Ability Delay and Animations

[Moriam]

So back in release there were many causes for ability delay which I think for the most part are gone, but I still cringe when my sith inquisitor uses his overload ability. I would really really like for BW to speed up the animations so that these abilities work much quicker after my key press. You guys did this the trooper morter volley, and I actually really liked the change! As a matter of fact I would like to see this done across the board for abilities with slow animations. Can you guys think of abilities which would benefit from this?

 

Oh and do you guys notice sometimes your character will execute an animation and the skill doesn't work?

 

I can think of a couple abilities which would benefit from being sped up.

 

Overload - Sith Inquisitor

Force Wave - Jedi Consular

Project - Jedi Consular

[Moriam]

Another ability which has a longer than I would like delay.

 

Railshot - Bounty Hunter

[whyzerman]

So back in release there were many causes for ability delay which I think for the most part are gone, but I still cringe when my sith inquisitor uses his overload ability. I would really really like for BW to speed up the animations so that these abilities work much quicker after my key press. You guys did this the trooper morter volley, and I actually really liked the change! As a matter of fact I would like to see this done across the board for abilities with slow animations. Can you guys think of abilities which would benefit from this?

 

Oh and do you guys notice sometimes your character will execute an animation and the skill doesn't work?

 

I can think of a couple abilities which would benefit from being sped up.

 

Overload - Sith Inquisitor

Force Wave - Jedi Consular

Project - Jedi Consular

 

Force Lightning. Combined with the 4 piece rakata alacrity bonus, 20% alacrity from Polarity Shift, and the "channel and tick twice as fast" buff from Lightning Barrage by the time you even see the animation for Force Lightning you have already moved on to 2 other abilities.

[smilefunk]

Oh and do you guys notice sometimes your character will execute an animation and the skill doesn't work?

 

i have occasionally noticed that force choke will only animiate for like a second or so and i feel cheated every time... still not sure if it's simply the anim getting stilted or the entire effect.

[LarryRow]

I have noticed really bad performance from Guardian->Vigilance Tree->Overhead Slash, which I only respecced to recently, so I have no basis to judge a comparison over time.

 

I also feel like the delay on force push has gotten a LOT worse recently.

[Moriam]

i have occasionally noticed that force choke will only animiate for like a second or so and i feel cheated every time... still not sure if it's simply the anim getting stilted or the entire effect.

 

Hrmm yeah that does sound rather annoying..

[Moriam]

I have noticed really bad performance from Guardian->Vigilance Tree->Overhead Slash, which I only respecced to recently, so I have no basis to judge a comparison over time.

 

I also feel like the delay on force push has gotten a LOT worse recently.

 

Ok keep them coming, I'd like to make a list and then make a post regarding the issue on the suggestion forums. I just have not played every class though.

[Senatsu]

Almost every ability for Sith Warrior gets f'ed up if you don't give the animation another 0.5 seconds after it finishes. Either the ability doesn't get triggered and you can cast it again (no problem really), or the ability actually does go off but it doesn't do anything and it gets a CD. The latter happens 90% out of the amount of times it messes up.

 

EDIT: Let's see if I can list some abilities off the top of my head.

 

- Vicious Slash

- Assault

- Battering Assault

- Ravage

- Cloak of Pain

 

My SW is only level 16 atm, but I'm sure I'll find more abilities later on as I level that mess up.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Senatsu

[Moriam]

Almost every ability for Sith Warrior gets f'ed up if you don't give the animation another 0.5 seconds after it finishes. Either the ability doesn't get triggered and you can cast it again (no problem really), or the ability actually does go off but it doesn't do anything and it gets a CD. The latter happens 90% out of the amount of times it messes up.

 

EDIT: Let's see if I can list some abilities off the top of my head.

 

- Vicious Slash

- Assault

- Battering Assault

- Ravage

- Cloak of Pain

 

My SW is only level 16 atm, but I'm sure I'll find more abilities later on as I level that mess up.

Really? I have a lvl 20 something marauder and I never noticed an issue with the marauder abilities being too slow. I guess I can try it again tonight.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Moriam
Grammar

[Malastare]

Er... no?

 

Some abilities should take a while to cast/use. And you, as a player, should figure out how long they take and adjust your playing to match. Yeah, there's a delay between when I press 'G' and when my BH fires his Rail Shot. However, it's less than the 1.5s GCD, and my adaptable human mind has given me the gift of being able to accept that fact and build strategies that account for it.

 

Now, they still need to be balanced, and I'd rather they avoid making one faction consistently better (whatever that means to you) than the other, but I'm playing a real-time quasi-action RPG. I don't expect ripping a rock from the ground to be instantaneous or even quick.

