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

[Bellog]

Stopped right there. You are clearly a baby and therefore not worth my time.

 

Most important part for you to read too.

[Vonexar]

I've been considering sending in a bug report on this very issue. While setting up my start of attack I gain an "instant" ability that becomes cancelled and has to be re-cast even though it allowed me to attempt a cast the first time. The 0.5 delay wouldn't be so bad if the ability queued up behind that delay but they start, fail and I have to start them again sometimes to repeat the process of failing. All of this while not even in combat yet.

 

Certainly some abilities seem less effected than others and with varied skill levels I'm not sure everyone will experience a problem with the system that they can perceive. Seems likely that most players will run into this frequently even if they don't pick up on it.

[mbernert]

Have to agree 100% with OP. I've posted on this issue in a few different but similar posts, yet OP has nails the problem 100%.

 

I played rift for about 3 months, and it had the exact same problem with ability delay. It is very hard to time spells right, such as trying to interupt someone's cast (buffs, debuffs and spell casting bars are a problem for me also, but not as important as I feel this thread's topic is).

 

Personally for me, the delay in abilities is a very sersious game breaking issue. It is the reason i quit rift, and went back to wow.

 

Like the Op says, you may or may not like wow, but it is the most smooth, responsive character control game around, that's a fact not opinion.

[Evin]

I guess this is the reason that somehow makes me tend towards sage although I always wanted to play a trooper.

I couldn't grasp it before, it just feels smoother.

 

Edit for noob-question: How can I rate a thread?

Edited December 26, 2011 by Evin

[Nanotech]

Most important part for you to read too.

 

I agree. Definitely the intellectual high point of everything you've said thus far.

[Migis]

Yes this is a problem, yes there is a delay for actions to be que'd and executed.

 

The people it hurts the most are Tanks and PvP'ers.

 

The number 1 abilty that this hurts are the interupts, followed by the taunts.

 

It is what it is. But to deny that it is there is ignorant. So far I have adjusted it, and kinda "guessed" when a PVE Boss would cast a spell, but for the most part my kick is about 50% useful.

[Cranberries]

The problem was a lot better when I changed the activation window to 1 second. It was still .. slow.. between casts, but a lot better, and I didn't have to mash up stuff. The only problem I find so far is that you can't "queue" multiple instants, you have to click them simultaneously or spam each key individually, theoretically removing the fact it's instant.

 

Worst culprit is PvP trinket, this is one of the most fundamental abilities that needs to be instant. There's no ifs or buts about it.

[Kasrith]

Agreed. +1 to this sentiment.

[Qazaam]

Space battles don't seem to have a delay at all. The guns all fire instantly so we know the engine is capable of instant response.

[Nanotech]

First, why call people kids because they are aware and are hindered by a gameplay issue. It is there for all, it's not machine specific or ISP specific. If you don't see it or you aren't bothered by it, great for you! But that doesn't make it irrelevant.

 

Also, the PvP community (which I can tell by your posts that you clearly aren't a part of, which is 100% fine) cannot continue to pay monthly subs if this remains an issue. It makes the game not fun, and although I have no written and documented evidence that a game being "not fun" will cause people to leave it, I would suspect this to be true.

 

Again, please, enjoy this game. If it's not an issue to you, count your blessings and enjoy the great story and other aspects. But, to deny that the issue is a contrived story of WoW fanboys, is to be obtuse. Just read the posts in this thread. The majority (and that is a fact) in this thread are posting that they experience this issue. So, again, please let us explain to the developers something that is clearly important to us.

 

Actually, I am a part of the PvP community. Thus proving once more that your assumptions and assertions have no place in reality. However, as any real member of the PvP community would do: I have adapted. Should things get better? Could things get better? Yes and yes. Am I going to run around like a doomsayer claiming that the end is nigh because of it? No. Hell no.

[iamthefuture]

/signed and rated

[Doolish]

/sign

[shinguvna]

Yeah unfortunantly bioware like many of the other mmo companies neglected this important part of combat. If it's not fixed by the time the "newness" has worn of on people we will see a mass exodus of players much like every other mmo besides wow (which for all its faults was at least smooth and responsive)

[GhoXen]

I was a WoW player, and I honestly cannot tell the difference. I have never even heard of this issue in SWTOR until reading this post. I cannot comment personally on the validity or the seriousness of the claims.

