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

[Nissin]

Easiest way to see this in action is mounting up and moving forward when cast hits 0 it will dismount you and not count as mounting up.

 

Also on my Bounty Hunter spam Power Shot or Tracer Missile you will see it feels like I am playing with a huge lag spike every time I cast anything.

[ajjw]

I say someone should just compile all the problems into one big list. Do you have any idea how hard it is to read 100+ pages of vague descriptions and getting specific examples every 20 or so pages o.o

 

For example -

Riposte - Not animating and its hard t osee if it actually worked or not. It will sometimes trigger its cooldown but not do anything.

 

Or

 

Propel - You can not move or use any other abilities for half a sec after its supposedly "done casting"

 

or

 

Ambush - If you use it right after rolling into an environmental cover, it will stop casting halfway throguh

 

Or

 

General skills with cast time - It will bug out if you try to tighten your rotation and will cause abilities to not go off, etc

 

x.x

Because this is not about specific abilities. It is about animation lengths. ALL animations should be synced to their cast times. Right now an animation can overlap a cast time adding unintended delay.

 

Speeding up / slowing down all animations -automatically- to match their cast times = problem solved. This can be implemented very easily and does not require a list of abilities with animations longer than their cast times.

[no_big_deal]

Personally I love not being able to utilize all of my GCDs in a "Warzone." Ranged classes in the game are a joke. They don't have to deal with that whole, "I'm not in ranged even though that guy is blasting the f*** out of me and still running away" that is always there for melee. Of course this is pretty much the case for all types of classes.

 

Talking with some people about this and it effectively kills raiding too. No one can look in the future and you're guaranteed to get hit by something that randomly happens in the fight for a brief moment. That has got to suck. How could anyone at EA/Bioware think that this was a good idea? It's like adding another mechanic to EVERYTHING and will have to be balanced around it.

 

I have no idea why this was ever implemented. It isn't another way to the play the game. It's like you're trying to peddle a bike with one wheel and you don't know why you aren't going anywhere.

[TripleOG]

I say someone should just compile all the problems into one big list. Do you have any idea how hard it is to read 100+ pages of vague descriptions and getting specific examples every 20 or so pages o.o

 

For example -

Riposte - Not animating and its hard t osee if it actually worked or not. It will sometimes trigger its cooldown but not do anything.

 

Or

 

Propel - You can not move or use any other abilities for half a sec after its supposedly "done casting"

 

or

 

Ambush - If you use it right after rolling into an environmental cover, it will stop casting halfway throguh

 

Or

 

General skills with cast time - It will bug out if you try to tighten your rotation that involves attacks with cast times and instacasts and will cause abilities to not go off, etc

 

x.x

 

Or trying to stack 2 Kolto Probes when you cant tell if the first one actually casted or not. So you overcompensate. After u overcompensate you realize u left yourself in an unrecoverable energy deficit.

[Leilei]

Because this is not about specific abilities. It is about animation lengths. ALL animations should be synced to their cast times. Right now an animation can overlap a cast time adding unintended delay.

 

Speeding up / slowing down all animations -automatically- to match their cast times = problem solved. This can be implemented very easily and does not require a list of abilities with animations longer than their cast times.

 

Except the game right now doesnt use cast times to tie with animations. Cast times tend to START the animation after its done casting o.o

 

Have you guys tried other games with hero engine btw? Im curious to see if it applies to the way the engine itself works. o.o

 

Edit :

 

I still think that SWTOR wouldve been so much better if it took Champions combat style. Its like...The single best combat style out of all the mmos I played.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Leilei

[ajjw]

Except the game right now doesnt use cast times to tie with animations. Cast times tend to START the animation after its done casting o.o

 

Have you guys tried other games with hero engine btw? Im curious to see if it applies to the way the engine itself works. o.o

Yes my friend, that's the problem

[Seismax]

Because this is not about specific abilities. It is about animation lengths. ALL animations should be synced to their cast times. Right now an animation can overlap a cast time adding unintended delay.

 

Speeding up / slowing down all animations -automatically- to match their cast times = problem solved. This can be implemented very easily and does not require a list of abilities with animations longer than their cast times.

 

This doesn't fix the problem of abilities off the GCD not working though.

 

Something in the system is broken if abilities that should always be able to fire are getting blocked.

[ajjw]

This doesn't fix the problem of abilities off the GCD not working though.

 

Something in the system is broken if abilities that should always be able to fire are getting blocked.

Yes - Right now, the game waits for the previous animation to finish before letting another ability go through.

 

It's a stupid design.

 

IE the animation from your previous skill is still playing when you try to use your off-GCD skill, so it doesn't go through :-/

Edited December 27, 2011 by ajjw

[Scelerant]

 

To be honest it is so annoying hearing people saying that they dont see it, that i can easily assume that either they are a bunch of ignorant n00bs or that someone is actually paying em to troll this thread. Its THAT obvious!

