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

[Lusiferz]

After we have identified the problem with my guildies, we were also frustrated with it.

 

Since the last patch (1.0.1) we observed a major improvement over the problem, not it has been fixed completely but as i said its improved a lot.

I would like your feedback as well on that.

[tehmoose]

I really hope they fix this problem and i am so happy to see others are having the same problem. Which means that they might fix it...

 

I seriously doubt they will. I think its a problem with the engine as written.

 

There's no way they're going to overhaul the entire combat system to make it into something its not.

[hulduet]

When i first took note of this problem, which was kind of right away, hard to miss it really, the first ability that came to mind was interrupts. I mean how are you suppose to even make it in time with the 0.5~ delay. Of course i was proved right when i got the interrupt... it's near impossible for me to interrupt a monster due to the extra 0.5 sec i have to wait before it actually triggers. I have to be spot on to make it in time /sigh.

 

<edit> I'm going to start swtor and play with the latest patch, see if it has improved at all. I doubt it tho since i believe that is an entirely different problem. I'll be back with my input.

Edited December 28, 2011 by hulduet

[wilsonzx]

I totally agree with the OP, on WoW my fingers will be moving a mile a minute from casting abilities due to the smooth gameplay, but on SWTOR I feel like a "blind 85 year old man trying to type" because of the ability delay. Don't get me wrong I love this game but this issue should really be addressed.

[Frostea]

If you are a WoW player, and have played WoW with any amount of skill, competitiveness, you cannot help but cringe when in a Warzone in SW:TOR. It feels unresponsive, frustrating... as if something is wrong with you! but there is nothing you can do about it!

This is precisely what I was feeling in Warzones. The character responsiveness is choppy and ability animation completions seem to have greater priority than the actual ability. On my Jedi Sentinel, Blade Storm is supposed to be an instant cast ability, but the animation leaves me hanging for a much longer time than the GCD, sometimes the ability bugs and plays the animation half-way then resets and tries to play it again, preventing ability usage at the same time.

 

I frankly, am so sick of WoW. Played since patch 1.1; the game is so stale to me now; however, character responsiveness is a must. Instead, in SWTOR I feel like something is wrong with me and that somehow I magically became mentally deficient at using abilities. I fell in love with the Old Republic franchise long ago, and I want this game to succeed. The quests are immersive, the environments beautiful, the characters connectable. But when it comes down to it, the raw gameplay, the basis of the entire game, if it is not smooth and polished, actual play through becomes hindering if not downright annoying to aggravating.

 

The "Guild Wars 2 Top 10 Reasons" video's first explanation really fleshes out the importance of character responsiveness. Just watch the first minute and a half, sums up the OP rather well.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBC_ig73aMs

Edited December 28, 2011 by Frostea

[Balbosa]

What is this Ability Delay you all are talking about? Can someone post a vid of it?

[Khoranth]

I'm just curious, so you guys in this thread, are encountering a 0.5 delay in abilities as well?

 

Basically you see a monster, you're in range, you click on whatever "attack" ability you have and then you wait for ~0.5 seconds before it actually activates?! Then the rest of the combat is the same, click and wait. It's even more frustrating in groups since it feels like you're not doing anything for such a long stretch of time. By the time your character actually attacks the mob is dead... i mean what is up?

 

And no, i'm not talking about the GCD, since that is often brought up in chat/forums, or latency.

 

You also get stuck in animations, so you should be able to use an ability, but animations are all lagged out and youre standing there pressing buttons and nothing happens then all of a sudden you are dead.

 

This is really bad especially in warzones. I have given up on warzones until this is fixed.

[hulduet]

I was just curious how do you even heal with this delay? I found it really hard so i just gave up completely on my healer.

[Xenofell]

I just wanted to say that I'm really glad this thread exists and that you folks are able to quantify this phenomenon that has put me off several major MMOs in the past. I absolutely love Star Wars: The Old Republic but I feel that my game experience would be significantly improved and the longevity of the game increased if this issue was resolved.

 

I may be out of line here, but I do urge any and all players who consider this an issue to tweet Rockjaw/SWTOR with this thread and open a bug report ingame with a link to this thread. Those two steps are probably the easiest way to bring attention to this major flaw in the game engine.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Xenofell

[Xcore]

After we have identified the problem with my guildies, we were also frustrated with it.

 

Since the last patch (1.0.1) we observed a major improvement over the problem, not it has been fixed completely but as i said its improved a lot.

I would like your feedback as well on that.

