Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Ability Delay
endgame1
Member Posts: 84
Hi all.
I've been browsing here for years, this is basically where I get all my mmo news.
Lately I've been following the release of SWTOR, reading the player feedback, to decide if it's a title I'd want to play.
One of the issues that gives me some degree of trepidation about the game is the supposed "ability delay" that many players have reported. For me personally, game controls need to be tight. I've uninstalled more than a couple titles that didn't deliver in that regard.
With this issue being something that could potentially negatively effect my gameplay, I thought I'd do a little research and form my own opinion. I've read many posts from players insisting it's real, and rebuttal posts from others who say they have no such issue with any delay.
There are more than a few people out there who seem to think that the Hero engine is somehow to blame. Other players insist the problem is on the users end, and often advise hardware upgrades to make the game run smoother.
I took it upon myself to read up on the Hero engine, to see if there's any validity to claims that it is the ability delay culprit. I read some articles from people who have worked with the engine before. I also read through the Hero engine wiki that's provided by the company that owns Hero engine.
So, I came across this> http://wiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Combat
I found this to be a rather interesting source of information, as it pertains to ability delay. If you read from the top, the page is basically explaining how there can potentially be issues with character actions delayed in a massive online environment. The page goes on to explain how developers should structure things to avoid the issue.
Obviously this section of the wiki is addressing an inherent hurdle that any mmo engineer would have; trying to make combat look smooth. The author talks about why this can be much harder with a mmo vs. a single player game or even LAN game.
The thing I found odd though is that on the combat page of the Hero engine wiki, ability delay seems to be the only issue talked about. They address it at the top, and then offer a page worth of solutions, and that's it for the entire page that pertains to combat.
The author talks about "common pitfalls" they have seen that can cause ability delay. As to whether this means common pitfalls they have seen that cause delay specifically with Hero engine, or common pitfalls they have seen across the mmo industry, I'm unsure.
In conclusion, if nothing else, the page does provide some insight as to why smooth combat can be difficult to achieve in a mmo.
As for me buying SWTOR, I think I'm going to wait a bit and see how it evolves. Hopefully over time they can get it running smoothly for everyone playing, regardless of the cause.
Comments
Very interesting, it was something I noticed in beta but couldn't quite find words on it. Apparently it was talked about even in CBT which kind of makes me wonder if it'll be fixed even if they acknowledged it just like Mythic did with Warhammer which was never fixed or least fixed in time to prevent it from a huge downfall.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Im like you, very sensitive to games that don't have tight controls.When SWTOR announced the trinity system, I went from major fanboi to doubtful thomas, but when I got into beta and actually played. My first words were, wow, this feels clunky and unnatural. Within 8 hours I stopped playing, looked at my list of bugs I had made, and never touched the game again.
Ability delay isn't a minor bug that's easy to cope with for a lot of people.
If you disagree I think Mythic would like to talk to you.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
He couldn't even get past a game having bugs in Beta.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
So your gonna highlight beta but not highlight this...
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Ability delay is no bug, it's poor coding and ignorance.
If it's a list of bugs you want, I don't think I have the time.
The 'ability delay' issue is something that Bioware admirred to after a chained thread that got to about 5,000 posts on the official forums. (Bioware's answer, in a nutshell: looking at it but non-trivial). Things were quiet whilst it was stickied and 'publically acknowledeged' but it back to being bumped again. (Link is to continuing thread 6, check the last page to see if it has spawned further pages.)
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=159300
The thread explains what the issue is and is not - with links to videos; and when the issue can be tolerated and when it is most significant. Almost certainly non-trivial to fix.
Huttball can be a laggy mess though right now, so I don't know if it is specifically the ability delay issue I'm seeing, or just really bad lag. Either way it's very annoying. CC and knockbacks are very important in Huttball, and having a one second delay can ruin your day. By the time my knockback fires to bump someone into fire or off a catwalk, they are already gone when it should have been perfectly timed.
I'm kind of leaning towards thinking that this is just part of the Huttball lag, for me at least. Everywhere else, I have no issues whatsoever.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Ability delay, wasn't what I called it when I played. I called it poor production quality. Like I said, the announced trinity system made me doubt the game, the poor production quality is something that has killed many games for me. It's something it has or it doesn't, never seen a game fix a core function of an engine like it yet. Whne the OP said the words Tight Controls, I knew exactly what he meant.
So what now? you are going to force people into accepting something that is not effecting them? i also never experinced any ability delays. The only bug i have is when full auto gets stuck. Otheriwse i haven't experinced ability delays in Huttball or outside huttball.
Not everyone is getting effected by it.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
My close friend said the same thing, so I went to his home and played on his system. And it was there too, only he wasn't sensitive to it or really cared. Till I pointed it out to him then he said, Oh I see what you mean. He's not a big PVP nut like me, so maybe it has a lot to do with what the OP said. Some of us are fickle about tight controls. Others, not so much.
Oh really? it is not about being fickle or not, i just never experinced it..simple. You think atleast once in 300 hours of gameplay i would notice it? so telling people hey you are just here to defend the game if someone is not effected by this issue is just BS.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
It is there and plenty of people have proved it.
