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

[Shivetya]

Have to agree with the OP. This is one of my personal top five annoyances in this game. It too often feels as if my character is not doing what I told him to do. For a lot of people this does not matter, but for those who play well; sorry but many who never experience the issue are not playing at nine tenths or even at seven tenths; the responsiveness of the game is severely lacking.

 

They need to clip animations and do it soon. Failings acceptable in many CRPGs are not so in MMOs.

[Thoronwen]

Excellent post, rated it. Hope we get an official reply soon and it'll taken care of soon.

[bvalley]

I posted my frustrations on this issue yesterday, and I will every single day until either its fixed, or a rep from BW responds to this with reasoning behind it. I will try post constructively each time until then...

 

If I were to guess, I would have to say that this issue has come up within BW many times starting in development probably years ago, but someone with the ability to make a decision... decided the way combat flows needs to be the way it is today. If that guess is correct, then that person needs a wake up call!

 

You can not tell me that during early development, when each class only had lets say 2 - 3 skills that this issue did not come up in a daily or weekly meeting. It was decided at THAT point to continue as is I am sure. Why else in gods name would they at that point continue to pile more and more abilities onto a clunky combat system like this unless someone that actually makes decisions said to keep it that way, or said it was acceptable. There is no way it was not spotted early on in development.

 

Regardless of the development decision, the following is another example as to why I absolutely can't stand the current combat clunkiness. I play a BH powertech, and I cast Unleash, which is a 3 second channeled ability. (Please note that I started as a bodyguard mercenary until I had to heal in a flashpoint and saw how clunky the combat system was, and rolled my powertech instead)

 

Cast 1 - Channeled animation doesn't start until half way through the channel, however the damage is dealt as intended. To me, this alone is unacceptable, but lets move on.

 

Cast 2 - Channeled animation doesn't even kick off at all as the game decided my dodge animation was more important than the Unleash ability I just cast. However, damage was dealt as intended... I think. No combat log to find out for sure Just to make sure it cast, let me bash the keybind for Unleash 2 more times.

 

Cast 3 - I keypress the Unleash ability 3 times as usual to make sure it goes off, but it didn't cast this time. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until 5 seconds later since I have been programmed to think just because the animation doesn't show, it will still activate. However, my brain has moved onto other things in my rotation, so I have to go BACK in my rotation to cast Unleash. Un..Acceptable

 

I can't keep constant watch on a single spell cd just to make sure it activates... I end up finding myself key bashing every activation 2 - 3 times JUST to make sure it goes off. Coming from high end level rotations that rely on specific situations and dot timers, if my f'ing spell doesn't activate when I want it too, and my brain has already moved on, my rotation is completely f'd up. There is no way in swtor to have a clean rotation system for ANY class due to this issue.

 

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BW - Please note that I will cancel my subscription just after one month of release due to this.

[rydow]

This is severely ruining my time spent pvping.

 

Having not played an MMO for a good two years until SWTOR, first I thought I just had to "break myself in" again. But around level 30 I was seriously starting to doubt that it was actually me there was something wrong with.

 

I do hope this gets atleast a response from the Dev. It's so incredibly major I cannot believe it's still in the game. Responsiveness should be priority one, not animation.

[Avversoine]

/agree

[Anakiim]

I totally agree. On a sidenote: If you're having trouble understanding what this is, I think one of the best ways to see that this is really happening is to use your mount. As soon as the cast bar finishes, move forward or backwards. 90% of the time you will move for a second and then get dismounted. If you watch and wait for the mounting animation to finish and then move, you will remain mounted. Now just imagine this happening while using a casted skill instead of doing something as insignificant as mounting. Edited December 27, 2011 by Anakiim

[ihateyouall]

Needs to be fixed in the upcoming patch, or sooner if possible !!

[Celleye]

I've been thinking the same thing since I started this game. It doesn't have the smooth combat as WoW has. The reason I quit most MMOs are because of the clunky combat. I love SWTOR but it seriousyl needs to fix this asap. Skills before animations not the other way around.

 

The most annoyign thing is mounting my god is it horrible.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Celleye

[myrmexaw]

/signed this is especially noticable if you are a healer or a tank ... my taunt sometime is delayed upward of 1.5 second because i am in the middle of a dodge/parry animation....It's all great and dandy for leveling but when mob will start one shotting people on nightmare i'm not too sure people won't mind the delay.

[Palanor]

I'm a little confused and not trying to come off as an ***. I haven't played any PvP yet, it's not really my thing, but the OP has made me want to try it out to see if I can discern the issue.

 

All players have the same issue so it's not a really a balance issue. Is the issue that you can't react fast enough? Guess I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the core concern.

[Reefus]

I agree, so many times I go for an interrupt that I know I should have hit and for some reason I'm stuck in limbo and can't cast something that has no global cooldown timer and should be immediate. Just from playing wow so much recently and using the interrupt there, I know what the timing should be and it's just off here. Very annoying.

[Kiry]

Isn't there an option in the preferences on the queing delay? I thought by turning it down that fixed this issue for a lot of people?

[Celleye]

I'm a little confused and not trying to come off as an ***. I haven't played any PvP yet, it's not really my thing, but the OP has made me want to try it out to see if I can discern the issue.

 

All players have the same issue so it's not a really a balance issue. Is the issue that you can't react fast enough? Guess I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the core concern.