 

Negative, I've seen no improvement on the core issue. Perhaps the GCD Triggers were improved slightly but ability linking is still majorly crippled through animations.

 

Also castbars filling up and being canceled even though cast time has already been fillled (likely due to animation) is still happening... I mean I could go on but in the end, no nothing was really done about this.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Xcore

[Aradain]

Brilliant post. It perfectly describes an issue that is slowly eroding away my enjoyment of the game. This is very similar to an issue I experience in LOTRO, and one that keeps me from going back to that game. I do hope someone at BW is paying attention, and that something can be done to fix this.

[bvalley]

I'm not going to tell anyone to do what I did, but I did make sure to cancel my subscription. I still have my remaining month to play, but in the sub cancel screen I wrote my concerns about this topic.

 

The game is fun and it could be amazing, but if this issue doesn't get fixed I'll get my pvp and immersive gaming experience from some other game.

 

Please, please please please please Bioware, give me a reason to go back and resub! My subscription alone will pay for a couple of days of your developers pay for working on this issue. I have played WoW since a month after it came out. I'm loyal to games I love and I really want this one to be good, but this is a game breaking issue for me!

 

I also want this game to be a success, but I decided to cancel my subscription as well, and referenced this thread, and the lack of response form a BW rep. If they don't want to respond to a huge forum post, maybe cancelling subscriptions might get them to say or do something about it. I will continue to monitor this issue on the forums, but I will not resubscribe if it isn't fixed.

[Halacs]

I seriously doubt they will. I think its a problem with the engine as written.

 

There's no way they're going to overhaul the entire combat system to make it into something its not.

 

I am no developer for thats for sure, but could this not be done by changing the timers on the animation? The GCD? Setting it back behind the cast timer somehow, so that a 1.5s cast is a 1.5s? Then off GCD abilities would work to....I think.

[dcinnitt]

Does anyone have any information on the WoW code that allows for the smoother interaction between client and server? I believe this WHOLE issue is down to how the server communicates what abilities you use to the server and then how the server communicates that back to you and other players involved.

 

This is bad coding. It's a bad combat engine. This is also evident in the hundreds of threads and probably hundreds of thousands of people experiencing severe FPS drops in warzones or busy areas or even just random areas. I'm guessing it's down to bad coding and a bad engine. Sorry to say that this will not be patched in a content patch at the end of the month or even patched in over the next year. It's too big of a job. They tried to get it right and they failed.

[Halacs]

What is this Ability Delay you all are talking about? Can someone post a vid of it?

 

A vid in my sig of how its should work. There is also another thread with about 10 vids in it showing ToR and how its happening.

[tehmoose]

I am no developer for thats for sure, but could this not be done by changing the timers on the animation? The GCD? Setting it back behind the cast timer somehow, so that a 1.5s cast is a 1.5s? Then off GCD abilities would work to....I think.

 

That speaks to a rather intensive overhaul of the combat system. I doubt they can just twiddle a few numbers and make it work...

 

Or they'd have done that by now.

 

I don't for a moment doubt that there's serious engine constraints and considerations that they have to make before they can think about addressing this problem. I believe that its pretty systemic to the entire game and isn't easily rooted out.

[xMKNx]

I was just curious how do you even heal with this delay? I found it really hard so i just gave up completely on my healer.

 

there's healers in this game?

[fallenvirtues]

Ive had this problem alot. I play a Marauder and it especially gets frustrating when Im almost dead and try to use FC (IN-Combat Stealth) and it just doesnt go off at all. So I back out like I would normally do if it works so that I can hide or do whatever is needed, Instead I just wind up getting blasted to death.

 

 

See now my main is a Marauder and I am level 39...I never have this problem...Never

 

They force the completion of the animation for visual effect and I personally like it...It has slowed combat a little bit so its just not a bunch of people running around frantically spamming the same couple of keys over and over...This is also why players dont die as quick too in pvp...It allows for more strategy in what skills you need to execute in order to win...I find it more intense this way and when you sit back and see how BW does it, you adjust your game play for it...The other players are working with the same feature so it evens the battlefield..The only thing needing adjusting is your mindset and habits from playing WoW...The visual effect will be as awesome as the gameplay

 

I played a mage in wow for years and started playing all together in vanilla...I spammed a few keys over and over and over and occasionally mixed it up when the situation called for it..Even with my warrior...and every class come to think of it...In TOR, I use up to 13-15 abilities, no lower then like 9 all the damn time..for attacks, building hate or rage whatever it is, defense, a DoT, more defense, etc etc...More so then any other MMO in my honest opinion...

