The real problems with the current state of PVP

I totally agree on the responsiveness, I can't tell you how many times I've stood there mentally screaming at the screen waiting for an interrupt to go off that would stop a heal, or a cc, only to have the ability go off anyway And burn my interrupt.

The UI needs HUGE improvements, not just for PVP, but for player feedback in general. I know they were going for a minimalist feel, but this is ridunkulous. Let me decide what I want and where I want it, please? And how big or small I want it to be on my screen. And if I'm experiencing no latency, I expect an Instant ability to go off the Instant I activate it.

If you want to keep the amount of CC that's in the game in for PvE (which is a good amount, every class should have a bit for soloing, which you do a lot of here.) then there needs to be diminishing returns in PVP. after I've been stunned for 5 seconds once, the next 5 s stun needs to be for 2s, and the third one I need to be immune to until I haven't been CC'd for 20-30 seconds. And my Ice-age long cool down for CC breaking either needs to be 75% shorter, or make me immune to other CC's for 10 seconds after hitting it.

But honestly, right now, my biggest problem with PvP? isPlaying Imperial. It seems like every one and their mother on Republic is playing a Sage, or Scoundrel, or whatever the trooper healer is. I look at the scoreboards at the end of a match and 3/4's of the Republic team has some kind of a healing score, and Imperials? maybe two guys. A good match is three, but not uncommon for only one, or even none at all. And that's not really Bioware's fault, that's just the IP working it's magic on the fan base. Not a lot of healing role models on the Dark side

I wish I didn't find all the Republic story arcs to be boring as hell. because right now, it's just awful trying to get a heal on the ball carrier redside.

I do not mean this as an insult, but unless you're actually fast enough both with your hands and your brain to notice, you won't. There is a MASSIVE difference between World of Warcraft combat and SW:TOR combat despite the core systems being so similar, and trying to explain it to people who do not notice it right away is utterly pointless.

It's one of the things that 5% of playerbase notice and rage about ? I have no lags or unresponsiveness either ... one ability every gcd + the ones off gcd fire on time.

Why are we comparing games to WoW when WoW looks like a low res cartoon that benefits from an extraordinarily mature game engine?

I agree with this. I haven't noticed any problems with my abilities responding too slowly. I definitely think their targeting system needs work! It's so hard to click on the person you want when everybody's clustered together. I also don't think there's too much CC going on. I've gotten CCed a few times in PvP but nothing gamebreaking.

I agree, but my biggest BEEF with any game including this one, is the "it all changes at 50(max) level. Or its balanced for level 50 play, level up. What a load of crap. I play the game from 1 THRU 50 not 1 then 50.

I've been a hardcore pvper in MMOs since 2005 and I strongly agree with every point (except for the CC one). I get the impression that the responsiveness of combat is lacking because of Bioware's forced "cinematic combat" where every animation has to play out. This is why bounty hunters are effectively superior to troopers because their animations cast faster.

This is also why sometimes my abilities don't work in succession. This not devastating in PvE but it absolutely essential in PvP when dealing with interrupts that have to hit a quarter second window or else you're screwed. If these very basic issues aren't corrected then I don't see how any hardcore PvPer could convince themself to continue supporting this game.

We're not comparing graphics.

Mortar Volley can be "cancelled" after the second shot (when the cast bar is done) by strafing, and the third shot is fired mid-air. It looks stupid, and isn't very intuitive, but it seems possible to get them to behave the same way.

None of this pertain to the actual engine responsiveness, though. Whether you're using rotations, mashing buttons, or bouncing in circles, either the game is responsive or it isn't.

They exist, but they are horribly under-communicative. When you're not sure if you were rooted or you took your finger off "W", that's bad telepgrahing. Force Choke is an example of this done right - you're lifted in the air, there's lightning all over, you shake furiously, obviously something is up. A lot of the roots are terrible in this regard, sadly.

You're serious? Even if the game was incredibly responsive, if you can't effectively target an enemy healer, that's a big problem. Difficulty shouldn't rest on bad targeting systems.

By interesting, you mean massive and undefeatable ranged zergs supported by untouchable healers? That's pretty much the only result of a combination of bad targeting+hard-to-land interrupts. When you're unable to direct train fire or burst key targets, you'll end up with a massive AoE spam.


It isn't intermittent. It's persistently bad. Okay, not bad. It's not like it's horrible. It's average. Maybe above average, but that's sadly all it is. There's no snap response to spells, there's some animation issues (e.g. Mortar Volley) with others. The lack of sound or notifications (clear animations, well telegraphed skills, good sound communication etc) has nothing to do with server issues either, it's by design. One of the things WoW has done well is telegraphing, aka telling you what's going on by sound and visuals. Kidney Shot is an example of a sound that really cuts through the noise of combat. Even things like the placement of debuffs (big squares at top right vs very small squares at bottom left) help with showing you what's going on.

Now there are some issues that appear to be lag-related, such as entering a death state before visually doing so (i.e mobs heal to full, you freeze, then suddenly, poof dead) etc... but that doesn't pertain to the responsiveness of spells, which has more to do with the engine/netcode than lag. To give an example of good responsiveness in TOR, a sniper is able to fire an explosive probe after a snipe, before the projectile lands, and get extra burst damage. Lag can negatively affect that (and make it impossible), but the responsiveness is there as a baseline.

It's also worth mentioning that most users probably won't notice the issue. Since most people are using WoW as a reference point (because it has the most responsive combat of any MMO right now....sadly) people who haven't played it won't know the difference. Likewise, people who didn't do a lot of PvP, especially at a high level, won't really know the difference. People who generally don't play fast, or don't PvP extensively, won't know the difference, etc. But if you've played WoW for years and gotten used to the responsive nature of the PvP, especially advanced tactics like baiting interrupts (fake casting), rapid tab-targeting to cast clutch silence/cc etc, you notice a very quick and sudden drop. And it's not to do with the pacing of combat either.

I think we need to differentiate between two categories. Firstly, there are the balance problems with PVP, which we really cannot fault anyone as it is very much early days for TOR. Things like a bit too much CC are simply class imbalances and can get fixed easily over time.

The second and more important category are the game engine issues. The OP mentioned 3 of these: casting responsiveness, buff/debuff notifications, difficulty of targeting. In the long term, these issues are generally more game making or breaking than the balance issues. I feel these issues are even deserving of their own thread but I will post about them here first.

Engine issues vary in difficulty to fix. For example, being able to target enemies by clicking on their nameplates is a relatively easy change that we don't need to discuss. Buff/debuff notifications also do not need a complete overhaul to make it clear which debuffs on the enemy are your debuffs. Responsiveness is probably a lot harder to improve but I will not speculate since I am not a game designer.

A few other game engine issues I'd like to add that were not mentioned in the OP. They may have been mentioned in the last 17 pages but I'm not going to flip through them all.

1) Macros - not really a gameplay 'issue', but still a HUGE part of gameplay in games that have them. Are there any plans to implement them? In 'that other game', macros play a huge part in pvp. I don't mean one-button macros; I'm talking about macros allowing you to cast something on focus/mouseover targets, etc.

2) A self-target key - this is especially annoying for healers, but incredibly easy to implement that I'm surprised it hasn't already been. A setting so that whenever you press a certain modifier, your spell is cast on yourself instead of your target.

3) Target of target - seeing who your target is casting on is pretty important. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Class imbalances are certainly on BioWare's mind and they will be paying very close attention to rectify any problems. But are they ready to change or alter the game engine with regards to the above? A simple 'yes' regarding this question would pacify many players. It would certainly make me very happy, for one.

No, you're comparing the overall feel and flow of combat. You're comparing apples to oranges.