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

[freakuancy]

But dude, this is only PART of the problem people are complaining about, and yes, it's due to latency. The issue pointed out by the OP is that if you character is in the middle of an animation, ANY animation, you literally cannot effect another ability until the animation for the current ability is done. This is NOT latency.

 

As I just said, it's two issues.

 

And the above has been covered in a crap ton of threads, and I did cover it in my original post on page 57 or 58 of this thread. It's a shortcoming of full animations...yes, your toon has to finish his sword swing before he can begin another. And yes, some animations are longer than the GCD. These are problems.

 

But the DELAY issue, see: mounting your speeder? Latency.

 

Edit: If I confused this thread with another, I apologize. There's too damned many people spouting the same crap thats been covered over and over and over since beta.

Edited December 28, 2011 by freakuancy

[VtTethias]

I don't suffer from FPS issues or high latency yet I have to agree with the OP.

 

E.g. Lightning Strike on my Sith Sorcerer is one of my spammable nukes. I cast it three times to stack one of the talent tree buffs. It has a 1.5 sec cast time so it should take 4.5 secs for me to stack the buff. WRONG! Sometimes I can achieve this. Most of the time however, the cast bar reaches the end of the cast and the attack delays in firing... my character just stands there... ponders a bit... and then Zzzzt! Fires the lightning. My ping is 45-50 and my graphics are fine.

 

So yeah...

 

+1 OP.

 

That's bizzare. I don't have this issue at all on my Sith Sorceror. The damage happens instantly after the full cast time. I can chain it back to back no problems.

 

The only issue I have been able to replicate is the moving after the mount cast bar is finished causing you to dismount issue. Which seems pretty minor to me. My instants fire off, well, instantly and I can immediately cast another spell after the GCD.

 

I saw the videos too, btw, so I know what to look for. Also played a Sith Marauder in beta so never had any issues playing a melee class.

 

One other thing that occurred to me is that my instant interrupt doesn't always immediately go off when I press it during a GCD. Is this the issue?

Edited December 28, 2011 by VtTethias

[samdbtto]

I'm not sure if I'm right but going through all the pages, are there people saying they dont get the long animations that cause delays in next qued abilities? If so, get Fraps (its free) and record it. Post it on youtube (also free), in fact recreate the video i made that is in the OP to show it working like you say it is. I'd like to see some TOR videos of it "working great"

[Agentlongwood]

For the love of all that is holy just make the animations clip each other. If I use an ability with a cast time followed by an instant cast I don't need to see both animations. Just make the instant cast animation clip the casted one and have them both go off immediately. I think this is a case of the Devs wanting the animation the trump game mechanics, but game mechanics absolutely must take priority over animation. I really want to play this instead of WoW but not if it doesn't play well.

[Darth-Malice]

Is it fixed yet?

[lenonk]

And the above has been covered in a crap ton of threads, and I did cover it in my original post on page 57 or 58 of this thread. It's a shortcoming of fully animations...yes, your toon has to finish his sword swing before he can begin another. And yes, some animations are longer than the GCD. These are problems.

 

But the DELAY issue, see: mounting your speeder? Latency.

 

Yeah, of course that's latency. WoW handles it differently by increasing your speed client side as soon as the cast is finished, but I'm not sure anybody really cares about that. Maybe I've just been glossing over those posts.

 

I think what most people here are complaining about, and a specific example springs to mind, is when your tank is in the middle of a game induced parry animation and you can't taunt until that animation is done.

 

Could be wrong though...

[Dajing]

OP speaks the truth. +1 from me

[freakuancy]

For the love of all that is holy just make the animations clip each other. If I use an ability with a cast time followed by an instant cast I don't need to see both animations. Just make the instant cast animation clip the casted one and have them both go off immediately. I think this is a case of the Devs wanting the animation the trump game mechanics, but game mechanics absolutely must take priority over animation. I really want to play this instead of WoW but not if it doesn't play well.

 

This already happens with riposte. It clips any animation I'm currently in the middle of.

[freakuancy]

Yeah, of course that's latency. WoW handles it differently by increasing your speed client side as soon as the cast is finished, but I'm not sure anybody really cares about that. Maybe I've just been glossing over those posts.

 

I think what most people here are complaining about, and a specific example springs to mind, is when your tank is in the middle of a game induced parry animation and you can't taunt until that animation is done.

 

Could be wrong though...

 

Yes thats a problem with animations lasting more than 1.5 seconds. So, exceeding the GCD.

 

Seriously, thats all it is. It's a facepalm move and Bioware will fix it. But people are pointing to the speeder thing as an example and thats a totally different bear in the woods.

[Gremmel]

To taunt I have to SPAM THE **** out of the taunt button instead of just pressing it once (which works just fine in WOW and supposedly the ability is supposed to do the same in this game).

 

Same goes for any ability that's not affected by the GCD, relics included.

 

Even though the net-code for a MMORPG don't have to be as good as for say an FPS, having it feel this unresponsive is ridiculous.

 

During the many hours I've already spent in Operations and Hard Flashpoints the only topic on teamspeak is how to work around the 100s of bugs you are affected by while trying to do any end-game content. Maybe 1% of the time is spent working out strategies, the rest is talking about how broken everything is. The game isn't going to get any new subs eventually because there'll be no word of mouth from people at max level.

 

And don't get me started on the character location **** that's going on in Warfronts. In Huttball if a character is carrying the ball and you knock him back I've had them be at THREE places at once, one where the beam indicating his location are, one where he's lying on the ground and one where he actually is. That last one is usually not represented in any graphical way and you just have to guess where the **** people are.....