 

If abilities are bugged and not executing right or at all...Thats completely different...That needs to be fixed...But once you really get used to following the animation and realize the other player is dealing the same thing. and with some tweaking by BW to make it flawless, it will change your opinion

 

I dunno...Just my 2 cents...I am really enjoying the combat and dont really experience any problems and I want everyone else to enjoy it to

 

EDIT: It actually makes it a little more realistic also imho

Edited December 28, 2011 by fallenvirtues

[aureliastarr]

That speaks to a rather intensive overhaul of the combat system. I doubt they can just twiddle a few numbers and make it work...

 

Or they'd have done that by now.

 

I don't for a moment doubt that there's serious engine constraints and considerations that they have to make before they can think about addressing this problem. I believe that its pretty systemic to the entire game and isn't easily rooted out.

 

Yes when I look at the videos I tend to agree... Some of the animations don't really seem to begin until after the cast time and then take a bit of time after that. I doubt it can or will be fixed. It was either a bad design or terrible oversight. Oh well... I have 6 months to see what they do.

[oflow]

Just reposting to keep this updated.

 

Like I said in my post on page 30, this has something to do with off GCD abilities, which effects the melee classes the worst. I have leveled characters of every one of the 4 archtypes to 15 or above and in my experimenting they are all experiencing this issues with abilities that are off the GCD. Its harder to notice it on ranged classes though except smuggler because 'Take Cover' will actually have a long delay to active at times as well.

 

I'm pretty sure this is a fixable problem since its either a sync error (where the players cpu is out of sync with the server cpu which has also happened in WoW as well most recently after the 4.1 patch) or they need to tweak the animation speeds to match the GCD since that is possibly whats throwing it off too.

 

Some one else mentioned the way WoW deals with this issue is when you use an instant proc your character wont actually do the animation just the damage. I never paid that much attention to it and I let my WoW account expire in the summer.

 

But just for all the people that didnt actually read the thread and keep trolling in every so often with 'my games fine you all just suck' heres a re-post of a video showing a perfect example of the bug in action (originally posted by Neroe):

 

 

Also, this is a video of the 'double-clutch' I was talking about on my post on page 30:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQmhYjkUqOU

Edited December 28, 2011 by oflow

[Bleedsy]

They force the completion of the animation for visual effect and I personally like it...It allows for more strategy in what skills you need to execute in order to win...

 

Like, for instance, needing to execute an interrupt before someone actually casts the ability you're trying to interrupt? Because if they cast it while your last ability's super sweet animation is playing, you're SOL?

 

Sounds legit!

[bvalley]

Another thing I find interesting... is that this thread, out 23,695 threads in general discussion, this topic is the 6th most viewed, and 3rd in replies.

 

Still no response?

Edited December 28, 2011 by bvalley

[hulduet]

Noticed no change with the latest patch. Honestly didn't expect any change either because it's a different issue from the one i'm having.

 

Found this video in another thread showing the problem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO2mK1DPRik

 

You'd see that the time from when he clicks on the ability before the ability actually triggers is quite big. I have the exact same problems, which seems to be around 0.5~ seconds. You click on the ability nothing happens, your character just stands there, waiting. It's even more obvious when you're in a group. Just makes me wonder how it looks on other people, if my character just stands there doing nothing. On trash mobs my character starts to fire when the mob is dead/almost dead. This is with ~30ms latency.

[Halacs]

That speaks to a rather intensive overhaul of the combat system. I doubt they can just twiddle a few numbers and make it work...

 

Or they'd have done that by now.

 

I don't for a moment doubt that there's serious engine constraints and considerations that they have to make before they can think about addressing this problem. I believe that its pretty systemic to the entire game and isn't easily rooted out.

 

Yeah I suppose so. They could do a bit at a time perhaps?

[Putok]

After we have identified the problem with my guildies, we were also frustrated with it.

 

Since the last patch (1.0.1) we observed a major improvement over the problem, not it has been fixed completely but as i said its improved a lot.

I would like your feedback as well on that.

 

I've noticed this as well. It's not 100% better, but I'd say it's more than 50% better. Instants that are off the GCD now seem to function correctly 100% of the time, including interupts. The animations look a little choppy sometimes, because it will perform the action before completing the first animation, and then move into the second, but if functions correctly, at that's a good start. There's still sometimes some clunkyness transitioning between abilities with long animations, but that also seems to be significantly improved.