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

[Mahulena]

I have been following this thread for some time and decided to share my view.

 

As far as I understand the combat mechanics the issue has two parts.

 

The first part are obvious bugs and glitches the OP was talking about, such as abilities triggering GCD, but not being executed, etc. I agree with those who say this needs to be seriously examined and fixed. I can't possibly judge how game-breaking this is... well, for me it definitely isn't. I managed to heal level appropriate flash-points just fine, regardless the few hick-ups this has caused to me. Since I mostly PvE and RP, I usualy don't rage about things and therefore I can't possibly comment on the doom prophecies either. I honestly don't know.

 

Now the second part is much more interesting. During beta I definitely noticed that the playstyle that became my second nature during the years in WoW does not work in this game. During EGA I started to level my Imperial Agent and again... I tried to spam abilities as usually... The resulting gameplay experience was not very good. When I fail in something I mostly try to find out more about it instead of complaining on the forum, so I tried to adopt. About level 15 I discovered something that helped me a lot... I moved the focus of my eyes from the health bars and numbers to my character and I started to pay attention to what is it exactly doing. And I started to respond to that animations and to find the right timing. The game-play was much smoother. Not ideal (I agree there is something broken), but much better. I also felt connected to the character, because the amount of key-strokes corresponded to the number of abilities executed - instead of a crazy button spam. A kind of similar thing to executing combos in The Witcher 1.

 

This in my view means that the combat system is deliberately different. Whether to GCD indication corresponds with it properly is another matter. This means that each ability triggers different effective GCD that the one displayed on the quick-bar, am I right? Well, I would not mind having GCDs of different length. Since there is a variability of the amount of time to execute them...

 

I can imagine how the second aspect could be game-breaking if one refuses to adopt. By the way... I firmly believe that this game will not kill WoW, because it obviously has different target audience. I am not going to play WoW in SWTOR so I would be pretty happy if the combat execution remains this way - granted the obvious bugs are dealt with.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Mahulena

[Larlar]

I must say, I'm appalled to find that, having gone to the pub last night and come back to the thread this morning that it has descended into such utter garbage. There are a handful of you making yourselves look utterly foolish.

 

Those defending this system/problem are threatening this game's life. I can't put it in starker terms than that. If the developers listened to you people, the five of you that keep repeating the same nonsense over and over, the game will crash and burn.

 

I don't care about WOW, I will never play it again in all likelihood, but I am all but certain that SWTOR needs to be able to make this combat system work as smoothly as possible, as fast as is possible. They are on a 2 week timer in my view. I would guess that for every person that comes here to support this thread, twenty more just don't bother and have a niggling feeling that this game isn't right. These are the people that will leave en masse if it isn't fixed... and they will. Just as they left Warhammer, Rift, Aion and Conan. The fundamental problem is the same. The elusive feel of perfect combat smoothness and responsiveness simply wasn't in those games and it isn't in this game.

 

How can any of us lose out if they get it right? That's what I don't understand about you people who are repeating the same drivel over and over here. We all benefit.

[Virulency]

Not sure if this has already been posted, as I don't really feel like reading 108 pages of a forum, but there is a few examples of animation/ability delay that I've personally noticed that's a large problem for playing a sniper at all.

 

Lets say you have your sting/dart shot or any instant cast shot (my personal example is with the dart) mapped to the same button as snipe would be after hitting cover. You press f, go to cover (or roll to it). Immediately after pressing F, you mash your snipe button. What will always happen if you do it too fast is you will use the sting(or whatever) despite it not being on your bar nor a usable ability since you selected snipe. This is even after waiting for your bar to change!

 

Ability queuing doesn't matter, this will always happen, and makes playing a sniper in pvp nigh impossible since they FORCE you to do everything much slower than you would in wow (for comparisons sake, obv).

 

I tested it with various ability queuing settings, and it does not matter. You get used to it and decide that instead of doing things quickly and responsively, you have to slow down a large amount to make sure you get the ability you want.

