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

[GoranX]

The main issue that we all must accept is that almost everyone is coming to this game from WOW. The success of WOW has almost dictated that this is the case - its just the reality. And if you don't get the responsiveness to match up with WOW, the game just feels bad.

 

This can be glossed over for a few weeks as the levelling process and the new world and professions provide the incentive to play, but once all of that ends, the glaring faults in the responsiveness and combat come to the fore. The game needs to be a pleasure to play in of itself. New content, fun sidegames, brilliant raid bosses matter not a jot if the fundamental mechanics of the game can't match WOW, because everyone will think "this just doesn't feel as good as wow".

 

I honestly believe I will never subscribe to any MMO that can't match or better WOW in this way. Its just too important. I just can't enjoy a dungeon or a BG(Warzone) if I don't feel the smoothness of my character - if I don't enjoy the combat in its own right.

 

This just has to be the difference between WOW and the challengers. All of the other games have better graphics, equally as good content, interesting and different questing systems, new ideas (holocrons, space battles in this case etc) and similar incentives schemes to play (new gear etc) - yet WOW remains the MMO behemoth and all challengers fall. The common theme is the feel of the character and responsiveness. They all get this wrong and its always the first thing I notice.

 

WOW is a pleasure to play even without the typical incentive scheme that MMOs rely on. I will play a WOW battleground even to this day, with no rewards on offer, just because it is fun just playing the game - and I've been playing WOW for seven years. To rival WOW you just have to match them in this regard.

 

I agree 100%.

[Larlar]

This ties in with another major game flaw of class imbalance... It's unfair that a Smuggler's 'instant' kick attack takes 0.5 seconds to perform yet the horde (empire oops) equivalent is literally instant based solely on the animations. Healing on my scoundrel is beyond frustrating when I'm used to the fluidness of my holy priest.

 

The problem really pains me because this could be a near perfect mmo if the delay and class imbalance were sorted. No one who has played an MMO before is going to take such an imbalanced game seriously.

 

I totally disagree.

 

Class balance will be an ever changing dynamic that is almost totally impossible to get right. Change one class slightly, and that can have dramatic consequences. Blizzard has been juggling with this for years and there are periods where they have it pretty well done, but other times when things aren't so good due to major game changes or class changes. Remember arenas when Death Knights came on the scene for example?

 

The character fluency and combat mechanics are the basics of the game and if they aren't right, class balance is irrelevant because there won't be many people playing who actually care about who is killing them for what reason. And its so important because it applies almost equally to people who have no interest in PVP, which is a LOT of people.

 

So I guess, for me, eveything can wait until they get this right. Its the foundation, the structure of the game, and if it isn't right every other aspect of the game suffers.

[MarsX]

For the sake of keeping this alive for it's 3rd incarnation ... /signed.

 

This is so obviously a problem, and so deeply frustrating for anyone who has played (almost) any other computer game/console game it's mind boggling that this was rolled out this clunky. I mean playability 101 .... Character responsivenes. I guess 100 million dollars doesn't buy designer intuition.

 

Frankly, I don't see how anyone on the combat design team still has a job.

[GoranX]

This ties in with another major game flaw of class imbalance... It's unfair that a Smuggler's 'instant' kick attack takes 0.5 seconds to perform yet the horde (empire oops) equivalent is literally instant based solely on the animations. Healing on my scoundrel is beyond frustrating when I'm used to the fluidness of my holy priest.

 

The problem really pains me because this could be a near perfect mmo if the delay and class imbalance were sorted. No one who has played an MMO before is going to take such an imbalanced game seriously.

 

Good1. Even if this is off-topic, I can agree that the game is currently VERY unbalanced, but the balance system will always be improved. WoW still balances their classes, so it's an never ending process.

Edited December 30, 2011 by GoranX

[StormDragonlord]

I saw the response in the 2nd thread from George. It was obvious they don't even know what's causing this.

 

It infuriates me because this was brought up in BETA, yet it seems like they completely ignored the problem because NOW is when they finally give an answer and it's basically "We don't know what's wrong at all but we're looking into it".