 

Nonetheless the suggestion seems constructive. I see only benefit in supporting it.

[Morgasi]

Yes, yes... agree a million times.

 

I turned my graphics down thinking it was my computer that just couldn't keep up but it didn't help. There still seems to be a brief time between when I hit my ability and my toon actually does it. Then I have to wait before I hit another ability instead of smoothly just clicking through my rotation.

 

I can live with this (I guess) with PvE, but I imagine it would be a game-killer for PvP.

[baznasty]

I was a WoW player, and I honestly cannot tell the difference. I have never even heard of this issue in SWTOR until reading this post. I cannot comment personally on the validity or the seriousness of the claims.

 

Nonetheless the suggestion seems constructive. I see only benefit in supporting it.

 

Let me preface this by saying this is not an attack. I just want to know:

 

What is your PvP experience in WoW, and what was the highest raid you were in? The point of that question is to find out if you are in fact a player that can even discern this type of thing. If you say that you PvP'd past 1500 rating and downed a difficult boss, then I will say that I am shocked that you can't tell.

 

If you are indeed a player that enjoys questing, dailies and achievement hunting, then I would say that you may not be aware of these types of issues.

 

Wish I had a better way of asking without sounding condescending, but I don't, so just take my word that it's not meant that way.

 

Edit: My wife plays and enjoys questing but would never be caught dead in PvP or raids. It's too much of a demand and she doesn't like the stress. She doesn't see anything at all wrong with this system.

 

I on the other hand am an avid PvPer and I noticed it on the very first quest in the game.

Edited December 26, 2011 by baznasty

[Deriver]

As I mentioned before on some random post, I believe this is mostly an animation issue.

 

If you don't "combo" skills, you will hardly notice any delay at all. Problem really start to happens when you have to cast your skills on a determined sequence and, obviously, expect the instant ones to be instant and respect only the GCD.

 

But, this is not what really happens, and it is easy to test:

 

If you are a Sith Sorcerer, for instance. Try this: start your Lightning Strike spell and, right before it ends, start Force Lightning, so the system can queue it after strike is casted.

 

What you will see is that Force Lightning animation (AND DAMAGE) starts a bit AFTER the channeling bar appears. The channeling bar appears exactly when it should, altho the animation and the damage starts a bit later because they took in account the finishing time of the previous animation being processed, in that case, Lightning Strike one.

 

So, basically, what do we really have in SWTOR, are 2 different kinds of cooldowns between abilities: the GCD one, already known to most of us, AND the animation sequence for each ability.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is good or bad. GuildWars 2 for instance, will launch with an animation based cooldown, and not a 'set in stone' GCD. Maybe it is just a thing for us to adapt.

 

 

Regards

[Granyala]

I would just like to strap them into the chair and play WoW for 1 week straight (yes even if you hate it!) just to see the difference in Responsiveness that is being mentioned.

 

Aye.. I went back to WoW to do an instance while in the queue for SW-ToRs Login, and the difference is staggering. SW-ToR feels like a laggy computer glued to the desk compared to WoWs who is floating on a anti grav device.

 

(metaphors are fun :< )

[flynny]

try casting lightning strike as a sorc, the very end wait for the spell to go off is so so painful

[Nanotech]

As I mentioned before on some random post, I believe this is mostly an animation issue.

 

If you don't "combo" skills, you will hardly notice any delay at all. Problem really start to happens when you have to cast your skills on a determined sequence and, obviously, expect the instant ones to be instant and respect only the GCD.

 

But, this is not what really happens, and it is easy to test:

 

If you are a Sith Sorcerer, for instance. Try this: start your Lightning Strike spell and, right before it ends, start Force Lightning, so the system can queue it after strike is casted.

 

What you will see is that Force Lightning animation (AND DAMAGE) starts a bit AFTER the channeling bar appears. The channeling bar appears exactly when it should, altho the animation and the damage starts a bit later because they took in account the finishing time of the previous animation being processed, in that case, Lightning Strike one.

 

So, basically, what do we really have in SWTOR, are 2 different kinds of cooldowns between abilities: the GCD one, already known to most of us, AND the animation sequence for each ability.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is good or bad. GuildWars 2 for instance, will launch with an animation based cooldown, and not a 'set in stone' GCD. Maybe it is just a thing for us to adapt.

 

 

Regards

 

This.