 

A similar issue with the animation problems, I've had my snipe charge to the end of the bar, trigger the gcd, and do 100% nothing. No miss, dodge, absorb, just "Try again!".

 

Pvp inherently requires fast responses, such as interrupts or heals. In our case, its stuns or punts, but without having a remotely consistent response, it's simply a crapshoot anytime you're fighting another player.

 

I'm sure someone has died to an elite for similar reasons such as using your interrupt on an elite droid to cancel missile barrage, but you just die with your gcd resetting without any indication your ability even happened. Just look at the delay when you die to something. You can't even die quickly in this game.

[Sivn]

I dont know what the problem is, but there is one.

 

Playing WOW and all my key presses, including mouse keys and wheel turns (i bind mouse wheel up and down and mouse wheel left and right as keys) respond instantly.

 

Playing SWTOR there is sometimes a lack of responsiveness. Some keys i have to press several times (mostly i notice this with the mouse keys and wheel), sometimes it plays the animation and doesnt trigger the ability and sometimes i notice a delay.

 

The quicker these problems are fixed the better.

 

We should be able to press a button every 1.5 secs (the GCD) and have it respond instantly with no problems (unless its a 3sec channel ofc).

[Reedful]

Speaking from a professional gamer's standpoint, the game is simply unplayable. It is barely possible to outplay your opponents with a 2 second median reaction time. Olympic is .4, I'd settle for .8. It is hilarious how they were bragging about taking subscriptions away from World of Warcraft when anything in this game after the single player parts might as well have been made in 2003... by Blizzard, and then discarded so their game would actually be successful.

 

I can interrupt my own instant casts. There's at least a 1 second delay on every single one of my abilities(even instants not on the global) with a professional gaming computer and 3 MS. I live right down the road. You should hire me, throw away the Hero Engine and maybe we can fix your issues.

 

--

 

Say I'm CC'd by the door in Voidstar and I want to trinket to interrupt the cap - here we have a perfect example of how you've ripped off World of Warcraft almost to the letter with everything from the battleground style in this, "Warzone," to "Tenacity" AND it's cooldown, et al, holy moly.

 

So anyway, here I am playing a WoW clone, stunned by the door. I trinket(I am not going to call it Tenacity because it is a blatant rip off of World of Warcraft and it hasn't established a real name for itself.) Nothing happens. Nothing happens for almost an entire global. I am spamming Concussion Charge. At this point I have only casted Tenacity, which does not use my global and I have waited for 1.5 seconds. Finally, the game registers that I have casted my PvP trinket, takes the cooldown 2 seconds late, frees me from my CC and allows my Concussion Charge spam to activate the ability except I get knocked back, the UI tells me my instant cast ability was interrupted and my Resolve bar has already decayed to 75%.

 

There is no saying, "hehehe don't spam your abilities." There is no saying, "well I still like the game anyway!" There is no saying, "well if everyone has the same lag, it's balanced!"

 

Those are stupid excuses for a stupid problem. This should have never been released. This literally ruined the game for me and my entire organization. Have fun having less than a million subscribers in 6 months and then turning into EVE online. Yes I have the ability queue set to 0.0. And no, you're not playing the game without these problems: you're just a bad player with a slow reaction time.

 

Fact: Blizzard spent $63 million making World of Warcraft

 

Fact: BioWare does not own the Hero Engine

 

Fact: If you don't find some way to fix this, your game is dead. No matter what excuses all these Star Wars fanboys make, eventually Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, Mists of Pandaria are going to bleed your game dry because those game companies don't think built-in lag is a cool feature.

 

Oh yeah, and are we going to be able to turn off camera auto-follow anytime soon, or is everyone being forced to have terrible awareness another cool feature?

 

Thanks for the $300 mil 1-50 quests I spacebar'd through, so long.

[Fodiddle]

Take a lesson from Blizzard.

 

Tighten up gameplay.

 

Read this man's post and do it.