 

You had PLENTY of time to figure out what's wrong with this horrible combat and now is when you respond, and you don't know what's wrong..

[Xcore]

Good1. Even if this is off-topic, I can agree that the game is currently VERY unbalanced, but the balance system will always be improved. WoW still balances their classes, so it's an never ending process.

 

I believe he may be talking about the effect this has on balance of classes due to differing animations.

[origosis]

Ah, so that is why stuff was not always working when i clicked it... Honestly. I did notice this occuring, but I did not know it was "This" I just thought it was something else.

 

It does not affect me by much. I have learned to adjust my rotation around it and once it is fixed I suppose I will be a little stronger, with that extra DPS. and a little safer with my instant heals being a little more instant.

 

I do hope it is fixed soon, but I am not worried about it. The game plays one way for me at the moment and all I can see is the game getting a little easier once it is fixed.

[Khoranth]

I agree 100%.

 

I disagree actually 100%.

 

Even if you never played WoW, you have probably played a good video game at some point in your life, and all good video games have responsive controls.

 

You think mario brothers would have been successful if you randomly fell to your death because the jump button randomly lagged and didn't work?

 

Or what if you tried to shoot a fireball while in the air, but then the game lagged you out, cause the jump animation wasn't done, and not only did your fireball not shoot, but your abilities all lag and get killed while waiting, because you pressed the fireball button more then once, because it wasn't working.

 

Only failed games have unresponsive controls, all GOOD games of any genre have responsive controls

[GoranX]

I disagree actually 100%.

 

Even if you never played WoW, you have probably played a good video game at some point in your life, and all good video games have responsive controls.

 

You think mario brothers would have been successful if you randomly fell to your death because the jump button randomly lagged and didn't work?

 

Or what if you tried to shoot a fireball while in the air, but then the game lagged you out, cause the jump animation wasn't done, and not only did your fireball not shoot, but your abilities all lag and get killed while waiting, because you pressed the fireball button more then once, because it wasn't working.

 

Only failed games have unresponsive controls, all GOOD games of any genre have responsive controls

 

You compare a single player game with a MMORPG that is a bit harsh. WoW is the best example to compare with.

[Shellshock]

I totally disagree.

 

Class balance will be an ever changing dynamic that is almost totally impossible to get right. Change one class slightly, and that can have dramatic consequences. Blizzard has been juggling with this for years and there are periods where they have it pretty well done, but other times when things aren't so good due to major game changes or class changes. Remember arenas when Death Knights came on the scene for example?

 

The character fluency and combat mechanics are the basics of the game and if they aren't right, class balance is irrelevant because there won't be many people playing who actually care about who is killing them for what reason. And its so important because it applies almost equally to people who have no interest in PVP, which is a LOT of people.

 

So I guess, for me, eveything can wait until they get this right. Its the foundation, the structure of the game, and if it isn't right every other aspect of the game suffers.

 

I think you missed the point here, he is talking about basically the same abilites taking longer to execute on mirror classes. It's like a horde death knights mind freeze going of faster than an alliance death knights purely because the animations are different. Which is clearly unacceptable.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Shellshock

[Khoranth]

You compare a single player game with a MMORPG that is a bit harsh. WoW is the best example to compare with.

 

I am comparing ALL games, when it comes to responsive controls.

 

I am sorry, but being an online game is no excuse, you think all those FPS tournament games could get away with unresponsive controls?

 

EQ had responsive controls a decade ago when I played.

 

Controlling your character is the most basic, fundamental in every video game, period.

If your making any game, and your controls are not coded well enough to be responsive, don't release the game until it is fixed.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Khoranth

[sdream]

Everyone talk aboit Bioware and SWTOR.

What if this problem can't be fix by Bioware beacuse the problem is not in SWTOR and instead in Simutronics Corporation's HeroEngine.

 

Remember that Bioware did not developed the game engine for this game, instead they used HeroEngine.

 

Pure speculation and hopefully this isn't the case. One of the reasons I quit Aion, because CryEngine on Win7 64-bit used to crash on me every 2 minutes during large sieges and developer couldn't address it quickly.

