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

[Rendekar]

Op is right. Fix this or your game's fate will be no different than WAR, Rift, Aion and many other's fate. No need to argue here really. This is by far the most important issue of the game. You can already stop talking about new content and stuff. But an inner voice tell me that these issues are here to stay and connected to engine or server structure. I hope I am wrong.

[ohmang]

I agree.

 

The way I put it is that it feels "clunky"

 

It works but it has no flow...

 

Not sure how it can be fixed though. Is it the GCD?

[Axxar]

How long is the ability delay in WoW? I remember you had to perform your interrupt abilities slightly earlier than the enemy cast bars would indicate, or the enemy would get his spell off. Edited December 26, 2011 by Axxar

[Lokai]

i completely understand what he's talking about to get a great idea go use any channeled ability or cast ability...then move to side. Watch what happens... game will literally keep casting ability to its full cast before cancels it, spamming abilities also foul up cast to and are occasions where you hit an ability and character just stand there for ages twiddling thumbs before actually doing anything.

 

This isn't lag

 

not latency

 

is a flaw in way system receives, reacts to and fires off abilities. I will agree with what OP said, alot of mmo's dont get it right and they fail pretty hard as makes game feel clunky.

[Leilei]

Ok since people seems to be mostly complaining about spamming abilities and that causing problems then those are prolly fixable but the rest of the feel most likely wont get fixed.

 

Kind of reminds me of some hunter combat in wow. O.o

I remember you had to weave in aimed shot between autoattacks and basically use skills between autoattacks...

 

Have you guys tried thinkin of it that way? Ill try spamming abilities in the morning to try and get the buggy attacks so we can yknoe... Put up a proper bug report with the easiedt way to reproduce it! Spamming seems easy enough though... If its just spam they should be able to fix it easilly.

 

As i said earlier i dont spam and when i do cast underworld medicine and pugnacity in quick succession i dont get problems with it. Even if its just underworld medicine being cast repeatedly. Or medicine -> back blast for that matter o.o

 

Edit -> i think the problem wih spamming is the effect on the queue. I bet if we could disable the skill queue for people who spam skills, there would be an improvement. If not then its with how the gcd works when skills are spammed and that should be fixable.

 

Of again the delay with somethigike back blast taking a while to fire off after activatingthe skill and the damage coming when your char animates the actual shooting will most likely not get changed.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Leilei

[boobaffet]

Yes default is 0.5 but it is important to understand that it is not the Queuing of Abilities that is the issue, it is the execution of an ability.

 

It has nothing to do with this sadly, for example... I cast "Aimed Shot"... about 0.5 seconds after I hit my button it starts to cast (at 40-50 FPS and 20ms Latency). Also, my "next ability" that I am spamming already before the Aimed Shot Cast Time is completed (as to not miss any time between) never goes off and no animation ever happens...

 

I mean, the whole system is just messed up, not smooth... not responsive.

 

its not the game, its you

[Zironic]

A friend who hasn't bought the game yet asked me how it "feels". I explained to him that it feels as if I am telling my character where to go, instead of controlling him.

 

The developers were very protective over their animations, and thus, it has made the game feel less fluid, because of the animations. The best example I can give is when you are strafing left, then try to immediately strafe right, the character performs a quick .2 second animation for "turning around". That makes total sense for someone watching the game, it looks more organic and fluid; however, someone playing the game, it just feels like I am disconnected from my avatar.

 

I agree 100% with your statement about WoW. Love it or hate it, the animation is perfect. When you tell your character to do something, it immediately happens and manifests itself on screen. Abilities happen the second you hit them, this game feels like you are queuing everything up and waiting for the game to decide when its the right time to do it.

 

I also think it's killer for me. I find this "flaw" to be major.

 

 

I think this describes the animation issue perfectly. Basically the game has two seperate issues which makes it feel unresponsive.

 

Issue #1:

The Client and Server are badly synced, this is the cause of the famous 'instantly dismounted from speeder when moving' and various abilities not going off properly.

 

Issue #2:

MANY OF THE ANIMATIONS ARE TOO SLOW!

Quite seriously, anyone that has played a Bounty Hunter must have noticed that any time the Bounty Hunter uses an offhand weapon, the Bounty Hunter appears to just casually raise the left arm as if he/she had all the time in the world, before shooting the projectile about 0.5-0.8 seconds later.

 

I don't want my instant attacks to hit 0.5-0.8 seconds after I click the button!

[Kovstrr]

I hope this will get fixed! Thanks OP

[Lokai]

Ok since people seems to be mostly complaining about spamming abilities and that causing problems then those are prolly fixable but the rest of the feel most likely wont get fixed.

 

Kind of reminds me of some hunter combat in wow. O.o

I remember you had to weave in aimed shot between autoattacks and basically use skills between autoattacks...

