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

[Nephrahim]

I have already posted that I have an agree with the Op's post, but i will try to explain to this comment what it means for me.

 

I am playing the game, with this issue, and having fun. Warzones are fun, questing ect. sure. But the current system is not optimal, which is what I think most of us are asking for.

 

Say you have a car at home, just a regular vehicle. And lets say for argument it has a manual transmision. You could get on nascar and hear about them saying that car doesn't shift right. To you, you may drive that car everyday, not a problem getting it into gear. But to them, vs using a very well tuned transmition on a race car, your average vehicle just doesn't shift the same.

 

I think this anology points out the problem I have. Combat for me, mostly in pvp, just isn't made out to where you can be very competitive with it. It feels just like a random mashing of buttons. This can be fun sure, but I'm the type I like to exploit every .01 second out of everything I do to be the absolute best I can be at it.

 

The controls and abilities for me, aren't responding EXACTLY when I press them. I play with around 50 latency, average anywhere from 100 to sometimes 25-30fps in heavy battle warzones (not sure why, this games graphics are nothing to brag about, and my pc should be 3x more than enough to play this game).

 

This is where I am as well.

 

Yes, I can still play the game. And have fun with it. But that doesn't mean this isn't a problem. It is, a big one.

[taproot]

/signed

 

most important issue of the game atm

[Manofmisery]

I agree have the same problems, did a raid yesterday it was pretty challenging the fight wasn't that hard the frame drop was just awfull.

[GumBoil]

STOP SAYING IT NEEDS TO BE FIXED...It isnt broken..

 

It just isnt your preference...

 

You are wrong. It is demonstrable. If you can not see it, it says more about your powers of observation than what is going on. Wish I could get me a +1 rose tinted fanbot visor too.

 

Look

(that was from a random google). Do you need me to explain what you are seeing? (serious question).

[Lmaonade]

Seems you won't get that development cost back, let alone profit.

Enjoy your utter failure.

 

FIRE ALL THE PROGRAMMERS !

 

 

ps: FIX THIS PLEASE

I LOVE SW:TOR BUT THIS IS KILLING IT

[Critical]

Completely agree with this post and this is one of the few major issues I have with TOR atm, and it really is MAJOR.

[Vindor]

This thread should be renamed, its obviously not about ability delay anymore but overall buged combat system :

 

- ability delay

- ability not working

- ability canceling for no reason

- Phantom ability animations/cast time (nothing happen nor cooldown triggered just the animation)

 

I for now really like this game but even the greatest fanboy cant argue that this kind of bug should ever make it through beta test no matter what.

[TheJmoney]

Guys,

 

It's the engine. They can't just 'fix' the responsiveness - it's built into the engine.

 

I hate to burst your bubble on this because I think the clunky gameplay will absolutely kill this otherwise great game, but it is what it is.

 

See the problem with that, is that this game has been in dev for many a year. Hell, the first TRAILER goes back to 2009? Which means they must've been working on the game prior.

 

WoW was released in 2004.

 

I'll make it simple for you kiddies, SWTOR was released in 2011. 2011-2004 = 7 years. 7 years of the most technological advances we've seen in quite a god damn while... and they couldn't get a 2004 formula correct. Even RIFT had less issues than this when it came to combat. And that was released 9 months ago.

 

For you to say that this crap was built into the engine, not only further proves our point of BW's ******ness, but it also proves, that I will never buy another damned game of theirs again if they can't fix a simple timing issue.

[DarthEod]

Just to add my comment to the swarm of posts here, I completely agree with the OP. I've played just about all the MMOs since Everquest and Ultima Online and part of why I stayed with WoW as long as I did was the smoothness and flow of combat and animation. Playing TOR, which I stress I'm enjoying immensely, still nonetheless feels like slogging through a river of brick. Especially when tanking, when I'm actually counting on those sub-seconds in order to successfully hold aggro off the 6 things when I only have one AOE ability.

[Luewen]

I dont know what ability delay peeps are speaking about. Only place the magical delay comes is with the speeder. Every other action happens exactly when you r pressing the button, unless you r still doing your previous action or GCD is on. However, instant abilities work even with GCD going.

[Raionx]

Totally agree, Bioware NEEDS to fix this.

[Thatguy]

I just don't see myself continuing with swtor past my first month if this is not addressed. I'd love to keep playing. I think the game is amazing and has a ton of potential, but with combat being the centre of the game and not functioning as it should, it breaks the deal for me.

