Posted by Lethality | 12 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You Affected By The ‘Ability Delay’?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

The “Ability Delay.” A large majority of players won’t even notice this largely intangible idiosynchrocy.If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can probably just safely vote “There is no such thing!” in the poll below and move along. But if you find yourself trying to figure out why something about combat doesn’t feel quite right, this is for you.

A few days ago, a thread cropped up on the official forums (and subsequently lit them on fire) worked to describe what some players are perceiving as a delay in the responsiveness of abilities in combat in some cases. This, in one way or another, has plagued nearly every single MMO that has come out since World of Warcraft – some worse than others. Say what you will about World of Warcraft, Blizzard built a masterpiece when it comes to combat and responsiveness in an MMO.

The original poster, Xcore, did a good job at explaining and then providing examples (along with other posters doing the same.) So for the first time, we have a snapshot of the issue:

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!

After no less than 2 iterations of the tread with over 400 pages (about 4,000 posts), forum super hero and Principle Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller recently chimed in this long-running thread with these words:

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’.

 So, with that acknowledgement we know that BioWare is aware of the issue and is working on it. The down side is that there is a real issue there, and the fix may not be simple or even possible.

I’m curious, of all the AAJ readers out there, have you experienced this? Does it bother you if so? What are your thoughts about what’s wrong and how to fix it?

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Posted by Cormeister | 5 Comments

Yellow Posts: Community Questions, In-Game Purchasing, Future Content, And Respecing

Forum user Spankyjnco posted a list of eight questions (expanded to ten) about various things in the game that probably a lot of players would like answered from BioWare. Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager, took the time to respond to all of the questions and let us know where they stand on the issues. Here are a couple highlights:

Q: Is there a plan to fix the graphic settings? Right now there is no real difference between medium/high graphics and it’s apparent that we are all stuck with the medium textures. What’s the reasoning for this, and do you guys have a fix planned?

A: It’s a bug, and we are working on rolling out a fix.

Q: A easier way to find groups. Having to spam in /1 is quite annoying to everyone in the zone, let alone those looking for a group. And noobdy seems to use that actual “Flag yourself for group” option because it’s not very successful. I would like to do flashpoints, but I’m not going to waste 30 minutes sitting in the fleet spamming /1 that I am looking for a group. Some kind of way to have a global search/group finder would be nice.

A: We’re aware of this desire, but we actually believe that finding others on the same planet as you encourages social interaction a bit more than a general ‘group finder’. We’re not saying it’ll never, ever happen but again, not high priority right now.

The post is pretty extensive, so I would encourage all of you to check it out for some valuable information.

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Posted by Momus | 6 Comments

Blasters, Beggars & Credits: I Love Ilum – Observations from the Summit

Some players do it for glory. Some do it for infamy. Some like to accumulate the most points, or explore the far reaches of the worlds they inhabit. This, however, is not a column for those people. This is a column for those people who, quietly or not, enjoy making money so that their digital avatar can sleep on large piles of cash.

A lot of details have been making their way out of the Fansite Summit, but perhaps most tantalizing of the recent items is the sudden openness about Ilum, the hostile and frozen planet of open-world PVP.

Of course, it’s the duty of this columnist to attempt to find some manner of profit in it all, so a quick run-down on the features and how we might make find some opportunities.

First, the most obvious one: the highest-level nodes of resources spawn here. As with other games that had high-level zones that encouraged world player-versus-player, players will be fighting over the best grounds for farming materials. However, unlike other games, the zone does not have a reset or timer. Instead, while farming, you will constantly be under threat, and it will be far more likely that you will encounter a hostile intent on preventing you from harvesting that sweet, sweet cheddar. Full-contact gathering certainly has its place as a sport, but it also cuts into profits. In general, if you yourself are not a PVP (at least in combat) enthusiast, I would recommend going at off-peak hours, unless it turns into the only place to acquire some rare material – in which case, fight on!

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Posted by Cormeister | 2 Comments

Yellow Posts: Lots of Imperial Agent Information

I’m usually not one to believe in coincidences and the recent postings by a certain developer definitely made me continue that belief. Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer, spent the week leading up to the release of the Imperial Agent Progression Video talking about the Imperial Agent on the forums. Even saying this on Wednesday:

Quote: Originally Posted by Lenali

I took matters into my own hands to find out information about the Imperial Agent. Bioware isn’t going to give us information about the class and i’m willing to bet that they definately won’t give us the progression video until after Swtor is released.

How much are you willing to bet?

Oh you crafty developer you, Mr. Zoeller. I see what you did there ;)

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Posted by Cormeister | 4 Comments

Yellow Posts: Darkside Disfigurement and Tanking

Every week in Yellow Posts, we dive head-first into the depths of the Dev Tracker for you and eek out every tasty developer morsel worthy of your eyeballs. If you’ve missed anything, this is the place to catch up!

This was a pretty slow week for developer posts so I’m going to dip a little bit into last week. I am really looking forward to my Dark side character getting disfigured and misshapen the further he falls to the Dark side. But some people my not share my enthusiasm for a Palpatine-esc visage. Never fear, BioWare has included a feature to toggle off the grissly appearance should you desire. As Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer, explains:

Like ‘Hide head slot’ or ‘Unify colors to chestpiece,’ this is a game option, on by default, which can be toggled on a per character basis.

Forum poster torsjn started a thread titled “I *Really* Hope SR Misspoke Here :(” about something that Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager, said at New York Comic Con.  Basically he said that the Shadow/Assassin ACs are off-tanks which was a departure from what we had heard before regarding tanking in SW:TOR. Torsin was understandably confused, and Georg Zoeller provided clarification on Mr. Reid’s remarks:

Nope.

By design, all tank capable ACs can spec to be fully capable main tanks.

There are no ‘off tanks’ unless you intentionally spend your skill points into different trees.

So, no need to worry, every class can main tank unless the player chooses talents specifically to off-tank. Stephen Reid also clarified his statements a little bit later:

As you’ll see from Georg’s latest posts, I did mis-speak. My tanking experience is limited (in MMOs generally; as I said in the interview, I’m a DPS lad) and I did point that out in the interview.

I think my confusion came from playing a Sith Assassin in our Eternity Vault demo many, many times, who was specced to be an off-tank, not main tank. However, as Georg has now corrected me on, that’s not a limitation of the AC, it’s a choice on the part of the player.

Sorry if I confused everyone for a minute. This is what happens when you ask questions of the Community Manager that are better suited to the development team. It’s not their fault that they can’t make it to every show, we want to keep them hard at work on the game. 

Apparently, Amazon.de reported (for a time) that the release date was sometime in April 2012. Jasdemi got an email from them saying that the release date had changed which was quite strange, he though. So it took to the forums and asked about it. Stephen Reid responded, saying that this was just an error in Amazon.de’s system:

…our release date has not changed.

According to our investigation there was some confusion between Amazon.de’s warehouse and the main site, hence the update.

Nothing’s changed regarding our release date. To ease confusion and to ensure this is the last message anyone sees in this thread, I’m closing this now.

Until next week, keep the yellow text flowing.

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