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The State of the Game - Via PvP


Mackuss

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There is a giant design/logic flaw in this game.

 

The more I play, the more it seems to keep centralizing itself with the 1.5 GCD. Now, I completely agree arenas are utterly toxic to MMOs, but there's a peculiar conundrum that this game has created for itself.

 

Everything, and I mean everything about the fact that the GCD being 1.5 seconds logically points itself to, that, as long as it is like that, the game is designed FOR arenas. Think about it, since day one everyone has been saying that, because the GCD is what it is it, "creates more of a need to critically think about your moves, not get into locked rotations, and strategy will play more of a role in things".

 

I COMPLETELY, 100% agree with that, and to be honest, with the way I'm forced to play because of the GCD, I feel like there would be no greater game on the market for competitive PvP. For those reasons alone. In comparison, honestly, this game makes arena in WoW a hefty laugh with the way strategy is needed in a fight.

 

But what it's done to virtually everything else in the game - open world PvP/PvE(not SO much), and Warzones is render them virtually illogical and, for lack of a better term, pointless. All because of something so simple as the GCD. How?

 

There may be a lot of you out there that didn't play it but do you remember Halo? The game was great and fun and all, but do you remember what it was like on the smaller more..."intimate" maps? The entire game basically turned into a game of "clean up" kills. That is, it doesn't really matter if you kill someone because as soon as you do, someone comes along and hits you when you're about dead anyway. Now, take that concept and stretch it very very very finely, like a silk blanket, and imagine placing it over the entire game structure. The concept being: someone comes along and does something to you while you are in the middle of doing something else. It doesn't matter what that something is - it could be something very very little, so little, that it takes 1.5 seconds to do it - but the point is you are doing something and are rendered incapable of doing anything else, EVEN IF IT'S 1.5 SECONDS LONG, short of running.

 

That's all warzones are, or any form of PvP that's not dueling. It's something that transcends any argument really - it's going to happen between the most skilled premades, and between the most random pugs, because, well, it's the game. The game is completely logical and insanely well crafted when you are attacking another person - but the SECOND someone else starts attacking you (that is 2v1 even for a few seconds), the ability to be effective drops exponentially and sharply. Because the concept of someone doing something to you while you are doing something else is essentially occurring every single time you start a 1.5 GCD, and multiplied by anyone else attacking you.

 

And before you post, or even think "well anyone's going to die if they're being attacked by more people" - I want to tell you #1 - That's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, not the time at which you are ALLOWED to think about reacting, I'm talking about the time in which you CAN react. and #2 - that's not true. On my hunter in WoW, even in the middle of a heated battle I could very easily and quickly gee-tee-eff-oh a tight spot.

 

In WoW, the global cooldown was long enough to not allow anyone to spam everything inside of the time it takes a thought to hit your fingertips, but short enough to allow you to react to incoming threats, assess them, and actually DO something about it - to act accordingly. The current state of SWTOR is, it really doesn't matter how fast you can think, or how many good decisions you are capable of making quickly, or how skilled you are, you are an absolute slave to the 1.5 GCD. And it multiplies exponentially for every threat that comes your way - every time someone attacks YOU, there is another threat that you have to react to inside of your 1.5 seconds, and then can't because you're left staring at someone, THUS rendering you incapable to deal with multiple threats quickly and, in some cases, at all. Basically put. it renders you incapable of allowing you to play anywhere NEAR as fast as you can think. Not to MENTION how there is no diminishing returns (noticeably anyway), so you can be stunned until death.

 

Maybe to alleviate this, they should put way more things off of the GCD, but I don't know what that would do for the already atrocious server side lag.

 

Anyways, that's the state of the game. It's in a very peculiar place at the moment - and I don't see this extremely non-action-packed PvP style keeping many people for long - so it needs to highlight its strengths. And those strengths, ironically, is a competitive/arena style of gameplay.

Edited by Mackuss
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You have a point, but this is hardly something people wasn't aware of. It was said for a long time on the forums that the GCD was this long. Some people like it this way. Gives them more time to backpeddle before they die. I don't know about the other classes, but the Jedi guardian still has an array of abilities of GCD. All the defensive CDs, Riposte and our interrupt. It's still very much possible to win 2v1's though.

 

In all honesty though, no hotkey MMO so far has hardly had "Action-packed" combat. Even a 1 second GCD is more time then most people realise. Besides, once you have played enough, the decisions you make usually happen almost instantaneously as they become more and more based on previous experience rather then assessing every new situation individually.

Edited by Herew
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You have a point, but this is hardly something people wasn't aware of. It was said for a long time on the forums that the GCD was this long. Some people like it this way. Gives them more time to backpeddle before they die. I don't know about the other classes, but the Jedi guardian still has an array of abilities of GCD. All the defensive CDs, Riposte and our interrupt. It's still very much possible to win 2v1's though.

