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

[HoneyBoy]

.5 sec? oh The HUMANITY! How dare bioware release a game in which you can't buttonmash your way to the top, hide your women and children lest they fait at the horrible sight waiting .5 sec.

 

as mace said ADAPT, dont play like WoW, this isn't wow so dont expect it to be like WoW.

buttonmashing wont get you anywhere so suck it up for now, maybe they'll "fix" it later but I, for one, have never had any problems with it, maybe because im not smashing the keyboard buttons in a fit of rage.

 

Do you not understand the concept of a global cooldown? Whether or not this system was changed or left in its current state we wouldn't be able to button mash and have abilities fire off instantly.

[Xzenorath]

the swtor unresponsive combat feels exactly like warhammer, you think that is a coincidence?

 

HELL no. Not even close, good god, what are you people smoking. Perhaps your computer is garbage because at 100FPS, it plays pretty smooth and isn't anywhere close to warhammer. Warhammer was so bad, it actually made me quit. Don't even try comparing the two, you're delusional if you believe this to be true. Unreal

[Elog]

the swtor unresponsive combat feels exactly like warhammer, you think that is a coincidence?

 

You need to chill. WAR has actually really responsive combat nowdays. Personally prior to SWtoR I played WoW for PVE and WAR for PvP. WARs PvP reigns supreme right now - but the two first years of a bad client killed the game when it comes to the population.

 

Now - you have said the same thing over and over like a record on repeat. Most people agree with you that the UI, animations and click (press up or press down) needs to improve for SWtoR.

 

But why are you so hateful?

[Liquid_Drano]

Just bumping. This 100% needs to be addressed. Screw the "it doesn't have to be a copy of WoW" argument. When we press a button, the reason for pressing said button should be executed, plain and simple. Someone early on was right; when the luster and excitement of a new game wears off, this will start to really affect people.

 

In response to those who say we will get used to it, someone else before used the example "people don't get used to being *****." Although that is a harsh and just plain weird example, I agree that people won't simply get used to it. It's something that requires attention. Sorry to the developers if they thought it was a good idea, but it's a serious problem. Knibb High football rules.

[Xzenorath]

What is the point of a GCD if it's not accurate? What is the point of castbars if there is a hidden delay independent of both the cast time and global cooldown? What is the point of the stat "ALACRITY"?

 

Load up the game, mount your speeder and try moving forward as soon as the cast bar (you know that thing that tells you when a spell is finished?) is done, see what happens...

 

Works just fine most of the time, then sometimes I'll hit a lag spike and dismount.

[MaceTowani]

It has nothing to do with button mashing at all.

How about you get a clue on the subject before you spout utter drivel.

 

So ignore the advice of someone who DOESN'T have your problem?

 

Smart.

[myrmexaw]

We have this wicked long thread with a lot of peeps arguing...I think its easy to figure out what needs to be done for those that are REALLY feeling the effects of it and it doesnt involve changing the combat system to an exact clone of WOW's...There is no need to attack or defend the combat system itself

 

1. Fix the sync of cast time, animations, and make sure it ends on time with the GCD

 

2. Fix the U.I so it responds perfectly when you hit the button

 

And thats that...If that means speeding up animations a .5 or full second so they end perfectly, then so be it...The U.I is definitely a different scenario but is obviously bugged the hell out for most of you

 

Some of us experience no response occasionally but even I have experienced that in WOW from time to time

 

 

That's the thing tough .. they cannot simply shorten the animation ... Imagine for a second high end game you end up with +250 alacrity rating giving you a whooping .15 second less on your casting but alas you are stuck waiting for an animation even tough you invested many point of gear into making it feel shorter...If the skill are driven by the animation then no matter how good your gear will be that lvl 1 skill that takes 1.5 second will always take 1.5 second.

[HoneyBoy]

I love people who think that this isn't a crippling technical issue but a matter of changing your approach to the game, ie not button mashing, anticipating more, etc.