 

They stated on number of occasions that they re-wrote major parts of the engine to fit their needs. While this may sound like something to be proud of, to me it sounds like wrong decision to begin with. I work in software development environment and if we use 3rd party software and have to re-write major chunks of it just to fit into our project needs, we just dump it and look elsewhere.

 

Has anyone played with another game based on HeroEngine and saw the same problem in those games ?

 

Well, this isn't UDK, CryEngine or Gamebryo, besides BioWare using it, it doesn't have too many well known titles under its belt, so I doubt many people would be able to say for sure, whether this is engine related or not.

[Larlar]

I think you missed the point here, he is talking about basically the same abilites taking longer to execute on mirror classes. It's like a horde death knights mind freeze going of faster than an alliance death knights purely because the animations are different. Which is clearly unacceptable.

 

I didn't miss the point, I am just emphasising that this type of thing is a side issue. It can be dealt with later.

 

They need to make this game play smoothly and fluidly in all areas first as a matter of extreme priority. Until they manage that, the rest of the complaints won't even matter as a significant proportion of the players who have bought the game will stop playing it. They are on a timer with this issue.

[Zironic]

I saw the response in the 2nd thread from George. It was obvious they don't even know what's causing this.

 

It infuriates me because this was brought up in BETA, yet it seems like they completely ignored the problem because NOW is when they finally give an answer and it's basically "We don't know what's wrong at all but we're looking into it".

 

You had PLENTY of time to figure out what's wrong with this horrible combat and now is when you respond, and you don't know what's wrong..

 

Well, the cause is actually pretty obvious. Most of the issues are caused by the animations and effects being tied together, in WoW they're completely desynched.

 

In WoW, when you press the button, your animation and cast bar (However not the timer!) start the second you press your button, then when you get the reply from the server the cast bar TIMER will start and in the case of instant casts, you'll get your effect (You'll notice that when a WoW server is lagging, instants also lag).

 

This means that your local TIMER will always be about 100ms behind the servers timer, which means that by the time your cast bar/animation is done, the server has already been done for a while. This means that if you cancel your cast/animation before you're finished, you'll still get a 'your cast was successful!' message from the server and your spell will go off.

 

In SWTOR it appears that if you cancel your local castbar/animation before it's done, it'll cancel the whole thing regardless.

 

The solution would be to change it to work like WoW does it, however then you'll not get damage numbers exactly when your weapon impacts anymore.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Zironic

[Xcore]

I saw the response in the 2nd thread from George. It was obvious they don't even know what's causing this.

 

It infuriates me because this was brought up in BETA, yet it seems like they completely ignored the problem because NOW is when they finally give an answer and it's basically "We don't know what's wrong at all but we're looking into it".

 

You had PLENTY of time to figure out what's wrong with this horrible combat and now is when you respond, and you don't know what's wrong..

 

Their priorities in BETA were different, in fact their line of priorities (misguided) is the reason we're having this issue I believe.

 

Priorities as they appear to have been:

 

Introduction of Quality Story into MMO Genre > Full VO > "Heroic" Animation based Combat > Companions > Environment and Settings > Gameplay Responsiveness/Feeling > Bug Squashing

 

 

What I believe they should be (Blizzard appears to agree):

 

Gameplay/Overall Responsive Feeling > Gameplay > Gameplay > UI Feedback Accuracy > Gameplay and Responsiveness Bugs > UI Bugs > Smoothing out Responsiveness and UI Response to Input..... "repeat of above" .... > "EVERYTHING ELSE IN ANY ORDER AT ALL"

 

 

My point is 99% of the dedication should be spent on what every player will do 99% of the time... this is simple logic to player retention.

 

Who cares what the story is, who cares what the voice over quality is, who cares what sound effects and music are there... who cares how cool my guy looks flipping around and about.

 

When I feel disconnected from the Avatar that IS ME within the universe due to "poor" responsiveness, EVERYTHING ELSE IS USELESS.

 

 

 

lets not even talk about the detailed effects this has on PvE and PvP and competitive play. I stress, "nothing" is more important to an ACTION MMO than the WAY the ACTION FEELS. Because that is "all" that you'll be doing.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Xcore

[Xandarous]

This is one of those things that really does make or break a game.

