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

I believe for an MMO to achieve success game developpers have to look at psychology. I would agree that while the whole success behind WoW is a great "Feel" for your character, the smoothness of your attacks and channeled abilities, healing etc, its not the only thing that contributes to its success.

In order for you to "enjoy" something long enough to play several hours without realizing or to actually sit through a progression raid, every action, every objective has to trigger some fundemental part in your brain saying "ok if I do this, I'm going to get this". For DPS classes, its big numbers (scrolling combat text, dps meters, etc..) for healers its keeping tanks//raid alive, you get the picture. I would guarentee you that if you put 5, 10, or 20 people in a raid instance, told them they have to progress until they down the boss and not have any number display, loot available or achievement, they would quit within 1 or 2 weeks (probably within the first several attemps). Sure you would get the odd extremists that would do it just to say they did it. But no one would care, so they probably wouldn't do it repeatedly.

Like it or not, blizzard has found a superb way to introduce this into their MMO//games in general, I mean, look at their games, how many GoTY awards do they have, I almost feel bad for other game companies because every strategy game that comes out is goign to have to compete with: "Oh well SC2 does this, or Starcraft Broodwar was even better". When a new MMO comes out, how many "This game sux compared to WOW" threads are there, or how many "In WoW we had this, bring it here too". They have products appealing to a wide range of market computers, they're learning curves are not incredibly steep for the casual player, they have many tools designed to help the player, its literally a gold mine.

Their developpers know how to keep players hooked, they introduce you quickly to "Instant Gratification" with subtle programming that makes it feel "easy" and enjoyable. Your brain likes being rewarded for anything and everything. Go and pick up an instrument, try and practice//learn it with your favorite PC game on the computer next to you and see how long you last. Even people who don't particularly like WOW, play it because there's not really much out that they feel is worth the time and effort they put into their character. How many people do you think will buy Diablo3; another GoTY, and if you think I'm wrong, go back to this thread in 2012 and quote me who the award. Blizzard yet again does something groundbreaking by introducing Real Money Auction houses and while this may not have a direct effect on the game itself, for professional//fulltime gamers around the world this will be a historic moment. A video game company finally taking the next step into saying "ok, you want to be a professional gamer, here.. we'll give you the tools to make money and you don't have to be sponsored///top 2%". This is going to be a benchmark for game companies in the future and a new wave of internet business. I wouldn't be suprised if the CEO's of Blizzard most likely have posters in their office quoting "Haters gonna hate"... with a huge stack of $$$ under them just to look at and laugh. You may hate their products, but you cannot deny their marketing//programming//ingenuiety. Yes they may have copied styles from other games, ideas from other mechanics, but they did it BETTER, they did it solid, and they ended up in the end with a longer list of subscribers than the games who did it orriginally.

While Bioware may not need to address their combat response time, they need to make sure mechanics are in place to keep players wanting to quest, wanting to pvp, wanting to progress their character past the level cap and to give them (bioware) time to fix the other issues at hand. Suprisingly they have missed some fundemental programming issues already, considering we are 2011 and they have spent a MASSIVE amount of money on the game you would think these issues that have been reported throughout beta be fixed, they none the less can still recouperate and possibly address the combat and other issues in future patches.

Blizzard themselves are quoted saying they hope Bioware does well..You would think after all the time, $$, and effort put into something, you want it to succeed no mater what perspective you look at it from. You have to have a clear goal in mind with where you want to take your product (I'm sure BW has this) but you also have to listen to your player base, try to balance it out and not make a mess of things.

Its a tough industry out there, the player base being 8 days into release of a game is already thinking months ahead of you. What comes fast is not fast enough anymore, what's free is too much of a lineup and what costs $$ is too expensive.

Bioware, you mentioned in your letter to the player base that you wish the force be with us...

Well, I would just like to wish that "May the force be with you".

Its not latency issue ..... its so clear that even a child can understand that....

Or maybe no ?!

It's not even viable in casual group play. With you and your companion doing your story quest sure, it's doable and even enjoyable. I will just give one example of how prioritizing animations over character control is a bad thing.
We have a group in a flashpoint where the mobs including the bosses do what's called random agro. The tank (me) has some trash mobs and the boss tanked for the moment. The dps are doin what they do best, slaughter things, the healer is healing and all is well in a galaxy far far away. And then....The boss decides it wants to rip the healers face off, why? Who knows, maybe he doesn't like your pretty yellow dress, uhmm robe I meant robe. Remember these mobs do what's called random agro... The tank (me) is still tanking the trash mobs and as luck would have it is in the middle of a parry animation as the boss descends with a wicked gleam in his eye on our beloved robe wearing healer. Now because I'm in the middle of a game induced parry animation,when I taunt the boss calling him names using the most colorful of four letter words, it doesn'tt work. Well why the heck not you ask? Because animations overide character input , that's why. So, my gcd gets used but the taunt doesn't work. Since the gcd is used I now can't even jump to boss to try and save my robe wearing friend. The healer takes a pummeling tries to run off, kite, get away...anything to shake this boss and it aint happeneing. Healer dies.....I am dependant upon my healer to a certain degree as is the healer dependant upon me as is the entire group and vice versa. I failed my healer and my group because the game dictated I can do nothing while in a parry animation, BUT at the same time used the ability and the gcd even though it didn't fire. You see, there are times when you must have absolute control over your toon. Things can go south and that's when you need a responsive combat system. This is only one of the many many many reasons animations over gameplay is a bad idea. Others can cite other examples or ways in which the animations are causing issues. No, this isn't happening to everyone, no this doesn't happen all the time. It is only certain skills at certain times but is detrimental to gameplay and has already caused a group wipe once or twice. Now I love this game. I'm not going to quit. But I along with many others beg bioware to fix this in some manner.

Update: Stephen Reid, the Senior Community Manager has responded to a post on the reddit thread about ability delay.

The question: "Ability Delay. This has been brought up all over the forums at swtor.com including http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=95738 . Have you guys discussed this internally, and if so, is there an ETA for a fix on this issue?"

His Response: "Hey! It has been discussed internally, and we'll talk about it publicly soon. It's not a simple issue so we don't want to issue a quick, off-the-cuff response."

So we can all relax guys! They hurd us! Herp.

Now what they will respond with is interesting.

I feel the combat is extremely smooth and I really have no complaints anymore now that I switched up my play style.

If my play style works, and I experience no problems, why continue doing what you do and expect a different result?

Stephen Reid just stated over at Reddit that the team is aware of this issue and it's being discussed internally. However, due to the complexity of the issue, they're not ready to make any off-the-cuff statements about it other than they know and they're working on it.

should shut us up for a few days, no?

Havent played in days. I have a feeling this issue wont be resolved. After pvp'ing for an hour this issue drove me to quit. Sorry but unresponsive gameplay didnt even exist in EQ1, I have no idea why it is in a 2012 game.

E: Damnit, Moriam beat me to it.

Sorted by "hot" comments so it doesn't get lost since it's getting the most upvotes: http://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/commen...star/?sort=hot

no its more like:

1) I've done extensive testing and some of us even made videos showing how some abilities off the gcd dont cast when activated but still reset the gcd and use the resources, this is a major issue that makes the gameplay feel sluggish/nonrespsonsive and definitely hurts the ability to do any real competitive pvping.

versus

2) My game works just fine this game is awesome. I dont know what you are all complaining about. I've tried to duplicate the issue and I cant make it do it, so you need to buy a better computer/wait for animations to finish/play a non-melee class/adjust your preferences. Relax, give it time, have fun the game just came out.