 

When you press a button, your ability fires later than it should, or not at all, and this creates an overall gameplay that is objectively less fluid than other popular MMOs of similar size and aspiration. These are facts. Disputing them means you either:

 

A. Do not have extensive experience with other AAA MMOs, namely WOW, which has the most fluid gameplay in the genre

 

And/or

 

B. Are blindly defending the game because you enjoy it.

 

 

TOR is not WOW, it is its own game. The thousands of People who are here posting WANT this game to succeed on its own terms, otherwise why bother posting at all? But TOR will absolutely be relegated to a second class MMO if they can't improve the most basic and fundamental functionality of the game.

 

 

One of the better posts in this thread. Fluid combat is a great thing, I don't understand how people can claim a problem does not exist whatsoever while at the same time typing out how they "adapted" to said problem that they claim did not exist. If the combat system was truly meant to be like this then please adjust the UI or GCD to lock me out of my action bar if I can't use a move because I'm waiting for a previous animation to finish. I can't constantly be watching my player in a full operation or warzone for every individual animation.

 

The value of the stat Alacrity is also greatly diminished under the current system if there will always be static animations to adhere to.

[LaurentiusX]

It has nothing to do with button mashing at all.

How about you get a clue on the subject before you spout utter drivel.

 

Im a jedi shadow, my main attack is shadowstrike which means I have to get behind a target then use it, now if I press the button 100 times in a row the attack wont go of, press it ONCE and it goes of beautifully, then again and then again. I suggest you learn to play the game.

 

EDIT: It's all about RYTHM! which means you actually have to learn how to play as opposed to spamming attacks out of the blue.

Edited December 28, 2011 by LaurentiusX

[Nikita_Kilemal]

Forgot the wow comparing, now that its F2P I'd invite anyone to go load up a city of heroes account for just a week, and compare it's combat to TOR's at the moment.

 

speaking as a 60+ month vet who played it on and off since beta (just to get the measuring tape out =p ) It's combat is about as smooth and fluid as they come. Even on my old machine which could barely run the lowest graphics settings. This meant I couldn't do the huge raids (total screen lock but that was my hardware to blame) But on normal missions Combat was fast, it was solid but most important it was spot on .1 sec responsive. you hit a button and you attacked, period. You could watch your long animation go, but already have the next ability highlighted and pre queued to insta fire the second it was ready and the previous animation finished. Minus the wow slappy hands as earlier posts put it. No animation cut offs and everything looked beautiful. That and you had the ability to queue up an attack and have it fire the second you were in range, why does TOR lack this is a side question I'd like answered.

 

I'm fully in support of the OP on this one, and it's a dealbreaker for me as well, if they can't fix the combat clunkyness I won't be playing after the initial 3 months chance I give every MMO is done with. Launch bugs my you know what, there's no excuse for the animations to not be syncing both with the queue system, the gcd, and their "cinematic" combat all making a muckity muck of things. Either get it right or be ready to lose subs. I'm sick of sitting here waiting nearly a second between hitting my bloody normal attack and finally watching it fire. Or hitting a button to see nothing happen.

[MaceTowani]

That's the thing tough .. they cannot simply shorten the animation ... Imagine for a second high end game you end up with +250 alacrity rating giving you a whooping .15 second less on your casting but alas you are stuck waiting for an animation even tough you invested many point of gear into making it feel shorter...If the skill are driven by the animation then no matter how good your gear will be that lvl 1 skill that takes 1.5 second will always take 1.5 second.

 

It's not the animation, it's the INTERRUPTION/PROLONGING of the animation due to your character being under stress. Nothing is wrong with the animations, but getting pummeled and expecting your abilities to insta-cast is NOT the way to go in this game.

[SnakeBites]

So ignore the advice of someone who DOESN'T have your problem?

 

Smart.

 

It's not advice, because "button-mashing" isn't what is causing the problem.

It's the same people who are saying "Get a better GPU", "You're lagging" - it's not advice at all, they clearly haven't got a clue what the main issue is.

[AkAseo]

Spamming is exploiting. There's no two ways around it.

