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

[Scelerant]

To be fair on those defending the issue I think it@s more a case of misunderstanding *** we are actually talking about they keep coming out with things like adapt your playstyle it isn't wow the combat is different you have to chain abilities together blah blah blah.

 

YES WE KNOW THAT..

 

Now listen to what WE are saying, the GCD and the Castbar do not match the Animations making combat feel slightly off and giving an unresponsive "Feel" to the game.

 

Not to mention that off-gcd abilities will sometimes not fire at all during the animation of another ability. If I had a euro for every time my interrupt was botched by this I'd have enough to find something else to do with my ample freaking time.

[Paganini]

Then either one of two things happened;

 

1) He had a lag spike

2) It bugged.

 

Either way, it'll be fixed. The game JUST came out.

 

 

So we don't have a right to complain about a key game feature that is currently broken because it might get fixed some time down the road? Bioware hasn't even commented on the issue yet.

[Olzmo]

ancient EQ had it right a decade ago, basically the 1st MMORPG of its kind. WoW is not alone at all, I could care less about WoW.

 

So if the first MMORPG got combat responsiveness down, why can't anyone?

I see a connection. The first one sets the bias for any future releases. In whichever way its combat system works, it's the only correct way.

 

 

Just kidding. Hope this is not a too serious matter to joke about.

 

[SnakeBites]

LOL.

 

So now pressing buttons quickly is eating up my bandwidth? You guys are too much.

 

The sad part is, i think Mace is actually serious & not trolling.

[Zakumene]

Wow, Bioware fanboys will really rationalize anything.

 

So now you've moved on from saying it's a client-side issue and are now saying we should just not get an entire stat (which is unavoidable if you get epic pvp and raid gear).

 

Yea, that seems like working as intended to me too. <--- (Note, this is sarcasm)

 

It's a client-side issue, and alacrity being an undesirable stat in my eyes has nothing to do with my claiming that your computer is the problem here.

 

Name ONE healing ability that has this problem?

[Devolution]

Then either one of two things happened;

 

1) He had a lag spike

2) It bugged.

 

Either way, it'll be fixed. The game JUST came out.

 

It was me playing, and this issues only occurs with Riposte and Master Strike, plus my latency bars remained at 4, so I don't think it was a lag issue. I will agree with you that it is a bug and should be fixed, which is the sole reason I made the video, to help show a problem to the people that can fix it.

[Xzenorath]

So we don't have a right to complain about a key game feature that is currently broken because it might get fixed some time down the road? Bioware hasn't even commented on the issue yet.

 

From the official patch notes:

 

Combat Bug Fixes

 

Fixed a bug that could cause the global cooldown to display incorrectly in the UI.

 

 

So you're saying they're not aware of the issue?

Or that you enjoy repeating the same thing over and over in the same thread with people who agree with you and threaten to leave because their button mashing doesn't always work 100% of the time in a game that came out 8 days ago?

 

Please enlighten me.

[Yaky]

Although I do agree with the OP, to all the doomsayers, and whiners I want to let you know how utterly ridiculous you are.

 

Compared to WoW, the only game about as buggy at release was Warhammer (I didn't try AoC so wouldn't know), and that wasn't as bad WoW. I remember about every 30-1hr my character would randomly die. Just walking, and died. How? Apparently there is a portal in certain areas in the Barrens that take you through the center of Azeroth and then you die in Azshara. Try doing an AV and being cc'd for the whole duration. But my favorite, was getting 1 shot by green-yellow non elite mobs. There was so much lag at peak hours on my server that I would wait 2 seconds to even see my cast appear.

 

^ Not everyone had all these bugs, but I know quite a few did including me. If that was in SWTOR today, people would be gone. You guys can complain about anything, but the truth is this is a good game. Does it have all the content you want? No. It has all the content you need to enjoy a game though. If you want to be spoiled, then support them!

 

Because even though you want everything, the truth is no MMO in the future or now, will have your list of demands on release. The people who invest their money don't look at it like that. After the game is out, if people will stick around and support them instead of crying, then you will get the things you want. Slowly but they will come out.

[Fireline]

The sad part is, i think Mace is actually serious & not trolling.

 

 

My mind is blown.

[Shellshock]

No it's not, go back to it. Look JUST before 0:13. He uses the skill next to it then MASHES the next one, as soon as the previous GCD finished, then it fires off.

 

You're confusing things. The only reason why you noticed is because the entire interface doesn't spin in a GCD animation like WOW does.

