Hello,

 

Updated: 12-30-11' (This is Continuing Thread 3)

 

Original Thread: Thread 1 -- http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=84943

Thread 2 -- http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=95738

 

 

Before you label me a Troll please read my Early Review here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=76222

 

My Reflection of the entire Thread: 3000+ Replies (Read every single one), 120,000+ Views... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=95738&page=82

 

 

Other forums discussing this issue:

 

(MMO-Champion) http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1052920-Ability-Delay-Character-Responsiveness-(This-will-make-or-break-SW-TOR

Incredible Post on Rift Forums - MUST READ! http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/pvp-warfronts/276611-rift-pvp-woes-feedback-long.html

 

 

Video Examples of the Discussed Subject

 

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

Thank You - Sanchpanza (Thread 1, Page 123) -- TOR Example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzP0xjNLyX4

Thank You - Samdbtto (Thread 1, Page 124) -- TOR Target Switch Responsiveness

Thank You - Badchx (Thread 1, Page 181) -- TOR Healing Issue MUST SEE!:

Thank You - Devolution (Thread 1, Page 210) -- TOR Melee Ability Delay MUST SEE!:

Thank You - Hulduet (Thread 2, Page 89) -- TOR Ability Activation Timer:

Thank You - Badchx (Thread 2, Page 148) -- WoW/TOR Cast-Moving Responsiveness MUST SEE!

Thank You - jtype_sw (Thread 3, Page 24) -- Kolto Injection Healing FAIL ABSOLUTE MUST SEE!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fc79BNC-zI

Thank You - Owarida (Thread 3, Page 27) -- Imperial Agent, Delay + Snipe Cancel etc.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTX3VYtZGhE

Thank You - jtype_sw (Thread 3, Page 83) -- Ability Trigger FAIL ABSOLUTE MUST SEE!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbFgyeRFbdo&context=C3d50270ADOEgsToPDskJYu1y-3uG_uWyCstMK7nMz

 

 

Note: Please, if you agree with these points and this subject, rate the thread. Perhaps this will raise Bioware's awareness. Anything we can do to make SW:TOR the best it can be because the truth is you and I are here because we want it to succeed and we see it's potential.

 

The game has been out long enough for the masses to finally realize the negatives. As people are getting out of the starting planets and the "new and shiny" feeling starts to subside, the cracks in this new wonderous world are becoming apparent.

 

Ability Delay and Character Responsiveness: -- It is not Latency or FPS Lag

 

I will attempt to discuss this issue and I will do so in a manner that I hope will make everyone understand it better. The "Character Responsiveness" for lack of a better term, is how "smooth" the game plays from your avatars perspective. I have played SWG and EQ to a lesser degree as well as Warhammer Online and several other MMOs and I must honestly say that Bioware has gotten this all too important aspect much better than any previous MMO that I have experienced (with the obvious exception, to which we will get soon).

 

You see, I really want you (The Reader) to understand the importance of this topic. To drive home "how" important this is. In fact I will say this: I am in no way shy to say that, the reason Warhammer Online, EQs, Rift, SWG etc. etc. could never "ever" get to anything near WoW subscriptions is the Character Responsiveness. All these games failed for many reasons, and a game "can" fail for many reasons and on many fronts but this single-one-category... is by "far" the #1 Reason why World of Warcraft is World of Warcraft.

 

Again, I must drive home the fact that no matter if you understand this issue or are new to the subject (and perhaps MMOs) or if you believe the game is fun and enjoyable and think that this is just a vocal minority piping up on something nonsensical. This is the undeniable truth and any game developer or serious gamer worth their salt will agree.

 

 

What is Character Responsiveness and Ability Delay? -- It is not Latency or FPS lag

 

It is the feeling of connection between the person behind the keyboard and the Avatar that is being controlled. Basically, the better the Character Responsiveness is, the smoother the Game Plays! You may HATE World of Warcraft and believe it is the worst abomination on the planet... that is fine. HOWEVER, you "must" objectively admit that it is the absolute, smoothest Character Responsiveness in a Western Available MMO ever.

 

If you are a WoW player, and have played WoW with any amount of skill, competitiveness, you cannot help but cringe when in a Warzone in SW:TOR. It feels unresponsive, frustrating... as if something is wrong with you! but there is nothing you can do about it!