[Tinkersw]

Wanted you to see this Xcore if you havent already.Tried to PM this to you but that feature does not seem to working atm.

http://www.swtorstrategies.com/2011/12/ability-delay-character-responsiveness.html

[lenonk]

Yes thats a problem with animations lasting more than 1.5 seconds. So, exceeding the GCD.

 

Seriously, thats all it is. It's a facepalm move and Bioware will fix it. But people are pointing to the speeder thing as an example and thats a totally different bear in the woods.

 

It's not just animations exceeding the GCD. In the Charged Burst example, it's a 3 (2?) second channeled ability. While channeling, your character is kneeling and your blaster starts glowing orange. At the end of the channel, you stand up and start shooting for like 1.5 seconds, and you can't do anything else in the mean time. So, essentially, that makes Charged Burst a 4.5 to 5 second ability, which is silly. If they want it to be a 5 second ability, the make the cast time 5 seconds and extend the channeling. Otherwise, make sure the entire damn animation fits within the 3 seconds, even if the damage isn't done until after the entire cast. Or, 1.5 seconds of "charging", then a quick 1.5 second burst if firing which can be interrupted would be fine too. As I said earlier, there are multiple way s to fix it, but it has to be fixed per ability, and that's time consuming.

 

Still, it's the same principle, and yeah, it's a huge facepalm, and as I stated earlier when I got into this thread, there's no chance Bioware won't find a way to fix it.

 

The speeder thing? That's a minor annoyance. I couldn't care less if they never "fixed" that.

[sabresandiego]

I hope gameplay is improved very soon.

[Nephrahim]

Still nothing. BH quest gets multiple dev posts 9For good reason, it's a bad bug I gather.) but still nothing to say to us.

[ajjw]

And don't get me started on the character location **** that's going on in Warfronts. In Huttball if a character is carrying the ball and you knock him back I've had them be at THREE places at once, one where the beam indicating his location are, one where he's lying on the ground and one where he actually is. That last one is usually not represented in any graphical way and you just have to guess where the **** people are.....

Nothing better than 2 Inqs knocking the enemy ball carrier in 2 directions at once off the platform, resulting in 2 glitching apparitions down in the pit while the real enemy runs forward and caps. Huzzah.

[Xcore]

Wanted you to see this Xcore if you havent already.Tried to PM this to you but that feature does not seem to working atm.

http://www.swtorstrategies.com/2011/12/ability-delay-character-responsiveness.html

 

Driving home now! I'll check it out soon... Bioware reddit response is mildly encouraging, I would prefer something within the thread, doesn't have to be concrete plan, just a "hey, we're here, carry on"

[Meltaman]

I agree, they should fix this as it can get frustrating really quickly in PvP (lvl 12 Merc). I suggest BioWare put this on top of their "What to fix" list so it doesn't grow any worse among people.

[lolynot]

i notice this as well...it really bothers me...UGHHHHHHHHHHH

[obez]

This needs to be fixed if they want a PvE/PvP Company after everyone is done leveling.

[eS--]

Completely agree 100%.

 

Anyone who doesn't is (no offense) a fanboy that wants to think this game is perfect.

[Dukibritches]

Well I've been reading much of this thread and I just felt like I needed to add my 2 cents on the matter.

 

First of all I love SW:TOR. The PVE is amazing. The PVP could use some work, but I'm sure that will evolve over time.

 

Not that anyone cares but prior to this games release, I played a few MMO's over the years, including WOW. Actually I have played WOW for like 5 or 6 years, way too long! I burned out on it and had been waiting on this game to release to continue playing MMO's.

 

This game is awesome. I love the quests, I love the graphics, I love the animations. However, the gameplay still feels clunky. I think the OP hit the nail on the head with this post.

 

The animations are great and I think they are essential to the gameplay due to the nature of lightsaber combat. However, waiting for an animation to complete before you can use your next ablility when you AREN'T waiting for the GCD is indeed gamebreaking. It may not seem like a glaring issue at the moment because everyone is enjoying questing and listening to the story and experiencing the lore of the game. But sooner or later (probably sooner) it will drive people up the wall. When people are lvl 50 and running end game content (ops/pvp) this issue is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

 

I would prefer that the animations do not get clipped because they are an amazing part of the game, so I'm hoping that there are other ways to fix the problem. Ideally, changing the animations to not exceed the GCD time seems like the best fix, however it may not be the easiest.

 

tl;dr

I love the game in general, but this is an issue that needs to be fixed. Maybe change the length of the animations to be the same or shorter than the GCD.

[Rendekar]

Back to the front page where it belongs..

[sfryman]

Completely agree 100%.

 

Anyone who doesn't is (no offense) a fanboy that wants to think this game is perfect.

 

I believe that some people really don't notice it.

 

If you mouse click your abilities and use your keyboard to turn I'd wager a fraction of a sec delay would be hard to detect.

 

Or if you have nothing to compare it against you'd never know it should be better. Have you watched a VHS lately? It looks terrible, but back when that was all we had, no-one ever complained.

 

I argued with players back when warhammer came out who claimed: "ALL on-line games are like this, just get used to it."

 

No, no they are not.

[Khoranth]

For the love of all that is holy just make the animations clip each other. If I use an ability with a cast time followed by an instant cast I don't need to see both animations. Just make the instant cast animation clip the casted one and have them both go off immediately. I think this is a case of the Devs wanting the animation the trump game mechanics, but game mechanics absolutely must take priority over animation. I really want to play this instead of WoW but not if it doesn't play well.

 

 

They could at least make the GCD match the animations, so you wouldnt press buttons when gcd ends and get lagged out cause animation still going

[weezdajuice]

Its amazing that such a glaring issue made it all the way through testing.