 

As a pvper (been hardcore pvping for over 10 years across various mmo's) this isn't for me. Extremely clunky system that kills any skill factor and finess involved. My money is better off elsewhere unfortunately.

 

This needs to be fixed or at least addressed. So soon after release and with such a big launch, I can't imagine vacations preventing at least one dev from commenting. If I worked on this, I'd be all over the talk and discussion, and a thread like this is hard to miss.

[jeinasindorei]

Call me bad, or a noob, or a casual if you want (won't make it true), but I feel this is the way they intended it to be. I'm sorry that it's not your cup of tea, but I happen to enjoy not seeing choppy, half-second animations. Even with this "issue", my sniper can still kill NPCs and players alike quickly and efficiently.

 

I don't think it will cause droves of subscribers to leave the game or "doom" it as you feel it will. As a poster above me said, "casuals probably won't notice it". Given that most of a MMO's playerbase is made up of casuals, I guess this game will be just fine. Other MMOs didn't "fail" because of this issue, they "failed" for completely different ones.

 

The only real bug that upsets me is having my abilities cancel themselves for absolutely no reason when using them from cover, especially if they have a CD.

[Zioep]

Just to chime in for this, I agree completely. I was trying to figure out what felt wrong when I was playing, and this is exactly it. I primarily pvp, and coming from WoW to this feels awful. I love this game so much, but the combat doesn't feel remotely close to being fluid.

 

I feel like I'm spending all my time waiting. I really want this game to succeed, but I can't imagine that happening if this isn't fixed.

[Luuma]

Totally agree with this. The mopunt example is so obvious (from the first page), i often cancel my mounting because i move too fast (yes, after the castbar dissapears). I thougt it was lag, but now.

Thx for put it all together.

[HansBrolo]

@jeinasindorei: the literal problem here is that abilities are not activating per their advertised cast time. End of story. This further devalues haste (alacrity) and related talents (First Responder for Troopers). Edited December 27, 2011 by HansBrolo

[Syxx_]

Agree

 

As a Sniper you have no idea how many times I'll use cover, hit a hot key and it uses my non cover move first, or how many times I hit a key and it just wont work or if it does it replays the start of the animation several times before it goes off.

 

PLEASE PLEASE fix this, its killing PVP for me.

[AlkalineKitten]

Good to see this much more attention, support, and more importantly, critical, objective thinking in this thread.

[Kabloosh]

Agreed.

 

If you want to feel the difference go play a BG in WoW then come here and play a warzone.

 

You will undoubtably notice a difference. The worse I experience are abilities such as cooldowns or interrupts that aren't tried to the GCD end up not being cast for whatever reason even though I clicked on the ability.

 

Really if anything should be fine tuned first before anything else it is the core gameplay above all else.

[mbernert]

Call me bad, or a noob, or a casual if you want (won't make it true), but I feel this is the way they intended it to be. I'm sorry that it's not your cup of tea, but I happen to enjoy not seeing choppy, half-second animations. Even with this "issue", my sniper can still kill NPCs and players alike quickly and efficiently.

 

I don't think it will cause droves of subscribers to leave the game or "doom" it as you feel it will. As a poster above me said, "casuals probably won't notice it". Given that most of a MMO's playerbase is made up of casuals, I guess this game will be just fine. Other MMOs didn't "fail" because of this issue, they "failed" for completely different ones.

 

The only real bug that upsets me is having my abilities cancel themselves for absolutely no reason when using them from cover, especially if they have a CD.

 

Casual players probably won't notice this issue, you're right there. But while I have no proof of this next comment, I would be willing to bet that most casual follow the non casual players.

 

IMO mmos survive off of subs. When server population starts getting low, the company starts offering free server transfers and closing down some servers due to population, more and more people lose interest. This is how a game dies.

 

Now this problem might not be big enough to actually kill the game. I myself noticed this problem within the first 5 minutes of playing, and voiced it numerous times to friends I was on skype with while playing. I cancled my sub before reading these forums and seeing others with the issue, telling myself I will play my free 30 days for story, but what captures me in terms of long term gameplay is the gameplay itself. I don't feel like I'm in complete control of my character.