 

But more importantly, you have to learn to anticipate and think several moves ahead. Learn to use strategy and planning and learn to rework your plans when new situations arise.

 

This takes time and practice, NOBODY has a COMPLETE understanding of the combat system despite what they may tell you, we can only learn as we go and THIS is what I've learned.

 

Mate you spout more drivel than a thousand slabbering camels.

 

I'm glad you can predict the future and learn to react to an opponents next move before he has cast it, but for us non-psychics it is frustrating accept it and move on.

[kongzi]

Do you know what spamming is or do I have to explain it to you?

 

Spamming is bad.

 

Chaining Attacks Properly (you know, when the animation is actually finished and you're not trying to rapidly press the button over and over like a kid on ADD) is good.

 

So how is spamming bad and waiting good? Explain please.

[fallenvirtues]

That's the thing tough .. they cannot simply shorten the animation ... Imagine for a second high end game you end up with +250 alacrity rating giving you a whooping .15 second less on your casting but alas you are stuck waiting for an animation even tough you invested many point of gear into making it feel shorter...If the skill are driven by the animation then no matter how good your gear will be that lvl 1 skill that takes 1.5 second will always take 1.5 second.

 

I'm not suggesting to cut the animation but to speed it up so correspond with the casting time...If you have a stat increase that makes attacks happen faster, then you should visually be attacking faster...

 

Dont clip or cut anything, just go into the code for every attack and speed up the animation to where it times up perfectly with the cast time

[Uldalas]

That's the thing tough .. they cannot simply shorten the animation ... Imagine for a second high end game you end up with +250 alacrity rating giving you a whooping .15 second less on your casting but alas you are stuck waiting for an animation even tough you invested many point of gear into making it feel shorter...If the skill are driven by the animation then no matter how good your gear will be that lvl 1 skill that takes 1.5 second will always take 1.5 second.

 

Good point! I didnt even think about alacrity when i tried to explain earlier!

[Elog]

That's the thing tough .. they cannot simply shorten the animation ... Imagine for a second high end game you end up with +250 alacrity rating giving you a whooping .15 second less on your casting but alas you are stuck waiting for an animation even tough you invested many point of gear into making it feel shorter...If the skill are driven by the animation then no matter how good your gear will be that lvl 1 skill that takes 1.5 second will always take 1.5 second.

 

I think the easier explanation is that a) animations are slightly out of synch now and hence a bug that needs fixing, and b) that the UI/cast bar is not synched with the server so the animation is the true cast time while the cast bar is out of whack.

[Xzenorath]

I love people who think that this isn't a crippling technical issue but a matter of changing your approach to the game, ie not button mashing, anticipating more, etc.

 

When you press a button, your ability fires later than it should, or not at all, and this creates an overall gameplay that is objectively less fluid than other popular MMOs of similar size and aspiration. These are facts. Disputing them means you either:

 

A. Do not have extensive experience with other AAA MMOs, namely WOW, which has the most fluid gameplay in the genre

 

And/or

 

B. Are blindly defending the game because you enjoy it.

 

 

TOR is not WOW, it is its own game. The thousands of People who are here posting WANT this game to succeed on its own terms, otherwise why bother posting at all? But TOR will absolutely be relegated to a second class MMO if they can't improve the most basic and fundamental functionality of the game.

 

 

So I've been playing up to 31 without encountering any major issues with my delays, and this makes me inexperienced or blind? Seriously?

 

There isn't thousands of people here, there's a couple dozens arguing with another dozen.

 

I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'm far from agreeing with you guys on it being game breaking and horrible at the moment. There's far more important bugs that needs fixing and features that need to be added rather than providing slightly smoother animations and combat responsiveness to the button mashers.

 

Sure, it needs to be tuned and made smoother, but it's far from being game breaking. If that's all it takes to make you quit a game, then I can't say I'll miss most of you.

[PanzerKing]

Character responsiveness is nowhere near what you get from WoW. I firmly believe that this should be the dev's foremost priority going forward. The animations look beautiful, but they should always come second to smooth, responsive gameplay.

