Incoming changes to global cooldown UI Blog Discussion

The car won't start and you're advertising how you just put a bumper sticker on it.

This sure isn't blowing the skirt up of anyone who used Grid or Power Auras in WoW.

Seriously, Dual Talent specs, Mouseover Healing, REAL UI customization...basic...BASIC things. Even if this stuff is not ready, please show it and tell us. NOTHING makes me really lose hope that this endgame will ever be taken seriously.

My guild wants to raid. Our sister guild beat everything on Nightmare and is quitting because the bugs are all over the encounters and still not fixed. Just screenshot promises of the above mentioned stuff will go along way from keeping my guild and a lot of others from bailing out when Pandas roll out in a few months.

I know you know all of this, but I wanted to vent a little, because I'm trying to sell your game for you and tell members to ride it out... these thing are SURELY in the pipeline.
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I really feel bad for all the artists and writers. They should be furious that all their amazing work is getting screwed because a council or director above them has whatever explanation or reasoning that these things are not in the game. Seriously, writers and artists, you should mutiny at our offices. Don't get me started on the failure of random PVP bags and ilum.

Id pay money to have this fixed.

Wait a sec, I AM paying money! I WANT this fixed!

More patching and this still isn't on test. I'm glad i didn't keep my sub while I waited.

Can we get the old way it was done?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jxlTbkW2uA

I do like the new additions but i just wonder why did you move away from the old design?

I was surprised that they didn't have this customized ability of the UI from the very release. I played early MMORPG and never would have understood why they released SWToR without the very basic function. They are not even talking about anything new, or unheard of. You mean to say that after four years of development you guys are just getting into custom UI options? Granted that's only Four years, but as consumers we were assuming that the devs were just adding something fresh to what was already out there. Instead we get something 1990.

Well, fine give it to us already. We are tired of talking about bugs anyway. Once the 1.2 patch comes out, we hope to eliminate the talk about UI and focus more on end game contents and complete overhaul of all these bugs to a shiny polished, complete genre.

1. A "cool down" should be tied directly to the common sense time a particular action should take to execute/recharge, and should serve only to avoid overlaping abilites that should not or could not overlap.

2. A "Global Cooldown" looks and feals like a lock-step robot and detracts from the "fluid" look and feel of the "well trained, expertly honed skills" the avatar supposedly has. Character actions need to "flow" like the moves of Jackie Chan fight scene, one to the other, not tick-off like a mechanical rubber stamping machine.

3. A "Quick slash" with a lightsaber should prevent other abilites for only a split-second. Whereas a "Mater's Strike" should take longer. AND the two should be chainable into a kind of "form" or "Kata" like flow.

4. IMHO the concept of a "Global Cooldown" is just wrong and detracts from the game. It almost forces you to focus on the button bar and not the action. I think all the "it's destracting" line of comments are really about there being a Global Cooldown at all and not about wheather its "lighted with flash" or "dark with no flash" or a timer or anything.

2c

Yeah, after playing games like DCUO or CO, or even CoX before that, it's hard to stomach GCDs, the whole concept is so clunky and retro.

Nevertheless, now that ability delay is largely sorted, SWTOR's system feels fairly fluid even within the confines of a GCD. Most classes usually have sufficient important abilities that are off the GCD to make things a bit more interesting.

I want to know why the advertisement videos show high quality textures enabled and these are not even an option in the live product. Compare your game to the links in this thread. Compare your game to the "cut scenes" and see the difference. In 2012 an MMO should have high settings.

Yeah, but after all the other revelations late in development... Well, I wasn't surprised they decided to have a global cool down too. I'm still kind of flabbergasted that they changed the animation to this to begin with. What mental process brought about the conclusion that this neon was an improvement that rated high enough to push out while so many basics of UI options and customization are still apparently ignored?

The fact that within such a small time frame they made fixing their screw-up the point of an article which included pictures and a video highlights how oblivious they, again, were. Seriously, this may be BioWare's first MMORPG but they hired lots of folks who have other MMO's in their resumes. They should have known better than this.

Bioware, thank you.

Not only for 'fixing' this, but for your honesty, transparency, and moving quickly to take care of players' concerns. We are all human, and in a complex endeavor like running an MMO things will get missed, mistakes made, or in this case releasing a feature change with really no idea there would be such a widespread kickback.

Things happen and it's what you do next that counts.

+100 rep to Bioware.