 

If you have never played WoW, perhaps you come from SWG or EQ2 or Rift etc. that is fine! You are WELCOME in this thread, it is not WoW Players against the Rest! I just "need" you to understand that SW:TOR is "noticeably" and "objectively" bad in this crucial department. I am not writing this because I am trolling or because I love WoW, on the contrary. I am doing this because I want SW:TOR to be amazing, I love so many aspects of this great game... but if this is not addressed it "will" die like every other one.

 

 

Why is this "so" important?! -- It is not Latency or FPS lag

 

From here on I will say 0.5 for emphasis but reality is 0.2, 0.3 (ANY) Ability Delay is unacceptable.

 

And here is the real problem. It is so important because MMO gaming has become so "tight", so competitive and so smooth (through WoW), that it is completely and absolutely unacceptable for an ability or animation to be delayed by 0.5 seconds.

 

0.5 seconds is a lot of time, to our visual cortex. 0.5 seconds is the difference between interrupting a CC of the enemy player or not (and thus being disadvantaged/dying). 0.5 seconds is the difference between landing a Taunt on the "add" that just came into the room and thus having it come to you or it one-shotting your healer and thus wiping on the Boss you've just spent 3 Days wiping to.

 

Zero Point Five Seconds is a ******* Long Time

 

 

Bioware, I plead that you dedicate as many resources as required (all if needed) to address this. You cannot cram story/companions/new flashpoints - operations... Class Balance into patches and hope that is good enough.

 

I hate to be a crazed doomsayer but I must state: Mark my words, if SW:TOR's Character Responsiveness and Ability Delay is not on par with WoW's by March-June it will be just another Rift.

 

Bioware, please see the importance of Character Responsiveness and Visual Stimulation of Ability Animation Correctness. It should be impossible for me to have an ability's cooldown activated without seeing it animate.... this is unacceptable. I just truly hope that this isn't a core coding issue or engine issue, because then we're f'd.

 

 

 

Thread 1 -- Page 133 -- Poster: ajjw

 

"In a game like WoW, if your previous spell's animation is still playing when you use your next spell, the old animation immediately ends and that of the new spell beings. However in TOR, if an animation is still playing, the game will not let you cast another spell, even if the cast time and GCD have already finished.

 

In other words, if a spell has a 2s cast time but a 2.5s animation, you'll be sat there looking stupid for 0.5s unable to cast anything after the first spell, whereas in WoW the last 0.5s of the old animation will be "clipped" (ie cut off) and you'll be able to cast a new spell immediately, the animation of which will also begin to play immediately."

 

 

Thread 2 -- Page 109 -- Poster: Reedful (Professional Gaming Experience)

 

His Proven Credentials: http://www.arenajunkies.com/user/174129-threatslol/

 

WC3 Tournament Player

WoW Tournament Player

CS:S Tournament Player

 

Attended regionals and most MLG events from 2008-2010

 

Xcore: On a personal note, I value input like this a lot as this is someone with a very high understand of the intricacies of "Competitive Combat Design". I realize that the view may be a little "Hardcore" but nonetheless it is invaluable and coming from an individual that is perceiving the "Gameworld" at a higher level.

 

"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!""

 

 

Thread 3 -- Page 13 -- Poster: Asabalana (Casual Gamer)

 

"I am an average player who will never be on the list of greats and I see the issue very clearly. Yesterday I ran Esseles on a Trooper alt. It was painful. Spells misfired, spells cast after the gcd was over and ability bar was lit had delays before they activated. At points trying to cast while straffing was an adventure. As bad as the problem is in solo play, you can work around it, but in group play it is really bad. You feel that you are letting the group down because you can't function and play your part.

 

Yes I have played WOW and the only thing that I liked about the game was the combat system. But I am a noob at heart. This is an issue that affects everyone. The only difference between the top tier well experienced players and noobs newbies and newcomers is that the top guys/gals can understand and verbalize why game play does not feel good. The rest just know that it does not feel good although they can't put their finger on why.

 

I can't speak to whether this will make or break swtor, but believe that it will cost the game a great many subs and result in a great deal of lost revenue for EA/BW. It will cost the loss of most of the top tier players who although small in number contribute a lot to the game and community.