 

But Riposte (the one he mashes at 0:13) if off the GCD, you shouldn't have to wait for the GCD on the last ability to complete before it fires off. I had this exact thing happen to me in a flashpoint 5 mins ago, I had to read the tooltip again to make sure I understood it right, but yeah GCD should have no effect on it.

[Fireline]

Although I do agree with the OP, to all the doomsayers, and whiners I want to let you know how utterly ridiculous you are.

 

Compared to WoW, the only game about as buggy at release was Warhammer (I didn't try AoC so wouldn't know), and that wasn't as bad WoW. I remember about every 30-1hr my character would randomly die. Just walking, and died. How? Apparently there is a portal in certain areas in the Barrens that take you through the center of Azeroth and then you die in Azshara. Try doing an AV and being cc'd for the whole duration. But my favorite, was getting 1 shot by green-yellow non elite mobs. There was so much lag at peak hours on my server that I would wait 2 seconds to even see my cast appear.

 

^ Not everyone had all these bugs, but I know quite a few did including me. If that was in SWTOR today, people would be gone. You guys can complain about anything, but the truth is this is a good game. Does it have all the content you want? No. It has all the content you need to enjoy a game though. If you want to be spoiled, then support them!

 

Because even though you want everything, the truth is no MMO in the future or now, will have your list of demands on release. The people who invest their money don't look at it like that. After the game is out, if people will stick around and support them instead of crying, then you will get the things you want. Slowly but they will come out.

 

 

 

SWTOR is competing with WoW today, not in 2004, should I just unsub and come back in 7 years?

[lenonk]

First of all, I'd like to say that I appreciate the constructive manner in which the OP was written. You, sir, are a credit to the internet. If more posts were worded that way, perhaps we'd be able to get more developers to pay attention.

 

Secondly, a little background about myself. I fall somewhere between casual and hardcore on the gamer scale. I played WoW since just after BC was released, I had 10 or 12 85s, and I raided up through ICC, though I never cared much for PvP. I'm a software developer, so I have a pretty good idea of all the variables at work here.

 

I originally experienced all of the issues detailed in the videos attached to the OP. The Force Lightning animation would often not start until the channel was half completed, and wouldn't finish until well after the casting bar was done. As a result, I couldn't cast anything else until the Force Lightning animation was done, resulting in my standing there with my thumb up my *** for as long as 1.5 seconds. This means that I often was only able to get one Lightning Bolt off in between Force Lightning casts, which, of course, seriously crippled my DPS. And all of that says nothing about trying to keep Force Lightning on cooldown while using other skills such as heals, stuns, shields, or DoTs.

 

Now, that being said, the machine that I experienced these issues on was a laptop running a Core2 Duo T7500, with 6GB of ram, and a Geforce 8800 GTX. It's a bit dated, though in my opinion it should be able to handle SW:TOR easily on the lowest settings. It did run between 30 and 40 FPS in all but the most crowded areas.

 

Still, I decided to give myself a new laptop for Christmas, so I ordered a Sager NP8170 with an i7 2670QM, 8GB of DDR3/1333, and an AMD Radeon HD 6990M. Here's the part you don't want to hear, the problems went away. The UI lag, the looting lag, the animations being out of sync, all of it. I have not yet tried to recreate the video with the smuggler using Charged Burst and throwing the grenade, but I will definitely try it and see what happens.

 

I'm not saying that a bug doesn't exist, or that any of your concerns are invalid, I'm just sharing my experience. I think a number conclusions can be drawn, some or all of which may be incorrect:

 

1) Hardware definitely does affect the issue, even if it simply exacerbates it.

2) For at least some people, the entirety of the problem is insufficient hardware.

3) SW:TOR definitely DOES have a problem in that it refuses to clip animations when needed.

4) Perhaps it's a problem with SW:TOR and the Nvidia drivers?

5) Some people experience the issue, some don't. This indicates that it's not a core code problem, but rather potentially a hardware interface issue or perhaps some inefficiency.

 

At any rate, that's my two cents on this issue, for what it's worth.

 

Good luck, and be sure to give them a chance to solve it. If it's as big of an issue as you think it is, I'm sure Bioware won't take it lightly.

[Khoranth]

No, so many commands flooding the game will only cause you to lag even more, and if you have a faulty connection compounded with a temporary unresponsive game due to receiving too many commands at once, you are only hurting yourself.