 

And again, it's worth noting that (from memory) the enemy I target with Rail Shot actually takes damage (and potentially dies) before the animation shows the actual shot. Perhaps this odd behavior is what I get for playing the game with a 8ms ping, but I doubt it.

[smilefunk]

- Vicious Slash

- Assault

- Battering Assault

- Ravage

 

i can not verify noticeable delay with the aforementioned abilities

[Senatsu]

Er... no?

 

Some abilities should take a while to cast/use. And you, as a player, should figure out how long they take and adjust your playing to match. Yeah, there's a delay between when I press 'G' and when my BH fires his Rail Shot. However, it's less than the 1.5s GCD, and my adaptable human mind has given me the gift of being able to accept that fact and build strategies that account for it.

 

Now, they still need to be balanced, and I'd rather they avoid making one faction consistently better (whatever that means to you) than the other, but I'm playing a real-time quasi-action RPG. I don't expect ripping a rock from the ground to be instantaneous or even quick.

 

And again, it's worth noting that (from memory) the enemy I target with Rail Shot actually takes damage (and potentially dies) before the animation shows the actual shot. Perhaps this odd behavior is what I get for playing the game with a 8ms ping, but I doubt it.

 

That is not what we're talking about.

 

We're talking about abilities that have animations that block other abilities from being used until that animation is complete, which is usually looong after the GCD is up. If an ability can't be used after the GCD is done, why have the GCD in the first place?

 

i can not verify noticeable delay with the aforementioned abilities

 

I notice it quite clearly and I know of others leaving their SW/JK because of it.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Senatsu

[chadsford]

I would like to add to this thread the problem I keep seeing with channeled abilities. I play both an IA Op and a Sith Sorc. On both toons I have channeled abilities that can be chain cast. For my IA, it's Diagnostic Scan, and on my Sorc it's talented Force Lightening.

 

The problem that I have noticed is that if I wait until the cast bar hits 0 and drops off, then I always have to hit the button 2 or 3 times to get it to start casting again, but if I watch the cast bar as I channel and hit the button again when the cast bar hits 0.5 seconds left, it usually fires off again with a single press to the hotkey.

 

Has anyone else noticed this?

[Itukaaj]

Yes Bioware please fix overload you are starting to puzzle* me off you monkeyfunky's!

[smilefunk]

I notice it quite clearly and I know of others leaving their SW/JK because of it.

 

i genuinely feel bad for you and others you know...

i would share my non-delaying abilities with you if i could.

[Malastare]

We're talking about abilities that have animations that block other abilities from being used until that animation is complete, which is usually looong after the GCD is up. If an ability can't be used after the GCD is done, why have the GCD in the first place?

 

Sorry, but I can't say that I have this problem. Not, at least, with the severity you're reporting. Rail Shot takes longer than a GCD? Overload/Force Wave take longer? Really? Have you considered that this might not be the game that is causing the problem?

 

How long? How many seconds of a delay are we talking about?

[Saregon]

I have a Sentinel (Watchman) and a Marauder (Carnage) and both still suffer from Force Sweep/Smash ability stuttering quite frequently (even though I don't use the move that much since it's more for focus/rage specs). The little spinning jump animation starts, but a few tenths of a second before they leave the ground the animation starts over again, then finally completes. This is their only ability I notice this on, my latency is pretty decent too, usually around 50-60ms.

[AdamLKvist]

Sorry, but I can't say that I have this problem. Not, at least, with the severity you're reporting. Rail Shot takes longer than a GCD? Overload/Force Wave take longer? Really? Have you considered that this might not be the game that is causing the problem?

 

How long? How many seconds of a delay are we talking about?

 

If two abilities read INSTANT in the tooltip they should be just as quick to activate. Otherwise it should say 0.4-0.6 which is aproximately the extra time I have to wait on my sage to knockback compared to the trooper one. Night and day man, night and day. Kicker? They're both "instant".

 

Way to be naive though and say you adapt around it, of course we can adapt thats not the point - the classes are balanced around the fact that my da mn knockback is supposed to be instant and it isnt.

[Senatsu]

I would like to add to this thread the problem I keep seeing with channeled abilities. I play both an IA Op and a Sith Sorc. On both toons I have channeled abilities that can be chain cast. For my IA, it's Diagnostic Scan, and on my Sorc it's talented Force Lightening.