 

The game still has a lot of bugs. LOL, yesterday a level 17 player asked for help with a boss in general. I responded with my 26 JC Shadow. We fought the boss and he was killed quickly but I got the boss to 0 health and the thing still kept fighting. That went on for ten minutes and the boss just kept on with 0 health and would not drop. I told the person that I was trying to help that the instance was bugged and that he should just move on. No big deal (one bugged quest out of thousands that will be fixed eventually). But the combat system problems are a prime big deal. They need to be given top priority with communication to the community and be fixed post haste. Otherwise people will start leaving the game. It will be a real shame because most of the people who end up leaving really like the game and want to play, but find it not playable because of the combat issue.

 

To the OP, I think that BW owes you big time. You have identified and described a problem and forced their attention to it. BW is much better off facing this right now than rather seeing subs drop and somewhere down the line when it is way to late identifying why."

 

 

 

 

Thread 2 -- Page 123 -- Georg Zoeller

 

"This issue is under active investigation.

 

The complication is that there are actually a number of different issues with very different causes and potential resolutions lumped together in this thread.

 

All we can say for now is 'we are actively working on the topic of character responsiveness'."

 

Georg "Observer" Zoeller

Principal Lead Combat Designer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S.: It is not Latency or FPS Lag... also very important to understand.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Xcore

Because the previous thread has exceeded our normal threshold for thread length, we've started this new thread for the community to discuss this topic.

 

Developer response in the previous thread:

This issue is under active investigation.

 

The complication is that there are actually a number of different issues with very different causes and potential resolutions lumped together in this thread.

 

All we can say for now is 'we are actively working on the topic of character responsiveness'.

 

As always, we ask that the community keep the following things on mind when responding:

 

1. 
    
   
2. No insults, name calling, or personal attacks
    
   
3. Please stay on topic.
    
   
4. Please express your opinion and thoughts in a constructive, respectful manner.
    
   
5. If someone violates the Rules of Conduct, please flag it instead of replying to it.
    
   
6. Keep in mind that everyone has different viewpoints. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they're trolling. If you believe someone is trolling, please use the Flag function to report their post.
    
   

 

Thank you and enjoy the discussion!

Third remake of this thread by the forum mods!

 

For all the new folks here BW has stated that they are looking into the problem, so hang in.

 

 

Link below is to the second remake. Several pages have the link about this being looked into, but there is a quote from BW on the last page, and other pages as well.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=95738&page=165

Edited December 30, 2011 by Halacs

Third times the charm

Still supporting.

I agree. Every time I play an MMO that isn't WoW I cringe at the movement of my character not being fluid enough. Some have done better than others, but WoW has it down pat. SWTOR could use a lot of improvement.

Many people will quit if this issue is not resolved sooner than later.

I had just seen a new thread with two folks that are having this problem and have not found this thread yet.

Supporting until resolved.

 

PS: vocal minority who has no idea how to play a game is not insane, not it plays this game differently than how we should. Eat it fanboys.

Many people will quit if this issue is not resolved sooner than later.

 

 

Well for me I'm going to give it time. I'm still having fun and I'm an alt-aholic.

Some fixes take time. They have started to look into the problem and that is a great start.

After all, they had Christmas hollidays too.

I agree. Every time I play an MMO that isn't WoW I cringe at the movement of my character not being fluid enough. Some have done better than others, but WoW has it down pat. SWTOR could use a lot of improvement.

 

Yeah it is crisp. I found DaOC to be the next closest then Rift as far as that responsiveness.

Sadly this is mostly the reason why I could never play any other MMO besides Warcraft to near it's full potential.

Supporting until resolved.

Well last night, not sure if it was due to lag or what, but whenever I activated stealth I would go into stealth then a second later my companion would go into stealth...and of course all of my controls had the delay on them like usual

Sadly this is mostly the reason why I could never play any other MMO besides Warcraft to near it's full potential.

 

It took time to develop the combat.

I can adjust and ignore the delay for now because this game is just much fun and I love the stories. Feel apart of the story history instead of a viewer. But it's just my opinion.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Halacs

It took time to develop the combat.