 

I disagree, I don't even need the icon nor have I even paid it much attention. All I've done is wait for either my enemy to make the slightest movement which signals the stun is wearing off or close to wearing off, or I instinctively know due to the fact that all CC moves have the same amount of stun time, which is generally about 3-5 secs unless explicitly stated otherwise. Either way, I mash spacebar and jump back after a few seconds to create space and use Force Wave for good measure.

 

Either way, for me, it is more instinct and picking up on little subtle things. It just takes some time and getting used to.

 

Why would your enemy moving indicate a stun wore off you? You are obviously not following the conversation or dodguing the qeustion.

 

And why is it ok for you to mash buttons but if anyone else does it is exploiting?

 

This is ridiculous.

[Zakumene]

Alacrity might not be beneficial for all classes, but under the current system it's beneficial for none, you still didn't answer the question, in fact if anything you agreed with me. It serves 0 purpose.

 

I'm sure that's exactly what bioware intended

 

The fact that I don't want alacrity AT ALL makes your question moot. Clearly alacrity benefits spells with longer cast times and shorter animations if your claims are true.

 

In the worst scenario, if everyone has this problem, everything is equal and everyone has the same advantages/disadvantages. But not everyone has this problem. So troubleshoot your side before you cry bloody murder.

 

 

Lastly, game has been out how long now? If this is an issue for some players it will get fixed. I mean its not like ignite munching in WoW, we would fix that right? oh wait, still broken.

[Xzenorath]

It was me playing, and this issues only occurs with Riposte and Master Strike, plus my latency bars remained at 4, so I don't think it was a lag issue. I will agree with you that it is a bug and should be fixed, which is the sole reason I made the video, to help show a problem to the people that can fix it.

 

Yeah I'm playing my JK every other day and sometimes, some of my skills don't fire off.

Same **** happens on my trooper, and my consular.

 

I also understand that the game just came out and these kinds of hiccups and bugs are common things in all MMO's just released.

 

It'll be fixed, making a 6000 page long thread about it won't make it happen faster.

 

 

It's not game breaking, it sucks, sure, but I know it'll be fixed and the only reason I bothered to join the discussion was to try and make some people realize that this kind of issues gets fixed, and usually fairly quickly when an MMO comes out. They're dealing with numbers of people online that they've never had until 8 days ago.

 

If you people don't realize that some of the issues you're encountering comes from latency, some comes from random lag spikes, some come from hardware hiccups, and some are just plain ol bugs that WILL be fixed.

[mimasis]

Although I do agree with the OP, to all the doomsayers, and whiners I want to let you know how utterly ridiculous you are.

 

Compared to WoW, the only game about as buggy at release was Warhammer (I didn't try AoC so wouldn't know), and that wasn't as bad WoW. I remember about every 30-1hr my character would randomly die. Just walking, and died. How? Apparently there is a portal in certain areas in the Barrens that take you through the center of Azeroth and then you die in Azshara. Try doing an AV and being cc'd for the whole duration. But my favorite, was getting 1 shot by green-yellow non elite mobs. There was so much lag at peak hours on my server that I would wait 2 seconds to even see my cast appear.

 

^ Not everyone had all these bugs, but I know quite a few did including me. If that was in SWTOR today, people would be gone. You guys can complain about anything, but the truth is this is a good game. Does it have all the content you want? No. It has all the content you need to enjoy a game though. If you want to be spoiled, then support them!

 

Because even though you want everything, the truth is no MMO in the future or now, will have your list of demands on release. The people who invest their money don't look at it like that. After the game is out, if people will stick around and support them instead of crying, then you will get the things you want. Slowly but they will come out.

 

You are so right.

[MaceTowani]

LOL.

 

So now pressing buttons quickly is eating up my bandwidth? You guys are too much.

 

Game mechanics. Sorry that this isn't WoW.

[Paganini]

It's a client-side issue, and alacrity being an undesirable stat in my eyes has nothing to do with my claiming that your computer is the problem here.

 

Name ONE healing ability that has this problem?

 

 

I don't play a healer so I couldn't give you one of those.

 

I play a Shadow and here are some of the issues I run into:

 

 

My instant cast interrupt off the GCD has about a .5-1.5 second delay when I'm in the middle of a Clairovoyant strike or other saber animation. This is game-breaking by itself.

 

Deflection has a looong animation that often has trouble firing up. I usually have to precast this by at least 3 seconds, 5 to be extra safe. Comical.