 

Well then that may be introducing another realm of "unbalancedness" - meaning survivability. I know tanks are tanks, but pure DPS should be able to mitigate that at some point, ESPECIALLY considering it's 2v1.

 

And about people backpeddling - I lol'd. I love seeing people do that.

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I am sorry, but I failed to grasp the point behind your post.

 

Elaborate, please.

 

 

For the record, WoW sports the same GCD system, the engine is more responsive though. I'll add that due to having no auto-attacks this GCD may feel a bit heavy, since you really spend a lot of time doing effectively nothing - I agree with that.

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do you say arenas are toxic to mmo's because you aren't good at them or you just came across a few partners who raged on you because you guys weren't successful ?

 

just remember the elitist players were in the game WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY before pvp arenas ever existed in wow.

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I am sorry, but I failed to grasp the point behind your post.

 

Elaborate, please.

 

 

For the record, WoW sports the same GCD system, the engine is more responsive though. I'll add that due to having no auto-attacks this GCD may feel a bit heavy, since you really spend a lot of time doing effectively nothing - I agree with that.

 

WoW is a second long GCD, that can then be mitigated via haste. SWTOR is a fixed 1.5

 

Elaboration (in the simplest way I can think of): I'm casting something. In the middle of casting - oh SH*T! there's a rogue! And a warrior! I don't even need to interrupt myself because the GCD's that quick - as soon as I'm done casting a shot I can turn to the rogue, and in mid air whilst facing to him, "stun" him via scatter shot, and disengage away - then slow the warrior's movement speed. All inside of 2 seconds TOPS. I saw threat - the game allowed me to react as fast as I want. (Well, I could react faster if I could), and deal with that threat efficiently.

 

In SWTOR? I'd see a rogue - I'd have to wait 1.5 seconds to turn to him and scatter shot him - wait another 1.5 seconds while getting away, and slow the warrior - at which case I'd have to wait yet another 1.5 seconds to even start CASTING another long cast-time ability.

 

Get it now?

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do you say arenas are toxic to mmo's because you aren't good at them or you just came across a few partners who raged on you because you guys weren't successful ?

 

just remember the elitist players were in the game WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY before pvp arenas ever existed in wow.

 

http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/11/13/blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake/

 

lol. Not the brightest crayon in the box are we?

 

Blizzard even admitted it's the worst thing they ever did because the second the thing was created, the game there on out has to be changed and balanced around them. The second you insert arena in games, no matter how you slice it, the game is now a game balanced around arena and everything else (questing, PvE) are now side thoughts.

 

Not the other way around.

Edited by Mackuss
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WoW GCD is 1.5 seconds.

 

Everything you said about hunters in WoW actually happens to hunters in WoW right now because they don't gear for haste. Heh..

 

I know on the wiki it says it's 1.5 seconds, but anyone who's got to level 20 in WoW can tell you that's not the case.

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I like how you associate the GCD with arena, then don't explain why at all. That's a lot of words that explain absolutely NOTHING about your point.

 

If you didn't understand why being forced to critically think about your abilities creates more of a strategy-needed/fencing-esque dueling environment then I can't help you.

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I know on the wiki it says it's 1.5 seconds, but anyone who's got to level 20 in WoW can tell you that's not the case.

 

Except it is the case?

 

You can lower GCD with haste, but it requires a heavy amount of haste to get it to 1 sec flat.

 

I think your issue may actually be a fact that engine is rather unresponsive, WoW engine is awesome for PvP - abilities fire off when you complete a cast instant or otherwise. Here, on the other hand, there is a lot of delay (relatively) and it is a problem.

 

 

 

As a side note, you really don't HAVE to attack everyone who disagrees or questions your points. It does not serve your argument well.

Edited by Gaidax
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Except it is the case?

 

You can lower GCD with haste, but it requires a heavy amount of haste to get it to 1 sec flat.

 

I think your issue may actually be a fact that engine is rather unresponsive, WoW engine is awesome for PvP - abilities fire off when you complete a cast instant or otherwise. Here, on the other hand, there is a lot of delay (relatively) and it is a problem.

 

 

 

As a side note, you really don't HAVE to attack everyone who disagrees or questions your points. It does not serve your argument well.

 

I won't respond to your last part because you're trying to start a flame war.

 

However, yes WoW's engine is superior in responsiveness, you're being trivial about the GCD. lol, I'm sorry but the GCD is not 1.5 seconds by the time you even hit Silverpine/Darkshire/Barrens etc. I'm sure it's just that long at level 1 as a courtesy to create some sort of a learning curve. It's just inconsequential. Yes, the game is responsive as hell, but it also doesn't mean that 1.5 seconds just "feels like" a second in WoW - it's the fact of the matter, lol - to the point that it is stupid to even keep talking about it.