[Taboo]

Actually, I am a part of the PvP community. Thus proving once more that your assumptions and assertions have no place in reality. However, as any real member of the PvP community would do: I have adapted. Should things get better? Could things get better? Yes and yes. Am I going to run around like a doomsayer claiming that the end is nigh because of it? No. Hell no.

 

You're one of those people that will look at a product's brand before the product and purchase it.

 

"Adapting" is not a valid arguement in the slightest. Why should the players adapt when things can be improved upon by the PEOPLE WHO MADE THE GAME?! This is their job. When an MMO is released, it is the developers JOB to constantly aim to improve and work upon the game for the benefit of the people playing it.

 

Telling the developer that a serious game breaking issue is "fine, don't worry about it we'll all adapt and suffer with this huge issue!" isn't going to help anyone; the developers will become lazy and ignore serious complaints, leading the customers to put up with a half attempted game.

 

Oh by the way, you said earlier that this type of issue doesn't end/break games? Look at Warhammer Online. Then look at World of Warcraft. One has over ten million subscribers, the other is barely getting by. Want to know why? Because of things like ability delay.

 

Any other fanboys that may be reading this: You are entitled to support whoever you like, but please for the game's sake, the developer's sake and your fellow players' sake, help the game grow by accepting problems with the game and getting BioWare's attention to fix them!

Edited December 26, 2011 by Taboo

[Granyala]

You are entitled to support whoever you like, but please for the game's sake, the developer's sake and your fellow players' sake, help the game grow by accepting problems with the game and getting BioWare's attention to fix them!

 

Sorry, I just had to quote this statement. Fanboys don't understand how much damage they do if they shout down people who point out problems.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Granyala

[baznasty]

I view the naysayers on this topic like this:

 

Imagine if these were the Chevy Silverado forums. Imagine then if all of the Silverados had a loud whining sound while driving it. Some people might in fact not notice the whining sound at all (maybe their hearing isn't what it used to be). Then there may be some people who may say, "I hear it too, but you'll eventually get used to it. The car still drives like a dream!". Well, the problem is, to some people, that might be enought to take the car back.

 

A) In this scenario there is an actual issue. If you are able to live with the issue, GREAT! however, that doesn't change the fact that there is an issue.

 

B) Why badmouth the people who want this fixed? If you can live with it, GREAT! however, if the issue gets fixed, you won't have to live with your loud whining sound anymore because you'll get yours fixed too. So, worst case scenario for you is...it gets fixed? Doesn't sound too bad to me.

 

C) If you are a die hard Silverado fan who wants to "stick it to those Fordies" then you may be in complete denial that it exists. You view a claim of this noise to be an attack on your favorite product, and take it as an attack on yourself.

 

I see quite a bit of C's on this forum

[Xcore]

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.

 

 

Its most prevalent when "spamming" a tight rotation of abilities that include Casted abilties and instant abilities. If you have every played WoW (its ok if not, I apologize for reference) I would picture a very spastic rogue style... spamming sinister strike and eviscerates etc.

 

Or perhaps a rotation that involves casted abilities as we all as instant abilities and some Cooldowns in between etc.

[Feskitt]

I guess one of the simplest ways for me to explain it is, when you try to have a super tight rotation of abilities which include cast time followed instantly by instant ability then into casted ability etc...

 

at some point you'll have the bug happen, it'll just mess up, as in one of the abilities will trigger its CD but not the animation (or happen at all) or the ability will happen .5-1 second after its supposed to due to animation lag etc.

 

Its a bit hard to define but the point is that its not as "responsive", its not fast enough, when contrasted to WoW a solid quick and crisp rotation of abilities is just not smooth and in fact "stumbles" upon itself seemingly.

Okay, that's what I thought you were saying...

 

I've had it happen, albeit very rarely. I just try and time my moves as much by animation as by watching the cast-bar or cool-down, or whatever.

 

Sometimes, you can even 'trick it out' and get moves to "piggyback" on one another, firing them off almost simultaneously.

 

 

 

In a way, this discussion makes me think of Dragon Age Origins combat, vs DA2's combat.

 

Origins had what I consider 'realistic' animations; the combat looked hard, heavy, and effortful. But apparently lots of folks though it was 'too slow.'

 

DA2 had what I consider 'anime' combat; leaping across the room in the blink of an eye, whipping weapons around that are apparently weightless. Yet some liked it's "responsiveness."