 

Actually it becomes a balance issue when the animations are different and varied in length. It's basically that animations go before your skills and not the other way around making the combat clunky and unresponsive.

[Celleye]

Isn't there an option in the preferences on the queing delay? I thought by turning it down that fixed this issue for a lot of people?

 

It's not about queuing delay it's about the unresponsive combat and that animations are higher priority than skills.

[mrache]

just more wow e-peen pvp kiddie crap. If its random,its a bug. If it is constant with all players its a feature.

[The_Swan]

Op, thx for bringing the subject to light.

I would love an official response.

[Moriam]

I have to agree that this is a major problem for this game if this problem goes unnoticed. I came from playing arena in WoW pretty heavily (gotten 2.2k in 2 seasons as a resto shaman). WoW does get the character animations/responsiveness really well. I like SWTOR, but if this is not fixed I am going to move on.

 

After the pve story what will there be to do? The conversations/story will become stale. At the core, this game needs to have good solid gameplay.

 

I am not a programmer so I am not quite sure how WoW does this so fluidly, but could it perhaps all of the WoW races have only two cast animations? I am sure this makes it much easier.

[spherearrow]

Agree with the OP

[Hnng]

Great post OP

 

After 5+ years of playing WoW (and somewhat high rated arena, though that doesn't matter), I noticed the problem after killing my first enemy NPC. I really like the story and such, but just like anyone else who realizes this problem, I don't see myself playing for long.

 

Only thing that could keep me playing (beside actually fixing the responsiveness) are my few friends who are playing as well, though they're experienced WoW arena players too. So if they're gone, I'm gone.

[Hnng]

Double post because I can't add thread rating through edit

 

Back to reading through the thread! Just had to add a reply.

[SpeeDeh]

I don't have this issue at all, ever. I have played Warhammer and WoW, so I am familiar with the issue you speak of.

 

However, I was telling my guild mates how I actually enjoy the casting system they use here. Certain skills break a chain, like interrupts. This is a genius feature and I don't know why other games don't do this. I have never understood why a time sensitive skill would queue like ordinary nukes. Thank you Bioware for realising this

 

Just so you are aware, the queue delay is the delay you have before the current skill ends, not the delay to cast another skill starting from the beginning. It works flawlessly. Always has.

 

Some skills have different cooldowns, but all are affected by global.

 

Again, I am familiar with the issue, but have never once experienced it in SW:TOR.

[StupacGT]

I played WOW on and off for about 4 years. A friend linked me up with this game and after reading I became hooked. I did a few beta weekends but I was more caught up in the scenary and story than game play.

 

But now after hitting 50 and doing pretty much all PVP, I too have noticed the issue brought up here.

 

I will say that character interaction in this game is like a slow waltz. Because of the inherit delays, you have to choreograph all of your moves to create a sense of smooth gameplay. To be honest I kinda like this when doing 1-on-1 battles. But in group PVP it can try your patience. It's does feel like the game is slowed down though.

 

The one thing I take into account is that all characters have the same handicap. Even with instantaneous response, if you have 4 people attacking you, you're pretty much a goner without some other support. You ultimately still have to have faith in your rotations and see where the numbers land.

 

It defintely does have a different feel and you have to take a slightly different approach to it than WOW. If that is intended by the developers to help "disconnect" them from direct comparisons or if its a bandaid to temporaily solve an inherent problem in the code, we won't know until they say something up front.

 

It doesn't make me hate the game to the point of unsubscribing, but I can see how others can get easily annoyed. Especially people who are probably still playing WOW and this game.

[FalconDroid]

Excellent post, as a former (and current) WoW player, you realize control is key in any MMO. If it feels like you're merely watching your character go through pre-queued motions, then there's something wrong with the system. An example of a game with this crippling issue would be FFXIV. Great premise, amazing graphics... and piss-poor controls. While the delay is less in TOR, you still get that disjointed feeling whenever you hit an ability.

 

Speaking of FFXIV, I've recently resubscribed (I have plenty of disposable income... 3 MMO subscriptions doesn't break the bank hehe) due to the fact that their new team has probably been the most humble, transparent, and hard working group of folks in the MMO business. They've openly admitted to problems, shared future design ideas, and maintain an active presence on their forums. The head designer, Naoki Yoshida is probably the hardest working man in the MMO industry, mainly because he makes frequent forum posts as well as interviews with industry outlets (blogs, magazines etc) to constantly give and take feedback from the community. BioWare could learn a lot from their example. Hopefully ToR doesn't become a train wreck that FFXIV originally was hehe... but if they can handle issues with SE-like opacity, it means great things for this game.

 

Sadly, I've never seen BioWare show that kind of humility, at least not with prior games. If Bioware can address these launch concerns, they'll keep getting 15 bucks a month from me. My money tends to go with companies that understand the gamer mentality and create games that they themselves want to play.

 

As a fellow FFXIV player I salute you!

[Kesal]

Very good post, as a sniper focused on PvP, I find the delays unbearable. There is no way i can get the true measure of warzones with these issues.

[Springdancer]

This is just the reason I had to go back to WoW after trying virtually every free or paid mmo. To this day nothing has the responsiveness 'real-timeness' of W.o.W.

Heigan's dancefloor or interrupting Lord Jaraxxus - some loved and some hated those; I'm not saying we need something like that here, but basic control over the actions of our toon - that's what we need.

Still not there.