[MMO] Is EA ever patient?
- Thread starter ScytheRexx
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It's not just about polish, it's about realizing what things need to be done well. WoW started out with the extreme cohesion and responsiveness I talked about.
Necronic
Staff member
I can't remember when I started, maybe 1 year after the game launched. There were a handful of glitches but not much. Was it that good right off the bat? If so I'm impressed, I've never really seen a company do that (they did with D3 as well, in terms of technical/UI glitches, not balance/design.)
It had bugs and glitches, but it was always that responsive.
I think it mostly comes down to animations, funny enough.
Another SWTOR example, but the Bounty Hunter has a AOE missile ability where he leaps into the air, and then shoots the missles at the location specified. It take a second for the Bounty Hunter to leap up, do the missile barrage, then drop. That second for the jump can feel jarring since it's out of your control and add a unmarked warm-up to the attack.
If this was a WoW AoE ability, like the rogue Fan of Knives, you hit the button and with speed that seems downright superhuman the rogue launches daggers in all directions for instant damage to everything around him. If it was a mage, same for Arcane Blast.
Now, this does have the downside of making it so skills can actually out preform the animations. I can't even tell you the amount of times using skills like Slice and Dice and Adrenaline Rush, that my attacks are attacking the enemy faster then my character looks like he could possibly be actually hitting the enemy. Sometimes I would even use an Eviscerate so close to the end of the last animation that the client just says "fuck it" and does not even show the special melee animation for the Eviscerate, it just applies the damage and is done with it.
In the end I would rather my character look like he is freaked out on cocaine with instant feedback then worry about drawing out the animations for realism or style.
I think it mostly comes down to animations, funny enough.
Another SWTOR example, but the Bounty Hunter has a AOE missile ability where he leaps into the air, and then shoots the missles at the location specified. It take a second for the Bounty Hunter to leap up, do the missile barrage, then drop. That second for the jump can feel jarring since it's out of your control and add a unmarked warm-up to the attack.
If this was a WoW AoE ability, like the rogue Fan of Knives, you hit the button and with speed that seems downright superhuman the rogue launches daggers in all directions for instant damage to everything around him. If it was a mage, same for Arcane Blast.
Now, this does have the downside of making it so skills can actually out preform the animations. I can't even tell you the amount of times using skills like Slice and Dice and Adrenaline Rush, that my attacks are attacking the enemy faster then my character looks like he could possibly be actually hitting the enemy. Sometimes I would even use an Eviscerate so close to the end of the last animation that the client just says "fuck it" and does not even show the special melee animation for the Eviscerate, it just applies the damage and is done with it.
In the end I would rather my character look like he is freaked out on cocaine with instant feedback then worry about drawing out the animations for realism or style.
Necronic
Staff member
Agreed. That kind of unresponsiveness is unnacceptal in an MMO. Too much of the combat requires finesse/timing. Not having something go off the moment you expect it is really dangerous. This is a big problem hey had in EvE when you started getting 1k-2k fights, the game would start lagging so much that weapons wouldn't fire when expected etc, people would design fleets/ships specifically to fight optimally in this. CCPs way to deal with this was to do something called "Time Dialation" where the game would intentionally slow itself to levels below where the lag would, so at least it was smooth. It was kind of neat playing the game in slow motion. It's not really the same because it would only happen in places w/ 1-2k players (or 200 if you were really unlucky).
Anyways, that aside, it's a bit inexcusable for them to do that. Makes me think they didn't really know what they were doing in the first place.
Anyways, that aside, it's a bit inexcusable for them to do that. Makes me think they didn't really know what they were doing in the first place.
The story driven, multiple participant flashpoints were pretty awesome, but there weren't enough of them, and too often they were just combat than the unique mix of choice and roleplaying they could offer.
My only issue with it was that 98% of all BG was this goddamned map.
I got tired of playing this... even when I dominated the BG.
Fuck I hated Huttball. The combination of a sport-styled bg with traps that could kill you in seconds, were constantly changing states, and a ball that you had to throw to the braindead monkeys on your team, combined with the ability lag that ScytheRexx mentioned, made that the most frustrating pvp I've ever been in. I was honestly just leaving as soon as I loaded into it 80% of the time, because win or lose I knew I was going to be annoyed the whole time I was in there.
Huttball would have made an interesting scene on the Clone Wars TV show or maybe as part of a bounty hunter themed movie, but it was just annoying to play. If you didn't have at least 2-3 other people on your team in your vent, you simply had no chance of winning.
And all the arches, vents and what not with Jedis/Sith already jumping all over the place it was basically a clusterfuck. I learned how to use my macros to target bind and go through my Sniper's DPS macro sets to take shit down as long as they were in sight. I got so good at it, I was called a cheater multiple times.
I don't blame them... especially, when my damage output was on average 150k more than the next guy.
I don't blame them... especially, when my damage output was on average 150k more than the next guy.
Yeah... nobody likes fighting Snipers or Gunslingers because of that. They have the tools to keep you away and the DPS to burn you down no matter what you are.
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