 

Often times Clairovoyant strike will cast twice when I only want it to hit once.

 

Resilience and Force of Will both usually work, but about 20% of the time they have a 1-3 second delay.

 

Shadow Strike (Backstab) is nearly unusable in warzones due to the constant warping, clipping and server-side packet loss. This is another issue though so I'll leave it there.

[Xzenorath]

SWTOR is competing with WoW today, not in 2004, should I just unsub and come back in 7 years?

 

Yes, if you expect the game to run as smoothly as a game that's been out 7 years. If you don't understand this, then I feel sorry for you.

 

Get to grips with the fact that an MMO that just launches will have bugs and issues and not everything will be smooth.

 

The sooner you do so, the sooner you'll be able to enjoy the rest of the game.

[Zakumene]

I agree with the OP about how WOW had an amazing feel and responsiveness to combat.

 

I know dude, the way you could ride your mount in large circles in Org after you locked yourself to every dungeon was so amazing and responsive.

[Ibuki]

This ability delay kills the whole fun out of SWTOR. I waited years for this game to come out and I'm frustrated as hell since it is impossible to play SWTOR in a competitive way. Voice acting and story telling is no use when the gameplay sucks.

 

Please BioWare, fix this as soon as possible! This ist an extremely critical issue!

[bvalley]

It's not clunky, it's how the combat works. It's slower and well done. Sure it has hiccups here and there right now with some skills not firing off properly, but for the most part the combat doesn't feel chaotic, frantic button mashing like WOW does.

 

I don't understand why you guys want to go back to button mashing and spinning for 80% of your abilities like WOW. Seriously, have you played a dwarf warrior? Sunder armor, MS, HS, Cleave, EVERYTHING makes your dwarf spin around. It looks retarded, clunky and it sucks. You guys keep saying you don't want to go back but everything you're praising goes back to the horrible graphics and fights in WOW. **** the animations, just make the numbers appears when I button mash.

 

Zzzzz...

 

The sad part is I know this will be fixed eventually, yet some of you are threatening to leave a couple days after the game came out. Unbelievable

 

I can actually fight with my JK and not bother staring at the GCD on my entire bars as I button mash like I had to on my warrior, blows my mind that some of you want to go back to that. Hit 1, animation gets done, hit 2. I don't know why anyone would ever wanna go back to mash 1, mash 2 while the GCD spins on your entire bar, mash 3, rinse repeat. It's horrid, looked like *** and it wasn't fun. The combat as it is right now is great and it LOOKS 600 million times better than WOW's combat ever did. Whatever delay is causing you to have these fits right now WILL be fixed. Every single MMO I've ever played fixed it.

 

You and your RP server cronies that agree with this can go back to holding one another anytime now. Thousands of people have voiced there frustration with this issue, and only a few RP'ers have found there way in here and enjoy the unresponsive, slower than molasses combat. Please go play a platformer and enjoy the nice slow gameplay, but please don't ever join my pvp server.

[Paganini]

The fact that I don't want alacrity AT ALL makes your question moot. Clearly alacrity benefits spells with longer cast times and shorter animations if your claims are true.

 

In the worst scenario, if everyone has this problem, everything is equal and everyone has the same advantages/disadvantages. But not everyone has this problem. So troubleshoot your side before you cry bloody murder.

 

 

Lastly, game has been out how long now? If this is an issue for some players it will get fixed. I mean its not like ignite munching in WoW, we would fix that right? oh wait, still broken.

 

 

Epic PvP gear for healers comes with Alacrity. They have to use it.

 

Most AAA MMOs have responsive combat on launch day.

 

All I'm asking for is my abilities to respond to my key presses, I don't really think I'm being unreasonable.

[Xzenorath]

I know dude, the way you could ride your mount in large circles in Org after you locked yourself to every dungeon was so amazing and responsive.

 

LOL

 

+1

 

Good god am I glad to be done with that game

[Paganini]

Yes, if you expect the game to run as smoothly as a game that's been out 7 years. If you don't understand this, then I feel sorry for you.

 

Get to grips with the fact that an MMO that just launches will have bugs and issues and not everything will be smooth.

 

The sooner you do so, the sooner you'll be able to enjoy the rest of the game.

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

WOW WAS SMOOTH AND RESPONSIVE DAY 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm sorry for the spam but I really am sc****** the bottom of the barrel for a way to communicate with some of the people on this forum.