 

To compromise with you though, maybe they should make alacrity affect the GCD then. Because 1.5 seconds FIXED at much later level/end game, at what's supposed to be more action packed because people have more abilities, is not happening. I feel like it's pointless to even give us tons of abilities because we can only use a few in even 6 seconds time.

Edited by Mackuss
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The GCD wasn't born because of arena or gameplay.

 

 

the GCD is in WoW and similar games like it because it's the only/best way of managing requests to and from the server.

 

if you cut the GCD in half then the game would experience double the amount of command inputs from the same amount of players, resulting in a massive drop of how many players an instance could support.

 

It's got nothing to do with arena, do not assume to know the industry and art of creating a game because you played a lot of WoW.

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I am sorry, but I failed to grasp the point behind your post.

 

Elaborate, please.

 

 

For the record, WoW sports the same GCD system, the engine is more responsive though. I'll add that due to having no auto-attacks this GCD may feel a bit heavy, since you really spend a lot of time doing effectively nothing - I agree with that.

 

I fight with this feeling every time I play. The engine is very much less responsive than WoW and it hurts to play if you have spent even 5 minutes playing WoW. In WoW, I hit an ability when the GCD is up and it goes off. In SWTOR I hit it and have to hit it AGAIN in order to make up for the clunky less responsive combat engine.

 

A lack of auto attack, while kind of unique and requiring more player input, does make you feel like you are doing NOTHING a lot of the time. I find myself especially having an issue when a target is low health and multiple mobs are attacking it. First I wait the 1.5 seconds, then I try to get off the killing blow only to realize that it has been taken a second before my ability actually hits and effectively is wasted and I now switch targets and wait another 1.5 seconds to do anything. That is 3 seconds of doing nothing... that 3 seconds adds up.

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It's sad to think how much money and time was spent on the creation of swtor and yet it feels so clunky and non-responsive. As someone who has played wow on and off for the past 6-7 years, it's the first thing i noticed and one of the main reasons I don't expect to be playing for too long.
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Having played WoW since vanilla. YES the gcds are 1.5 secs. Haste changes this to 1 second. As has been mentioned WoW is more responsive. Keep in mind this game is going live to the public tonight. And for a launch, not half bad.

 

WoW started like all things start. Where they end up is different, or they get left behind. EA won't let this cash cow fall behind. I'm very sure they will fix the responsiveness.

 

I happen to like the 1.5 gcd and no auto-attack. I could see how others would hate it. This is the price of trying something different. We all get our old man clothes on and sit in the rocking chair with our shot guns and talk about how much we hate change.

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Gonna put money that there are only a handful of people who have ever been "held back" by a 1.5s GCD posting on these forums and those people are probably being paid to play pro Starcraft right now.

 

A 1.5s GCD means you're taking around 40 attributable actions per minute. Assuming you retarget an average of once every 3-4s you are adding an extra 20 a minute. Throw in the fact that your keyboard hand has on average two fingers tied up with movement alone and if you move around or change direction to keep pace with another player, you're performing many more than 60 APM.

 

Most non-pro mid level Starcraft players are pushing 40-100 APM, with highs of 150-200. Playing a class at its potential without considering positional requirements or ability choice at all requires a raw 100 APM or so.

 

That alone should explain why so many people are bad at MMOs. There is a reason why more twitch based games have so few available actions and why those actions tend to be combinational rather than activation based.

Edited by Bakarn
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I fight with this feeling every time I play. The engine is very much less responsive than WoW and it hurts to play if you have spent even 5 minutes playing WoW. In WoW, I hit an ability when the GCD is up and it goes off. In SWTOR I hit it and have to hit it AGAIN in order to make up for the clunky less responsive combat engine.

 

A lack of auto attack, while kind of unique and requiring more player input, does make you feel like you are doing NOTHING a lot of the time. I find myself especially having an issue when a target is low health and multiple mobs are attacking it. First I wait the 1.5 seconds, then I try to get off the killing blow only to realize that it has been taken a second before my ability actually hits and effectively is wasted and I now switch targets and wait another 1.5 seconds to do anything. That is 3 seconds of doing nothing... that 3 seconds adds up.

 

Yeah it even got worse lately when I just got the talent for my sniper that makes it to where, whenever I enter cover my next Snipe is instant.

 

It's almost pointless, lol. Because I'm I'd rather that insane burst damage of a Snipe+Rifle Shot combo. Instead I get into Cover, Snipe instantly........................and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaait to do my next move.

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Gonna put money that there are only a handful of people who have ever been "held back" by a 1.5s GCD posting on these forums and those people are probably being paid to play pro Starcraft right now.