[Nethrom]

So you would no question anything, even taken that the artist (BW) might have made an mistake that can cost a lot of players playing the game.

 

There are no mistakes, only decisions and if the artist or the company has made a decision it’s not for the costumer to question that. We are allowed to play the game, isn’t that enough already.

 

If they think the system is flawed, they will change it. Companies like EA or Bioware know how to make good games, why should they ever charge for anything that isn’t ready or as they wanted it to be?

 

Would should they release a flawed game, it’s not in their interest. Companies will always produce the best possible product for their costumers and Bioware and EA are no different.

[Reedful]

There are no mistakes, only decisions and if the artist or the company has made a decision it’s not for the costumer to question that. We are allowed to play the game, isn’t that enough already.

 

If they think the system is flawed, they will change it. Companies like EA or Bioware know how to make good games, why should they ever charge for anything that isn’t ready or as they wanted it to be?

 

Would should they release a flawed game, it’s not in their interest. Companies will always produce the best possible product for their costumers and Bioware and EA are no different.

 

They know how to make good single-player games. The fact that a delay like that got through beta speaks for itself. The end. If you disagree, you aren't very good at video games.

[mozedk]

Speaking from a professional gamer's standpoint, the game is simply unplayable. It is barely possible to outplay your opponents with a 2 second median reaction time. Olympic is .4, I'd settle for .8. It is hilarious how they were bragging about taking subscriptions away from World of Warcraft when anything in this game after the single player parts might as well have been made in 2003... by Blizzard, and then discarded so their game would actually be successful.

 

I can interrupt my own instant casts. There's at least a 1 second delay on every single one of my abilities(even instants not on the global) with a professional gaming computer and 3 MS. I live right down the road. You should hire me, throw away the Hero Engine and maybe we can fix your issues.

 

--

 

Say I'm CC'd by the door in Voidstar and I want to trinket to interrupt the cap - here we have a perfect example of how you've ripped off World of Warcraft almost to the letter with everything from the battleground style in this, "Warzone," to "Tenacity" AND it's cooldown, et al, holy moly.

 

So anyway, here I am playing a WoW clone, stunned by the door. I trinket(I am not going to call it Tenacity because it is a blatant rip off of World of Warcraft and it hasn't established a real name for itself.) Nothing happens. Nothing happens for almost an entire global. I am spamming Concussion Charge. At this point I have only casted Tenacity, which does not use my global and I have waited for 1.5 seconds. Finally, the game registers that I have casted my PvP trinket, takes the cooldown 2 seconds late, frees me from my CC and allows my Concussion Charge spam to activate the ability except I get knocked back, the UI tells me my instant cast ability was interrupted and my Resolve bar has already decayed to 75%.

 

There is no saying, "hehehe don't spam your abilities." There is no saying, "well I still like the game anyway!" There is no saying, "well if everyone has the same lag, it's balanced!"

 

Those are stupid excuses for a stupid problem. This should have never been released. This literally ruined the game for me and my entire organization. Have fun having less than a million subscribers in 6 months and then turning into EVE online. Yes I have the ability queue set to 0.0. And no, you're not playing the game without these problems: you're just a bad player with a slow reaction time.

 

Fact: Blizzard spent $63 million making World of Warcraft

 

Fact: BioWare does not own the Hero Engine

 

Fact: If you don't find some way to fix this, your game is dead. No matter what excuses all these Star Wars fanboys make, eventually Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, Mists of Pandaria are going to bleed your game dry because those game companies don't think built-in lag is a cool feature.

 

Oh yeah, and are we going to be able to turn off camera auto-follow anytime soon, or is everyone being forced to have terrible awareness another cool feature?

 

Thanks for the $300 mil 1-50 quests I spacebar'd through, so long.

 

Here we have a very nerrow minded aproach, well the fact that you bring up WoW to the plate list se how this holds up. WoW launch 63 million, no I do think so.....

It worked at launch no I dont think so. So your post isent that good. Sorry to say. There are always bugs in a new MMO. Havent seen one without.