[knightblaster]

I've noticed this quite a few times as well. It definitely needs to be addressed, because it's noticeable and has an impact when you are in a marginal situation like a FP or PvP.

[Uldalas]

I'm not suggesting to cut the animation but to speed it up so correspond with the casting time...If you have a stat increase that makes attacks happen faster, then you should visually be attacking faster...

 

Dont clip or cut anything, just go into the code for every attack and speed up the animation to where it times up perfectly with the cast time

 

Im not a game designer but i think this is easier said then done. The casttimes have a fixed duration and cant just be throttled on the fly.

 

Not entirely sure about this who.

[Khoranth]

You need to chill. WAR has actually really responsive combat nowdays. Personally prior to SWtoR I played WoW for PVE and WAR for PvP. WARs PvP reigns supreme right now - but the two first years of a bad client killed the game when it comes to the population.

 

Now - you have said the same thing over and over like a record on repeat. Most people agree with you that the UI, animations and click (press up or press down) needs to improve for SWtoR.

 

But why are you so hateful?

 

gee why would i be hateful? after waiting for over a year and listening to mythic hype warhammer only tog et a steaming pile of crap.

 

And now, after waiting YEARS for swtor, we get combat that is similiarly unresponsive, just like warhammer.

 

And you are telling me this is a coincidence?

[xivik]

After thinking about this some more I was wondering if the input delay and the too long animations arent part of the same problem.

 

I mean, you press a ability, 0.5 seconds later the animations actually starts to play. GCD/Castbar ends on the UI however the server didnt start the animation until ~0.5 seconds after the castbar started.

 

00:00:00 - You press ability A

00:00:01 - UI starts castbar.

00:00:50 - server start animation

00:02:01 - UI shows castbar as complete

00:02:05 - you press another skill but it doesn't respond, character is still playing animation.

00:02:50 - Character animation ends. You can start a new spell, 0.5 seconds after the castbar ended on your UI.

 

Thus animation length is exactly accurate however due to input delay it continues after the UI shows it's done because it started later then you pressed the button.

 

 

Hope it's clear what I mean, it's probably not the reason, it could be though.

[Zakumene]

We have this wicked long thread with a lot of peeps arguing...I think its easy to figure out what needs to be done for those that are REALLY feeling the effects of it and it doesnt involve changing the combat system to an exact clone of WOW's...There is no need to attack or defend the combat system itself

 

1. Fix the sync of cast time, animations, and make sure it ends on time with the GCD

 

2. Fix the U.I so it responds perfectly when you hit the button

 

And thats that...If that means speeding up animations a .5 or full second so they end perfectly, then so be it...The U.I is definitely a different scenario but is obviously bugged the hell out for most of you

 

Some of us experience no response occasionally but even I have experienced that in WOW from time to time

 

How about this

 

1. Learn the timing associated with the animations for each of the abilities you use when you roll your face across your keyboard and then COMPENSATE for or PLAN to use the abilities at the appropriate time.

 

2. Not and issue for everyone - so it must be you, your software, or your hardware.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Zakumene

[DiottFei]

.5 sec? oh The HUMANITY! How dare bioware release a game in which you can't buttonmash your way to the top, hide your women and children lest they fait at the horrible sight waiting .5 sec.

 

as mace said ADAPT, dont play like WoW, this isn't wow so dont expect it to be like WoW.

buttonmashing wont get you anywhere so suck it up for now, maybe they'll "fix" it later but I, for one, have never had any problems with it, maybe because im not smashing the keyboard buttons in a fit of rage.

 

This is an example of a "bad". Stop comparing apples to oranges. No one is saying this game is WoW. So just stop. As a healer I find it most crucial to have my skills to go off when they are available. That .5 seconds could make all the differance in the world whether someone is dead or alive. There have been many times where I try and heal and the skill doesn't go off at all or it's delayed to where the person is dead already. Especially in BG's. Take yourself and your idiotic post elsewhere.