[AERHAE]

I feel like im in thick molasis when I play this game.With a whole lot of inaction on specials.

This is not going away by itself and its a huge problem.

Im kind of getting tired of this and its makeing me loose intrest in this game.

Im having a hard time thinking about subing with this going on.

 

I want to be clear,bugs like this should not be hapening with the amount of time in beta spent and the amount of reporting for this problem during beta testing.

 

Im also getting tired of the Dev responces to this.I dont know whats worse,the Iowa cuacuses babble or the coorporate responces we are getting here.Buzzer anyone!

 

I also have another issue outside of this, I discovered by trying to find info on this,

Why do the people that represent this game as a spokesperson use twitter to explain whats going on and not this site.Stupidest thing ever.You have a site here Bio Ware,please use it.If I want to tweet,ill tweet,but im not tweeting to find out about whats going with problems or updates for this game.This also goes for facebook.

Communicate with your site to your costumer's,not these other outdside sources.

Thankyou.

[Zironic]

What I believe they should be (Blizzard appears to agree):

 

Gameplay/Overall Responsive Feeling > Gameplay > Gameplay > UI Feedback Accuracy > Gameplay and Responsiveness Bugs > UI Bugs > Smoothing out Responsiveness and UI Response to Input..... "repeat of above" .... > "EVERYTHING ELSE IN ANY ORDER AT ALL"[/b]

 

Well, at Blizzard they're really different teams. The famous 'Ghostcrawler' isn't actually the lead developer or anything at WoW, rather he's the "Gameplay" designer. He and his team are basically dedicated to nothing else but making the Class mechanics/UI/Trade Skills etc as good as possible.

 

Meanwhile the Art and Content departments do their thing completely separately.

 

I do however suspect that Blizzard has a QA budget that would make most other developers green with envy and all their devs have a ton of experience with reactive/dynamic gameplay.

 

I think that the MMO genre in general should recruit some Developers from the Smash em Up genres, steal some people from the Devil May Cry team to teach you how to make exciting fast paced combat.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Zironic

[Rokrz]

Not sure if this true but i read somewhere that Bioware was working on SWTOR expansions before even the game launch.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a190619/bioware-to-work-on-tor-dlc-before-release.html

If that is really the case, i would recommend them to leave expansions for now, fix that delay or they wont have players to buy those expansions.

[Randkin]

Don't get me wrong-- the Voice Acting was a major selling point of this game and I understand fully their desire to get that out so they arent saying "Hurp this is all voice acted but only half of it works right now when that's what a lot of our money went into."

 

But considering the fact that we DID, in fact, have Bioware response on the second incarnation on page 122, I believe it was, it's safe to say it's going to get the attention it deserves. I say this because I didn't even catch it until Fallevirtues pointed it out about 20 pages later. Thank you, mate!

 

Also-- I am likely the only one of my guild right now to really read the forums, yet all of us have mentioned this in one form or another, so there's another 20 people for you who are experiencing it for those who want to cry "Hoax".

[Shellshock]

I didn't miss the point, I am just emphasising that this type of thing is a side issue. It can be dealt with later.

 

They need to make this game play smoothly and fluidly in all areas first as a matter of extreme priority. Until they manage that, the rest of the complaints won't even matter as a significant proportion of the players who have bought the game will stop playing it. They are on a timer with this issue.

 

But it's all part of the same issue, its because the smuggler doesn't play as smoothly as an agent. He wasn't talking about class balance as a whole he was talking about the animations screwing up the same move for a mirror class.

 

Maybe we just don't agree on what a side issue is, fair enough. I just think the problem he referred to is a symptom of the very issue we are talking about here, rather than general class balance.

 

I'm not trying to argue by the way, i just think we are talking about the same thing but looking at it in different ways.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Shellshock

[Zironic]

Not sure if this true but i read somewhere that Bioware was working on SWTOR expansions before even the game launch.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a190619/bioware-to-work-on-tor-dlc-before-release.html

If that is really the case, i would recommend them to leave expansions for now, fix that delay or they wont have players to buy those expansions.