 

There might be bugs that needs to be fixed yes, will they. Time will tell.

Will it be doomed if it is not fixed, well I dont belive that. Many games can live side by side, there are different players for different games. thats a fact.

 

You bring up EVE as a negative, well there I am in a disagrement with you there. I would like to have there money they are earning on it. So a failur it isent. Maby you dont like it, but that dosent meen it's a failur. If that was the case a lot of games wouldent be mutch.

 

Try to look at it as a new game that needs the polish as older games have.

[Gohlar]

Thank You - Baznasty (Thread 1, Page 87) -- WoW Example/Contrast MUST SEE!:

 

He could have started moving before the mount was even done casting. The person in this video doesn't understand what is going on at all. I certainly hope they do not use the faking system WoW uses where 2 people can CC each other etc and animations don't even play properly.

 

Try using timing instead of spamming keys guys. WoW throws accuracy out the window in favor of the illusion of responsiveness. That's why the visuals on the combat mean nothing.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Gohlar

[Corwingeorge]

WOW was as responsive on launch as it is today.

[mozedk]

There are no mistakes, only decisions and if the artist or the company has made a decision it’s not for the costumer to question that. We are allowed to play the game, isn’t that enough already.

 

If they think the system is flawed, they will change it. Companies like EA or Bioware know how to make good games, why should they ever charge for anything that isn’t ready or as they wanted it to be?

 

Would should they release a flawed game, it’s not in their interest. Companies will always produce the best possible product for their costumers and Bioware and EA are no different.

 

You say it your self in the last line just forgetting the trying.

As I am reading you statements, it kinda sounds to me that you are saying that no one make mistakes. If that's so you might be mistaken.

 

And I belive that you dont understand what a MMO is, it is not a conventional game. They need to make more find out if there are bugs, or other unintended side effect and so.

 

This game are so huge that it is in my opinion imposible to make a flawless game.

[mozedk]

Take a lesson from Blizzard.

 

Tighten up gameplay.

 

Read this man's post and do it.

 

I like your post, now this is only to be a bit provokative.

 

When did Blizzard first Tighten up the game after launch, can you remember?

[Corwingeorge]

He could have started moving before the mount was even done casting. The person in this video doesn't understand what is going on at all. I certainly hope they do not use the faking system WoW uses where 2 people can CC each other etc and animations don't even play properly.

 

Try using timing instead of spamming keys guys. WoW throws accuracy out the window in favor of the illusion of responsiveness. That's why the visuals on the combat mean nothing.

 

^slow player

[Gohlar]

^slow player

 

No the slow players are the ones struggling here. You guys spam buttons and have zero understanding of what is actually happening.

 

WoW knew most people don't have a clue so they went with a very inaccurate, noob friendly approach.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Gohlar

[Nethrom]

They know how to make good single-player games. The fact that a delay like that got through beta speaks for itself. The end. If you disagree, you aren't very good at video games.

 

The costumer is buying the product, the costumer is not changing the product. The company or the artist is deciding about their product.

 

If they have not changed the delay issue during the beta and still have released it's not a problem for Bioware and EA. So if it is not a problem for Bioware and EA there is not problem at all. They would not release an unfinished game.

 

It's not your game, so you can not decide, if it is a problem, just play the game. Bioware and EA will decide in time, if it is a problem and if they decide it is a problem, they will change it.

[OrbitalDecay]

In case anyone didn’t see it, on reddit.com Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager for SWTOR answered a few questions.

 

If you sort by ‘Best’ the first topic is a summary of the discussion, ability delay is the top item … but the whole string is pretty interesting to read.

 

Here is the direct link to the Ability Delay note …

/c3bwmr0

 

 

 

tl;dr

Q: Ability Delay. Have you guys discussed this internally, and if so, is there an ETA for a fix on this issue?

 

A: Hey! It has been discussed internally, and we'll talk about it publicly soon. It's not a simple issue so we don't want to issue a quick, off-the-cuff response.

