps were daunting. I couldn't make ANY jump and it must have taken me 30 tries to get to the datacron on Hutta which requires you to get on a pipe and jump across to another pipe to get to the island. If you've been on Hutta, no further explanation is required.

 

Now, a year later, I make those jumps without even thinking. Don't get frustrated. Be patient. Practise jumping on your ship to get the hang of it. It really gets easier with time.

[Wrzaskun]

I think it's not the jump mechanics but the badly mapped routes to the datacrons, where you get stuck-teleported if you step on something invisible (makeb +10 endurance, hoth +cunning, corellia imperial +willpower, corellia +strength, corellia +aim) or you simply fall through textures (makeb and corellia again).

[DmdShiva]

For me the frustrating part of getting the datacrons has nothing to do with the difficulty and everything to do with the horrible physics the game engine puts out.

 

I can't tell you the number of times I've made a perfect jump only to get stuck in a wall or glitched away to some random location. And don't even get me started on how the surfaces in this game "slide" when logic says you should be able to stand on them.

 

Having finally managed to get the shard datacron on Nar Shaddaa with my Scoundrel, I got bitten four times in the process by the stupid automatic reposition -- if you gerb the hop from the crates over the railing onto the upper level (after you've made the jump across the two pipes to the platform), and get stuck vibrating between the top crate in the pile and the railing, you will automatically be repositioned, not back on the platform the boxes are sitting on, but all the way down at the start of the path you need to jump through.

 

Now that I think I have the jumping down enough to make this reasonably consistently, I'm going to have to take the characters that still need that datacron back to Nar Shaddaa to do it. (on a side note, if you're up there with a group of people, if you're reasonably quick about it, only the first one needs the Slot Decoder; everyone else can hit the datacron while it's unlocked, and if you didn't use the Slot Decoder, you can mail it to another character)

 

On an tangentially-related topic, why can't bounty hunters and other tech users use jet packs/rocket boots/etc. to aid them in jumping? And what about the prodigious leaps made by Force users in all of the movies? Be nice if they added a double jump feature...

 

I still find it endlessly amusing that a Jedi Knight (Guardian/Sentinel) can leap more than 100 feet straight up to engage in combat... but has trouble jumping on top of a six-foot-tall box if there isn't a hostile mob on top for him to attack.

 

Ultimately, I suppose it comes down to game balance issues. You saw the Jedi making amazing leaps in the movies, and you saw Boba Fett make a rocket-assisted leap from Jabba the Hutt's sail barge onto the small craft that Luke and Han were on, so Jedi/Sith and Bounty Hunters 'should' be able to make huge leaps. So where does that leave Agents, Smugglers, and Troopers? Taking away the canon ability of Force users and bounty hunters to make these huge leaps means that everyone has a level playing field for the idiot jumping puzzles that Bioware stuck into the game.

[keitzy]

I truly wish they would remove or let us disable the stupid auto /stuck feature. Who was the retard that thought it was a good idea, how about they fix the awful jumping and actualy fix the geometry instead of band aiding the problem. Edited January 4, 2014 by keitzy