 

The problem that I have noticed is that if I wait until the cast bar hits 0 and drops off, then I always have to hit the button 2 or 3 times to get it to start casting again, but if I watch the cast bar as I channel and hit the button again when the cast bar hits 0.5 seconds left, it usually fires off again with a single press to the hotkey.

 

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

If you go into the game settings you find something called Ability Queue, I suspect yours is set to the maximum amount of time which is 0.5 seconds. You can set it down to 0 if you don't want it to queue like that.

[Itukaaj]

If you go into the game settings you find something called Ability Queue, I suspect yours is set to the maximum amount of time which is 0.5 seconds. You can set it down to 0 if you don't want it to queue like that.

 

This is why in 6 months you will be waiting 2 hours to fill a 8 man group and another 2 for your WZ queu to pop.

[asbalana]

This topic was done to death after launcn with threads that cylcled four of five times after reaching 100+ pages. There was even a stickied thread dealing with it by the devs. Ability delay was analyzed to death and the devs identifed it as not one issue but a number of problems that were not related.

 

As a result, certain things like the Trooper morter were fixed so that the cast started at the beginning and not the middle of the channel. On the whole most of the problems were never addressed and still exist at this time. I doubt that they will ever be fixed and wonder if some are fixable at all.

 

Some players did leave and the community, as a whole, moved on with ability delay as a buried issue.

 

I play a SI and indeed still see everything from misfires to delay before a caat starts after a button is pushed to clipped animations to damage hits with no animation to animations run and no damage registered. My wife is a SW and also encounters ability delay issues. LOL, yesterday she experienced something new that blew us out. She leaped at a targeted mob and actually landed about six feet behind it. That is not ability delay, of course, but an indication of how messed up combat is in this game.

[fallenvirtues]

I been here from the beginning and seen it first hand..I had more of a mis-firing issue then I did a delay, but I can say now that I have a lvl 50 Mara and currently lvl'n a level 35 Jugg and have no problem firing off abilities as soon as the Cooldowns are ready...

 

I fire off a ability and as soon as the cool down's are ready, I fire off the next with no problems...

 

Sorry for those still experiencing it...

[asbalana]

If you go into the game settings you find something called Ability Queue, I suspect yours is set to the maximum amount of time which is 0.5 seconds. You can set it down to 0 if you don't want it to queue like that.

 

I believe that the Ability Queue defaults to .5 seconds, but can be set to 1 second. The queue approach was identified early after launch, but was not determined to be a solution to ability delay nor related to the issues.

[KilmarFyrewynd]

Project (Republic) - .8 second animation delay

Shock (Empire) - No delay

Edited May 10, 2012 by KilmarFyrewynd

[Moriam]

Er... no?

 

Some abilities should take a while to cast/use. And you, as a player, should figure out how long they take and adjust your playing to match. Yeah, there's a delay between when I press 'G' and when my BH fires his Rail Shot. However, it's less than the 1.5s GCD, and my adaptable human mind has given me the gift of being able to accept that fact and build strategies that account for it.

 

Now, they still need to be balanced, and I'd rather they avoid making one faction consistently better (whatever that means to you) than the other, but I'm playing a real-time quasi-action RPG. I don't expect ripping a rock from the ground to be instantaneous or even quick.

 

And again, it's worth noting that (from memory) the enemy I target with Rail Shot actually takes damage (and potentially dies) before the animation shows the actual shot. Perhaps this odd behavior is what I get for playing the game with a 8ms ping, but I doubt it.

Ok so you made many points here.

 

It is my argument that in the current state some abilities (not all) have an animation which takes too long. This is for mostly aesthetic reasons. For example overload takes a longer time to sort of convey the power of it I guess (that is how i view it). The problem that I find with it is that it is very clunky to use. So I have to predict where my opponent will be 0.5 secs after I use my instant ability to knock them off the ledge. If I have the incorrect angle at the end of the animation, then my cd is gone. Instant abilities should have very quick animations. You can argue that if they are too quick they don't look cool, but in the end gameplay issues should trump coolness issues...

 

After you level to 50 you are going to spend an awful lot of time looking at these animations. The animations and the time delay are a very important of the gameplay. Gameplay (fighting) is the core of SWTOR. It is not a minigame, it is THE GAME. Combat should be improved.

 

You also made the point that we should not balance animations for just one faction. I agree, lets identify animations that seem too long. Lets change them all...

 

Also from my memory rail shot's dmg registers after the animation. It does damage when you see the beam come out of your toons wrist and hit the enemy. The animation problem results in the amount of time your toon takes to lift his wrist and plant his foot. It could be argued that rail shot in its current state is ok. I just think it could be sped up a little bit.