[mbernert]

There are no mistakes, only decisions and if the artist or the company has made a decision it’s not for the costumer to question that. We are allowed to play the game, isn’t that enough already.

 

If they think the system is flawed, they will change it. Companies like EA or Bioware know how to make good games, why should they ever charge for anything that isn’t ready or as they wanted it to be?

 

Would should they release a flawed game, it’s not in their interest. Companies will always produce the best possible product for their costumers and Bioware and EA are no different.

 

I don't agree with this at all, especially your first sentence.

 

Offline games are more of a "take it or leave it" type imo. And even saying that is a stretch. Offline games are and should be made with the consumers interests in mind.

 

An mmo on the other hand, and this is my opinion, should be made with the consumer in mind, and be willing to adapt to the consumers wishs. That's what will keep players from jumping ship when they get bored.

 

Even if bw came out right now and said, this ability delay you are experiencing was implimented intentionally to make the animation of your character look more smooth. If enough people complained they didn't like it, they would have to change it, or suffer the sub loss.

[Reedful]

Here we have a very nerrow minded aproach, well the fact that you bring up WoW to the plate list se how this holds up. WoW launch 63 million, no I do think so.....

It worked at launch no I dont think so. So your post isent that good. Sorry to say. There are always bugs in a new MMO. Havent seen one without.

 

There might be bugs that needs to be fixed yes, will they. Time will tell.

Will it be doomed if it is not fixed, well I dont belive that. Many games can live side by side, there are different players for different games. thats a fact.

 

You bring up EVE as a negative, well there I am in a disagrement with you there. I would like to have there money they are earning on it. So a failur it isent. Maby you dont like it, but that dosent meen it's a failur. If that was the case a lot of games wouldent be mutch.

 

Try to look at it as a new game that needs the polish as older games have.

Bugs at launch are things like me needing an average of 18 bags for one piece of PvP gear, when Slicing is far and away the best profession or when my character gets stuck in a jumping animation and can't move.

 

WoW wasn't perfect at launch. I didn't compare SW:TOR to WoW, SW:TOR did. They said they'd take their subscribers. World of Warcraft was $63 million to create, 200 million by TBC(http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-World-of-Warcraft-cost-to-develop-initially) there are better references but, unfortunately, I didn't record the shareholder conference call so I could show it to every idiot who barely speaks English and doesn't believe me.

 

No game is perfect at launch. However, no other game had built-in UI lag as a feature. What is this, a 300 page thread on their forums with their forum moderators and still not even a reply saying, "we see the problem?"

 

You are obtuse. I bring up EVE, "as a negative" because the game didn't make a lot of money and wasn't very successful in the long run. World of Warcraft did, and was. A company's goal is to make money, not make a cool game that a few weird foreigners like to play. They said it was a next-gen MMO. It turned out to be World of Warcraft 6 years ago without any decent coding at all whatsoever. If there are people out there that like playing a game where lagging is the default, have a great time I guess.

 

But maybe you're right, maybe there's a whole generation of foreign gamers who love lagging and look for new ways to decrease their reaction time. I hope you guys have a fantastic time.

[Nethrom]

You say it your self in the last line just forgetting the trying.

As I am reading you statements, it kinda sounds to me that you are saying that no one make mistakes. If that's so you might be mistaken.

 

No people make mistakes, companies don't. They will never sell their costumer an unfinished or flawed product. Why would a company like EA or Bioware, a company with such a great reputation, destroying their reputation by releasing a flawed game.

 

Bioware would never risk their reputation just to sell a game. Else they would lose the trust of their customers and that would hurt them in future sales. So the game must good an the delay issue is not an issue, because they released the game.

[Xcore]

Speaking from a professional gamer's standpoint, the game is simply unplayable. It is barely possible to outplay your opponents with a 2 second median reaction time. Olympic is .4, I'd settle for .8. It is hilarious how they were bragging about taking subscriptions away from World of Warcraft when anything in this game after the single player parts might as well have been made in 2003... by Blizzard, and then discarded so their game would actually be successful.