 

Have you guys tried thinkin of it that way? Ill try spamming abilities in the morning to try and get the buggy attacks so we can yknoe... Put up a proper bug report with the easiedt way to reproduce it! Spamming seems easy enough though... If its just spam they should be able to fix it easilly.

 

As i said earlier i dont spam and when i do cast underworld medicine and pugnacity in quick succession i dont get problems with it. Even if its just underworld medicine being cast repeatedly. Or medicine -> back blast for that matter o.o

 

Edit -> i think the problem wih spamming is the effect on the queue. I bet if we could disable the skill queue for people who spam skills, there would be an improvement. If not then its with how the gcd works when skills are spammed and that should be fixable.

 

Of again the delay with somethigike back blast taking a while to fire off after activatingthe skill and the damage coming when your char animates the actual shooting will most likely not get changed.

 

because that isn't the issue... abilities are not firing when pressed take a full second or so to actually begin animation, its not like click and fire its more like...click... nothing happens so you click again...and nothing happens then go to click and starts animation as you hit the key and then animation fouls up and cancels and nothing happens. (also by click i mean pressing binds)

 

Issue is that when you press an attack or ability should INSTANTLY begin to do that attack, but instead we are getting no response so we naturally hit key a second time which causes problems.... we shouldn't have to wait and is REALLY killer for healers... had situations where i hit heal and doesn't fire for like a full second after i hit the heal... and yes had people die because of this.

 

isn't player error

 

isn't some lag or latency issue

 

is a flaw in way system receives and reacts to inputs something isn't right...also pretty sure this is a bug because i dont recall this issue during beta at all.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Lokai

[Zironic]

How long is the ability delay in WoW? I remember you had to perform your interrupt abilities slightly earlier than the enemy cast bars would indicate, or the enemy would get his spell off.

 

In WoW the delay would only be the latency, which would be on the order of 20-200ms.

[Vindor]

Also fix the bug which prevent any abilities from being used for several second after canceling a channeling or an animation with another ability ( more frequently with off gcd skill )

 

Having to go through 3 pulse cannon animations (which have a cooldown so it should be impossible ) in a row before doing any actual damage is really annoying.

[Leilei]

Lokai ive never had the problem of an ability not starting at all when I press the button. Does it happen often? Any way to reproduce it?

 

As for moving while channeling i will try that in the morning.

 

Im actually getting confused now sincr thr op talked about the effect time being tied to the animations and then other people said its the spamming button problem, etc etc.

 

Is there Any other specific thifs i can do so we can put a bug report or w/e that has all the issues without having to read 17 ish pages of vague descriptions? T_T

 

So far i got

1. Chaining cast skills with insta skills will cause it to mess up at one poi t

2. Spamming skills causing gcd when no animation occurs/having no effect

3. Moving while channeling will make the cast bar continue and only fail after the whole cast

4. The thing the above poster said

 

Ill test these out tomorrow and make a bug report on the whole thing n a forum post or somefing

Edited December 26, 2011 by Leilei

[Vindor]

This should be TOP priority on the fix list. We all know the game is all new and that bug should be expected but i trust bioware and EA to react quickly to major bug like this and fix it asap.

 

If not i guess they ll go on my SOE list

[Morzak]

Hm i don't have that many issues with responsivness with my bounty hunter. There seems to be a problem with certain skills that have animations that are longer then the gcd and make it impossible to execute an abbility before the animation is done. This needs to be fixed. I think many of the issues come from the fact that effects and dmg happens after the animation is done or better then when the animation shows it hits.

 

Problem also is that i can't cancel queued Actions this also makes the game feel unresponsive. Overall i don't feel it's that big of an issue, but maybe it's more pronounced with other classes.

[archifikoss]

Whilst it doesn't hamper my enjoyment (maybe because I'm playing casually and focusing on different things in this game), I know what OP means and agree with him. The combat doesn't feel as smooth and flowing as it should, and whilst it's actually great fun, it lacks in that department. And I can see how it could be a game breaker for many players.

 

I'm still loving the game a lot... But it's far from perfect, and this is indeed one of the things holding it back a little.

 

If only all negative posts were as eloquent and critical as this one. Good post OP.

[ozine]

Don't know if it's been posted in this thread, but during beta there was discussion about abilities being linked to "key-release" instead of "key-press". This might be your issue with responsiveness. If you hold down the ability key, it won't fire until you actually release that key.

 

Now I'm not sure if this is true or not. I really don't notice a lack of responsiveness with my character. I have noticed other issues with the "cover" system, such as a somewhat of a LoS issue where the ability starts and "cancels" 1/4 of the way thru that ability, and not due to another ability being "fired" off. For example, my Aimed Shot has a 2.5 sec channel time. I can hit that ability, and knowing its channeling, wait for the next ability to push, but notice the "cancelled" pop up in the channel window.