 

A 1.5s GCD means you're taking around 40 attributable actions per minute. Assuming you retarget an average of once every 3-4s you are adding an extra 20 a minute. Throw in the fact that your keyboard hand has on average two fingers tied up with movement alone and if you move around or change direction to keep pace with another player, you're performing many more than 60 APM.

 

Most non-pro mid level Starcraft players are pushing 40-100 APM, with highs of 150-200. Playing a class at its potential without considering positional requirements or ability choice at all requires a raw 100 APM or so.

 

That alone should explain why so many people are bad at MMOs. There is a reason why more twitch based games have so few available actions and why those actions tend to be combinational rather than activation based.

 

I understand you think you know what you're talking about (and DO know what you're talking about in regards to SC2 playing) - it's not just the pros that get APMs like that - I very steadily rock that as TERRAN. Likewise the pros aren't the only ones that do that - the only people that can think fast don't only play SC2.

 

Bottomline WoW allows you to play NEARLY as fast as you can think. SWTOR allows you to play ridiculously under the speed limit at which threats and obstacles are coming at you. They really need to allow Alacrity to lower the GCD.

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There is a giant design/logic flaw in this game.

 

The more I play, the more it seems to keep centralizing itself with the 1.5 GCD. Now, I completely agree arenas are utterly toxic to MMOs, but there's a peculiar conundrum that this game has created for itself.

 

Everything, and I mean everything about the fact that the GCD being 1.5 seconds logically points itself to, that, as long as it is like that, the game is designed FOR arenas. Think about it, since day one everyone has been saying that, because the GCD is what it is it, "creates more of a need to critically think about your moves, not get into locked rotations, and strategy will play more of a role in things".

 

I COMPLETELY, 100% agree with that, and to be honest, with the way I'm forced to play because of the GCD, I feel like there would be no greater game on the market for competitive PvP. For those reasons alone. In comparison, honestly, this game makes arena in WoW a hefty laugh with the way strategy is needed in a fight.

 

But what it's done to virtually everything else in the game - open world PvP/PvE(not SO much), and Warzones is render them virtually illogical and, for lack of a better term, pointless. All because of something so simple as the GCD. How?

 

There may be a lot of you out there that didn't play it but do you remember Halo? The game was great and fun and all, but do you remember what it was like on the smaller more..."intimate" maps? The entire game basically turned into a game of "clean up" kills. That is, it doesn't really matter if you kill someone because as soon as you do, someone comes along and hits you when you're about dead anyway. Now, take that concept and stretch it very very very finely, like a silk blanket, and imagine placing it over the entire game structure. The concept being: someone comes along and does something to you while you are in the middle of doing something else. It doesn't matter what that something is - it could be something very very little, so little, that it takes 1.5 seconds to do it - but the point is you are doing something and are rendered incapable of doing anything else, EVEN IF IT'S 1.5 SECONDS LONG, short of running.

 

That's all warzones are, or any form of PvP that's not dueling. It's something that transcends any argument really - it's going to happen between the most skilled premades, and between the most random pugs, because, well, it's the game. The game is completely logical and insanely well crafted when you are attacking another person - but the SECOND someone else starts attacking you (that is 2v1 even for a few seconds), the ability to be effective drops exponentially and sharply. Because the concept of someone doing something to you while you are doing something else is essentially occurring every single time you start a 1.5 GCD, and multiplied by anyone else attacking you.

 

And before you post, or even think "well anyone's going to die if they're being attacked by more people" - I want to tell you #1 - That's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, not the time at which you are ALLOWED to think about reacting, I'm talking about the time in which you CAN react. and #2 - that's not true. On my hunter in WoW, even in the middle of a heated battle I could very easily and quickly gee-tee-eff-oh a tight spot.

 

In WoW, the global cooldown was long enough to not allow anyone to spam everything inside of the time it takes a thought to hit your fingertips, but short enough to allow you to react to incoming threats, assess them, and actually DO something about it - to act accordingly. The current state of SWTOR is, it really doesn't matter how fast you can think, or how many good decisions you are capable of making quickly, or how skilled you are, you are an absolute slave to the 1.5 GCD. And it multiplies exponentially for every threat that comes your way - every time someone attacks YOU, there is another threat that you have to react to inside of your 1.5 seconds, and then can't because you're left staring at someone, THUS rendering you incapable to deal with multiple threats quickly and, in some cases, at all. Basically put. it renders you incapable of allowing you to play anywhere NEAR as fast as you can think. Not to MENTION how there is no diminishing returns (noticeably anyway), so you can be stunned until death.

 

Maybe to alleviate this, they should put way more things off of the GCD, but I don't know what that would do for the already atrocious server side lag.

 

Anyways, that's the state of the game. It's in a very peculiar place at the moment - and I don't see this extremely non-action-packed PvP style keeping many people for long - so it needs to highlight its strengths. And those strengths, ironically, is a competitive/arena style of gameplay.

 

Nope.

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