I can adjust and ignore the delay for now because this game is just much fun and I love the stories. Feel apart of the story history instead of a viewer. But it's just my opinion.

 

I must disagree, in WoW classic, the combat system worked the same way, GCD was correctly showed, and the exact time it was ended you could fire a new ability and it was instantly fired upon the target, unless you had latency high, wich is logical, but it isnt something "WoW has developed in 7 years" as other people try to argument

I feel like one of the issues causing bad character responsiveness is this:

 

World of Warcraft:

cast spell -> send cast spell request to the server + show castbar and start animation

 

Star Wars the Old Republic:

cast spell -> send cast spell request to the server -> wait for response -> show castbar and start animation

 

The ability que helps, so in some cases you can get two casts in a row that are instantly one after another, but the first spell is always delayed.

 

The downside of WoW's system is that they need to make all checks whether spell is ready to cast and target can be seen on both server and client - which may be sometimes problem, because client and server can be slightly out of sync.

Well i feel the same, character Responsiveness is one of the most important things to fix in the game. I dont know what the realm problem is , but i believe client side animations etc dont start before the reply from the server.

 

I hope bioware can fix this soon.

I almost broke up with my boyfriend because we got in a huge argument over him not healing me. He kept insisting that his heals weren't working and I finally realized why.

 

I hope you can help me mend this relationship and find a fix asap. This is more important than any new content in the next update. Quite critical. May the force be with you, Bioware.

I have a level 29 sith sorcerer, I very much like the game, and i rolled a sorcerer to be mainly a healer.

I hope that more players playing the same class and role feel the same but healing with that delay is frustrating and removes the fun from the game, to pvp especially. To be honest the last 3 days i have lost the interent logging into that char because simply i dont enjoy it healing or generally playing a caster with that delay.

However because i love the game, i rolled a meele class, sith assasin on whom the delay is not that much noticable. Currently level 14.

Bob and John tho, will not continue play like i did, when they notice how frustrating is to play a caster class with that delay.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Rokrz

Although I'm glad to see they're working on ability responsiveness, has there been any word on the FPS drops in warzones?

Although I'm glad to see they're working on ability responsiveness, has there been any word on the FPS drops in warzones?

 

Wrong thread.

The Guild Wars 2 crew was talking about he Character Responsiveness and took it very seriously. I suggest you do it too Bioware since that is the issue with separates good from bad MMO experience.

 

I've been playing WoW since 2005 to late 2011. I've been playing 3v3 and 5v5 arena under at least 3 of those years and boy.. I can tell the delay is huge in this game atm. Please you need to understand that "scrubs", "noobs", "newbies", "newcomers" will have a hard time understanding this issue because their game play is slow, bad, unskilled etc... But for us experienced players (most of the community are former MMORPG players with tons of exp) it will be a huge problem and ofc it will ruin our experience in-game OVERALL. If this issue is not solved within a 1 - 3 months, your subscriptions will drop, good mmorpg players will leave and SWTOR community will be left with nothing but a bunch of fan boys..

Edited December 30, 2011 by GoranX

The Guild Wars 2 crew was talking about he Character Responsiveness and took it very seriously. I suggest you do it too Bioware since that is the issue with separates good from bad MMO experience.

 

I've been playing WoW since 2005 to late 2011. I've been playing 3v3 and 5v5 arena under at least 3 of those years and boy.. I can tell the delay is huge in this game atm. Please you need to understand that "scrubs", "noobs", "newbies", "newcomers" will have a hard time understanding this issue because their game play is slow, bad, unskilled etc... But for us experienced players (most of the community are former MMORPG players with tons of exp) it will be a huge problem and ofc it will ruin our experience in-game OVERALL. If this issue is not solved within a 1 - 3 months, your subscriptions will drop, good mmorpg players will leave and SWTOR community will be left with nothing but a bunch of fan boys..

 

Pretty much and my boyfriend will probably dump me and continue playing while I go back to my DOTA style games, since I'm really tired of WoW and can't be assed playing another MMO.

Keep this thread going! Bioware needs to respond to this

Voicing my support in the expedient resolution of this issue. Tired of getting stuck repeating the same animation over and over, yet never seeing any damage, even though my GCD activates.

 

Grandma won't be able to tell you there's a problem, but any actual gamer will.