 

My 2 cents. Still think it's a great game, and adjusting to a new game is going to take longer for some than others. My MMO experience is probably the same as most others, and I found the responsiveness and controls a bit odd during beta, but now have kinda gotten the hang of what should be done in certain scenarios.

[Arkimor]

Good post, OP. This is really does need to be fixed. It's constant.

[GeLopez]

The only issue I have with responsiveness is the camera snapping, and I was a multi-gladiator in WOW.

 

Then again, I'm probably an exception, considering how many people seem to be having these problems. I hope Bioware looks into it.

[OhamSmyth]

I hate to be a crazed doomsayer but I must state: Mark my words, if SW:TOR's Character Responsiveness and Ability Delay is not on par with WoW's by March-June it will be just another Rift.

 

Rift is rather unfortunate example here as it has WAY smoother combat.

 

That being said, I agree with you that the character responsiveness is sub-par. This is especially true when it comes to PvP. In PvE, I can somehow get used to ability delays but it completely kills PvP for me.

 

It is not about ability delays only. Another issue is 'death delay'. If you land a killing blow with certain off-GCD damaging skills (like Jedi Sentinel's Riposte), the enemy is lingering around for up to another 1.5s.

 

Even worse is 'death delay' in PvP. Several people beating already-dead-guy while the opposing team is killing them is definitely not fun.

 

I hope they will adress combat responsiveness soon...

[Selerzz]

I recommend all to submit this as a detailed bug report, like i did.

[Korialstrazs]

I stopped playing rift because of the delay. It wasn't too too bad on single target abilities, but I got a ground targeted ability on my mage and it threw me so bad I stopped playing. I press the ability, I click on the ground, the ability apparently didn't get pressed despite being off cooldown and after the gcd, instead I'm now targeting a random enemy. I repeat and now the ground effect finally appears, this happened 1/2 the time I went to use this ability, and this was a cornerstone use-on-cd ability for my spec. Losing your target, and most of a gcd constantly, because of abilities failing to initiate, or the game failing to pick up your command is not good. I have witnessed a similar ability fail on my imperial agent, with snipe being interrupted most of the way through a cast for no discernible reason, repeatedly.

[Larlar]

I couldnt agree more. I have been saying this for as long as I have been trying the new MMOs that have tried to challenge WOW. This is the most important aspect of the game BY FAR, and if you get it wrong, it diminishes every other aspect of the game.

 

It honestly baffles me how the major MMO developers don't seem to get this, or at worst, they can't replicate the excellence of wow in this department for technical reasons. Either way, its a damning indictment of the software developers that are making these games. They are getting it wrong, and although SWTOR is better than all the other challengers to woe in this regard they have still got it wrong. Combat is not smooth and PVP is decidedly horrible.

 

The button mashing zerger will simply not notice this but experienced MMO players, and that numbers a hell of a lot of people now with the success of wow, will notice it. It must be emphasised that the 'feel' of your character is central to absolutely everything that happens in an MMO (apart from space battles and side games - which bioware have executed very well i might add).

 

I am enjoying this game but I fear that when I reach max level and turn my attention to PVP, the clunky unresponsive gameplay is going to torpedo this game in a brutal fashion for me, and thousands of others, unless they fix it and fix it quickly. It is not so much of an issue now as 99% of players are levelling, and levelling is easy, but once PVP and endgame PVE become the focus of attention lot of people will realise what we alrwady realise - that this game is horribly clunky and dramatically inferior to wow in the area that really counts - gameplay.

 

If they focus on this and get it right in the next month or two this game could go on to be very very good or even great. If they do not fix this problem, then this game will fall by the wayside and be ranked alongside all the other failed challengers to wow's crown. It will have a respectable number of followers as any star wars game will have almost by default, but it will come nowhere near wow.

 

I hope they hear this message amid the incessant whining over utterly trivial garbage about class balance, irrelevant bugs and the hordes baying about what isn't in the game and "should be". If they read this thread and act, or are acting on it anyway, then the game might be saved. If they don't and let a month or two slip without fixing this, the game and subscription base will NEVER recover.

[BombzAway]

+1

is it really wow fanboyism to demand that my game works in a correct manner?

[Rendekar]

+1

is it really wow fanboyism to demand that my game works in a correct manner?

 

Not at all mate. That smoothness must be an industry standard. If you fail to reach it, you should not be releasing an mmo. Sadly, Bioware has not been able to solve this issue since the beta versions of the game.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Rendekar

[Nanotech]

Just because you say that such and such will "make or break SW:TOR" doesn't actually make it true. Nice attempt at fearmongering, though.