I have died numerous times in combat, due to my medpacks not activating on critical moments, eventho pressing the hotkey several times in a row! Just an example. And plenty of other people have experienced this unresponsiveness.
The same thing with various other abilities not activating and/or not showing their animations. Not knowing if the ability worked or not. Another example.
When you compare to other games like EQ2, AoC, WoW or RIFT, then SW:TOR's combat is rather unresponsive and non-fluid.
It is definitely something they need to get sorted out rather sooner than later!
And we are going in circles here. It is effecting a lot of people but it iks not effecting everybody. So if people have no issues with it doesn't mean they are being less fickle, oblivious or just outright defenders of the game.
I wish people would read more before posting.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
I haven't experienced any ability delay either. Zero.
the only semi-repeating bug I experience is resource nodes not being accessible. But ability delay? Nope. I hit my key, and it fires off flawlessly. Now I realize some people ARE experiencing this. However, it is by no means universal.
i have died a couple of times due to the delay as well. it becomes annoying sometimes, i do enjoy the game but i hope it gets fixxed.... why mmos are still being developed with ancient engines is beyond me...
Tor's engine is quite new, so new in fact that might be the reason they have not hammered out the bugs so far.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
You missed the part where i said that I have been experiencing it in Huttball lately. So, to explain that a little further, I admitted to currently noticing the issue.
I've done all the hard modes, cleared the raid content as the main healer, and have reached valor rank 30 in pvp. In all of that gameplay, I have only noticed it during Huttball.
Let me give you an example. In one of the hard modes there is a mechanic where you have to do two consecutive knockbacks on a boss. They have to be timed very close, within a second or two of each other. We use voice chat to coordinate the knockbacks. I am a healer and I always do the first one, then someone else does the second.
During this fight, my knockback and my teammates knockback (i only run this with a set group btw) both fire off immediately and the fight is won. We never have to account for any delay.
When I'm in Huttball, however, my knockback almost always takes a couple of seconds to fire off. This is infuriating because knockbacks are extremely useful in huttball. You can knock people off catwalks, knock them into fire, knock them into the acid, prevent them from picking up the ball, get melee off your back, etc. It is EXTREMELY difficult for me to even use knockbacks properly in Huttball. This goes for my stun too.
If some guy is waiting to run accross the fire trap, I have to actually try to cast my stun a second or two before the fire goes down because if I don't the player will already be on the other side of the trap when the fire activates and will receive no damage.
Is that a good enough freaking example of my experience with this issue for you?
EDIT: oh and not once did is claim that noone is having the issue or pretend it's not real. In fact i admitted to it being real and just provided you with a very real example of how this issue is affecting me.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
It is possible for a person to not notice it if they're used to high ping in games, remember how we happily fragged in Q1 with 150-250ms ping?
Or they learn the rhythm of the game and manage to keep it in all situations.
This works in PvE only, of course, but it's possible to live with it.
This thing is anyway acknowledged and verified by Bioware, so denying it is actually pointless. Or attending to a conversation telling you don't have it. If you had a solution for it, then there would be a case, but otherwise, no.
After I first read about the ability delay issue there is, I was able to pinpoint the major issue I had with SW:ToR combat. I thought it was because of the latency, but it was the game.
Unless you participate in some heated PvP warzones or somewhere where the game is strained, it's natural that you won't experience any of what is mentioned.
I wouldn't really call it a delay, more of a hiccup. Like a mini time stop and then everything goes fast forward. The problem of course is that whent the time stop happens you don't know if your healng spell registered or your damage killed that guy and when everything goes fast forward you have practically zero time to compensate for anything that happened in between.
This is not the first game that has similar issues. But it is one that the particular issue is easily repeatable and identifiable in pretty much every warzone where the two teams are equally powered so the battle is fierce.
Edit: My ping is averaging 80ms.
Actually you're wrong there. SW:TOR is built upon the Hero Engine. A modified version of the Hero Engine to meet their needs, but the Hero Engine nonetheless, and said game engine is fairly old. Also nobody uses the Hero Engine because it's a pretty terrible game engine and is the reason why the game has certain issues, like players using high performance PCs getting between 5-20 FPS in Warzones.
Can omeone who has some actual expeitrence in coding or software development tell us how easy - or hasrd - it will be for Bioware to fix 'ability delay'?
I would say the most logical reason is probably one of these, since the first person I showed it too admitted to being oblivious to it.
The issue in some cases is with how the game prioritises animation over the skill's GCD and when the animation doesn't match the GCD, there can be some conflict and prevents skills from going off, when queued one after another. So the best solution would be to tighten up the animations first, so that they all match the respective GCDs. Coding comes after, or simultaneously... whatever.
Ok been playing the game for a complete month now. I have to say the only place i notice ability delay is pvp warzones. That goes for all of my guild too (150 members) and the friends i made in my server. Anyone (Bunks) in this thread claiming that he has ability delay during pve, is either not even playing the game or is just hating sw:tor 2 much.