 

I notice some people posting here saying maybe this is the way the game was meant to be. While I don't like it, I have considered maybe TOR didn't have optimal gameplay in mind, just the way I want it. This may be the case. My answer to that is, if this is the problem, then I'm asking them to change it, just for me. That may sound selfish, but this very lack of responsive controls is why I cancled my rift sub, my warhammer sub, and why my sub has been and still is going in wow.

 

It is a gamebreaker for me, maybe not for everyone.

Edited December 27, 2011 by mbernert

[Rhydler]

Absolutely agree with the OP. I'm having fun now, but this is an end game killing issue. At this point, there are literally millions of people that have played WoW at one point or another. To not be able to offer the same fluid play is a fatal flaw.

 

I don't recall if it was in a published interview or at Blizzcon, but one of the Blizzard's developers brought up this issue internally with their staff for one the Blizzard titles. In this case, the lag between an action and response was 3 frames. Not 0.5 seconds, or 0.3 seconds, but 3 FRAMES. That's the kind of attention to detail that Blizzard/WoW has for this type of issue.

 

It's one thing to have a game that isn't very good at PVP, because WoW PVP is pretty terrible and that obviously hasn't had an effect on the game's success. However, you can't have bad PVE as well. For those of you who have downed Heroic Alysrazor, or have DPSed Normal+ Ultraxion, you'll be accustomed to pushing the proper button maybe 0.2 seconds before the mob ability goes off, whether that's interrupting an add on Alysrazor or avoiding the instant death.

 

Now could you seriously imagine being able to do that reliably in this game for a 5-10 minute encounter? It'd be one thing if the interrupt locked out a school for much longer, but they're already timed for a fairly short duration (e.g. Sith Sorcerer's Jolt is a 4 second lockout with a cooldown of 12 seconds), which means a game designer will to assume that interruptions are fairly "cheap" and plentiful: Black Temple Reliquary of Souls anyone?

 

Now the end game design might not be nearly so demanding and exclusive as WoW's most storied fights such as C'thun, M'uru, Heroic Lich King and Heroic Ragnaros, but it's not really about how elite or demanding the encounter design is at this point. This is a basic and fundamental problem that affects all players, not just the select 1% high end raiders or pvpers.

 

I dearly hope that it's something that's fixable within in the client with a mega-patch, and not embedded so deeply that it's impossible to optimize. As it is, I'm definitely still logging into WoW and collecting my weekly loot.

 

Right now, Star Wars is the hot new girlfriend you won't leave your wife (WoW) for especially given past history.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Rhydler

[EATtheDEAD]

xcore, first off amazing post. your words were like butter!

 

second, i have experienced this issue myself and it drives me crazy. especially with skills like the warriors skill Ravage. I activate it and the damage is done the gcd has refreshed and im mashing my next attack but im still standing there doing an epic movement with my lightsaber while 3 troopers shoot my face off

 

i hope they do take your post to heart because it needs to be addressed. if bioware doesnt then they are idiots.

[Merkmerk]

See the problem with that, is that this game has been in dev for many a year. Hell, the first TRAILER goes back to 2009? Which means they must've been working on the game prior.

 

WoW was released in 2004.

 

I'll make it simple for you kiddies, SWTOR was released in 2011. 2011-2004 = 7 years. 7 years of the most technological advances we've seen in quite a gosh darn while... and they couldn't get a 2004 formula correct. Even RIFT had less issues than this when it came to combat. And that was released 9 months ago.

 

For you to say that this crap was built into the engine, not only further proves our point of BW's ******ness, but it also proves, that I will never buy another damned game of theirs again if they can't fix a simple timing issue.

 

You can take it however you want. Engines aren't easy to build, and they chose to license out an engine which personally I think is rather weak - especially in how well it performs.

 

SWTOR has some really awful performance considering the graphics, even on high, really aren't that great by modern standards...it should be running a lot smoother.

[Dark-Storm]

For me having waiting for some of the cool animations to complete before i can use another skill is'nt so bad what gets me though is that when for example i throw a grenade at some enemys to start combat theres about 0.5-1.0 secs where they attack me before i even hit them, it really breaks immersion when an enemy takes damage and attacks you before you actually hit them with anything. :S

 

(and i dont have any lag or graphic slow down)

[TheJmoney]

Hey guys, HEY GUYS. I just got a warning for being rude to other people on the forum from BW. Have they replied to this thread yet? Nope!

 

Good priorities guys!