 

I like that aspect, because I can instantly know if its worth reading their post or not. I'm sick of only getting about half my abilities off.

[samdbtto]

Except the game right now doesnt use cast times to tie with animations. Cast times tend to START the animation after its done casting o.o

 

Have you guys tried other games with hero engine btw? Im curious to see if it applies to the way the engine itself works. o.o

 

Edit :

 

I still think that SWTOR wouldve been so much better if it took Champions combat style. Its like...The single best combat style out of all the mmos I played.

 

doing a little google it looks like no other game havd been released with this engine, there are some being developed. Thats what wikipedia says

[Rafkin]

What problems are there with the method I suggested? What corners does it cut?

 

Because your solution doesn't include interrupting animations for abilities off the gcd.

[Oneiros_IV]

Yes - Right now, the game waits for the previous animation to finish before letting another ability go through.

 

It's a stupid design.

 

Like I stated before even parrying animation prevented me from using saber ward (def cd) how funny is that

[Juuju]

Completely agree, hope this can be worked on by Bioware. This exact reason is why I quit Rift, Warhammer Online, and Aion. You can just feel that the game doesn't feel right, the combat, the casting compared to world of warcraft. I love this game and don't want it to fail like the previous other mmo's.

 

 

Please Bioware look into this, you've made an amazing game and it could be even better if this could be looked into.

 

 

That video shows perfectly what this thread is talking about. SWTOR casting combat just feels clunky and laggy.

[ajjw]

Because your solution doesn't include interrupting animations for abilities off the gcd.

Good point. I dunno. The only reason I suggested syncing animations to cast times instead of clipping them like WoW was to keep the "But they're sooo preetttytytytyty" people happy.

 

IMO WoW's method is still king.

[ajjw]

Like I stated before even parrying animation prevented me from using saber ward (def cd) how funny is that

That's just f'ed up :-/ Not being able to pop a potentially clutch defensive CD because your char is still playing the parry animation .. My god, BioWare.

[samdbtto]

Yes - Right now, the game waits for the previous animation to finish before letting another ability go through.

 

It's a stupid design.

 

IE the animation from your previous skill is still playing when you try to use your off-GCD skill, so it doesn't go through :-/

 

I posted an example of this

 

 

also an example of animation being cut short for next ability, this is only time ive seen it do this but i would like if all animations stopped short this way.

 

[AJSXenigma]

Can definitely sympathize with this thread. Trying to use abilities properly in SWTOR is frustrating because you always have to account for a delay, which makes the game feel slow and choppy. Heck, just basic running and jumping can have odd delay issues, as I've found with hunting datacrons that the jump button rarely operates right when you press it, leading to a lot of missed jumps in platforming sections. I was never a big WoW fan, but the responsiveness of the system was always fantastic, and it's a shame that for all the traits new MMOs emulate from WoW they don't get that one down. I have no idea if Bioware can properly patch responsiveness, but it would be a great thing to see if they can.

[Kashley]

That's just f'ed up :-/ Not being able to pop a potentially clutch defensive CD because your char is still playing the parry animation .. My god, BioWare.

 

zomg so true...

[sac-]

I'm almost glad to see that I am not the only one having this. I thought it was some FPS or lag issue.

 

It's painful trying to continue with my rotation after an interrupt, and not being able to, just because my character is not done with his jump-kick-thing. Or, as someone said, seeing my character doing the channeling but not channeling at all.

 

I completely agree with you when you say that this is the #1 issue that would break the game. It's already doing it, at least for me.

[Corwingeorge]

here's another perfect example of me trying to get off an ability after a channeled ability and losing a global cooldown and my footing

 

[Oneiros_IV]

Yes - Right now, the game waits for the previous animation to finish before letting another ability go through.

 

It's a stupid design.

 

Like I stated before even parrying animation prevented me from using saber ward (def cd) how funny is that

[Bollah]

This is my number one issue as well, playing a Scoundrel that depends on positional requirements the animation lag can screw you up big time.

 

The game will do fine as is, it isn't a "make or break", but it is a huge issue that needs to be looked at or they should let us know whats up.

[Baalzamon]

Hope they are working to fix this.

[Nephrahim]

I've said it before here, but I really REALLY hope they are working on this. If they can fix it, it would just improve the game tremendously.

[Sanchpanza]

I've posted a video response to the link on the very start of this page, showing that you actually CAN queue skills on seperate targets without a problem.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzP0xjNLyX4

 

Hopefully the OP and original video poster will respond to this

 

As I say in the video, animations are borked, but the core global cooldown isn't.