 

As a rule, the people working on Expansions are not the same people working on maintaining the current game. The Skillsets are rather different too.

 

For maintenance you need mostly programmers and QA. While for new content you need a whole bunch of artists/designers/voice actors etc etc.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Zironic

[Khoranth]

Their priorities in BETA were different, in fact their line of priorities (misguided) is the reason we're having this issue I believe.

 

Priorities as they appear to have been:

 

Introduction of Quality Story into MMO Genre > Full VO > "Heroic" Animation based Combat > Companions > Environment and Settings > Gameplay Responsiveness/Feeling > Bug Squashing

 

 

What I believe they should be (Blizzard appears to agree):

 

Gameplay/Overall Responsive Feeling > Gameplay > Gameplay > UI Feedback Accuracy > Gameplay and Responsiveness Bugs > UI Bugs > Smoothing out Responsiveness and UI Response to Input..... "repeat of above" .... > "EVERYTHING ELSE IN ANY ORDER AT ALL"

 

 

My point is 99% of the dedication should be spent on what every player will do 99% of the time... this is simple logic to player retention.

 

Who cares what the story is, who cares what the voice over quality is, who cares what sound effects and music are there... who cares how cool my guy looks flipping around and about.

 

When I feel disconnected from the Avatar that IS ME within the universe due to "poor" responsiveness, EVERYTHING ELSE IS USELESS.

 

 

 

lets not even talk about the detailed effects this has on PvE and PvP and competitive play. I stress, "nothing" is more important to an ACTION MMO than the WAY the ACTION FEELS. Because that is "all" that you'll be doing.

 

The only one type of player that may be able to argue against it is an RPer. Fine, I sympathize with that but he picked the wrong game (for himself sadly) when he chose a "Combat Based MMO" -- SWG, one could argue that Gameplay Responsiveness may not necessarily be the most important aspect... Though I would still argue it is...

 

What is really shocking to me is that after vanguard, warhammer, AOC and this list goes on and on... That bioware would not realize that responsive controls is clearly a top priority.

 

Unresponsive controls are the one thing all failed MMO's seem to have in common.

 

I remember in vanguard i could only describe the controls as ' i feel like i am walking in sand'

 

It is just hard to imagine bioware was completely oblivious to all these failed MMOs over the years and the reason they failed.

[Zironic]

What is really shocking to me is that after vanguard, warhammer, AOC and this list goes on and on... That bioware would not realize that responsive controls is clearly a top priority.

 

Unresponsive controls are the one thing all failed MMO's seem to have in common.

 

I remember in vanguard i could only describe the controls as ' i feel like i am walking in sand'

 

It is just hard to imagine bioware was completely oblivious to all these failed MMOs over the years and the reason they failed.

 

I thought the one thing all failed MMO's had in common was that they all underestimated how much time/money it takes to make a fully featured MMO, all being forced to release their product before it was ready and ending up making all the subscribers disappointed shortly after release only to be unable to ever get them back again.

[MaxymumForce]

Man having a great time leveling up a toon ! It's new and being new you get a lot of forgiveness.

 

27 days left until subscription starts and I really want to keep it up and running.

 

In fact I really want to get 2 other accounts for the family and cancel the 3 wow accounts I have.

 

The lack of toon response when I push the button is the only reason you are not getting 2 more game sales and 3 reoccuring monthly subscriptions.

 

Not only are you losing my personal pay to play on 3 subscriptions, I am also continuing to pay your only true competitor. Your story is better, I'm sure your raid content will be better, I'm sure your end game pvp will be better .

 

I want you to succeed! I want to stay here for 6 years leveling, raiding, pvping across the country with my family experiencing your incredible story.

 

I just won't be able to if my toon doesn't do what it is supposed to when I tell it to !

Again word of mouth is spreading how bad it is. Wow forums are saying don't bother to waste your money. GW2 are begging please don't be like swtor.

 

You need to get out in front of this and do serious damage control.

 

Side note you can do zero balance fixes until you get the button control fixed. Doing any balance changes will fail once interrupts and cc work when I want them to work.