 

I can interrupt my own instant casts. There's at least a 1 second delay on every single one of my abilities(even instants not on the global) with a professional gaming computer and 3 MS. I live right down the road. You should hire me, throw away the Hero Engine and maybe we can fix your issues.

 

--

 

Say I'm CC'd by the door in Voidstar and I want to trinket to interrupt the cap - here we have a perfect example of how you've ripped off World of Warcraft almost to the letter with everything from the battleground style in this, "Warzone," to "Tenacity" AND it's cooldown, et al, holy moly.

 

So anyway, here I am playing a WoW clone, stunned by the door. I trinket(I am not going to call it Tenacity because it is a blatant rip off of World of Warcraft and it hasn't established a real name for itself.) Nothing happens. Nothing happens for almost an entire global. I am spamming Concussion Charge. At this point I have only casted Tenacity, which does not use my global and I have waited for 1.5 seconds. Finally, the game registers that I have casted my PvP trinket, takes the cooldown 2 seconds late, frees me from my CC and allows my Concussion Charge spam to activate the ability except I get knocked back, the UI tells me my instant cast ability was interrupted and my Resolve bar has already decayed to 75%.

 

There is no saying, "hehehe don't spam your abilities." There is no saying, "well I still like the game anyway!" There is no saying, "well if everyone has the same lag, it's balanced!"

 

Those are stupid excuses for a stupid problem. This should have never been released. This literally ruined the game for me and my entire organization. Have fun having less than a million subscribers in 6 months and then turning into EVE online. Yes I have the ability queue set to 0.0. And no, you're not playing the game without these problems: you're just a bad player with a slow reaction time.

 

Fact: Blizzard spent $63 million making World of Warcraft

 

Fact: BioWare does not own the Hero Engine

 

Fact: If you don't find some way to fix this, your game is dead. No matter what excuses all these Star Wars fanboys make, eventually Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, Mists of Pandaria are going to bleed your game dry because those game companies don't think built-in lag is a cool feature.

 

Oh yeah, and are we going to be able to turn off camera auto-follow anytime soon, or is everyone being forced to have terrible awareness another cool feature?

 

Thanks for the $300 mil 1-50 quests I spacebar'd through, so long.

 

Your post is too extreme and hardcore for a lot to appreciate but I hope that Bioware takes it very seriously because the passion and accuracy is very valuable and displays why WoW is so successful.

 

I would like to add parts of your post to the OP if you could list me more specifically your Pro Gaming credentials, perhaps with further proof if comfortable...

 

Thank you for contributing

[Gohlar]

But maybe you're right, maybe there's a whole generation of foreign gamers who love lagging and look for new ways to decrease their reaction time. I hope you guys have a fantastic time.

 

If you want the noob friendly approach feel free to return to WoW.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Gohlar

[AERHAE]

Im a little miffed that this got through beta.

Im not going to down the game,but I would like to know what approach if any will happen for this fix.TO accept the current situation as a norm and continue to play like nothing is wrong quit frankly is not happening.

I would not be posting if this game had not been in development for the last 5 years.This alone is bothersome and hard for me to understand.

The Money and time in this game is scary,when you see the outcome at launch after particpating with beta.

The game makers are getting told about it too in the general discussion I see.This is just another let down relating to the Star Wars Gameing History abroad.They say History repeats itself.

[Corwingeorge]

No the slow players are the ones struggling here. You guys spam buttons and have zero understanding of what is actually happening.

 

WoW knew most people don't have a clue so they went with a very inaccurate, noob friendly approach.

 

nah, you're just slow

[Gohlar]

nah, you're just slow

 

/yawn

 

This is the type of person who wants the spamfest style people. Think about it. None of you have figured out that if you stop mashing your buttons and pay attention everything works fine, other than specific attacks which do have some animation problems, but that is a different issue.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Gohlar