I think the very real issue of UI LAG is being confused with ability activation literally interfering with each other.
I've never known hitting one ability (or several) via clicking or keybinds to mess up other ones going off. I'm sure that's not likely to be happening.
What IS happening is that the UI and game engine seem to have some serious issues registering that a user has hit an ability (either with a mouse click or a keybind) and that;s why we have to click 2,3 or even 4 times to get things to go off.
Put simply the engine seems to be struggling to handle the UI properly and it's starting to show. It was horrendous whenthe Command ships first came out as the game was too busy measuring the inspiration mechanic, and we've seen the same from how APB was applied to targets also. I have to wonder if all these passive abilities we have from thinbgs like traits, specialisations etc are starting to take their toll.
on a bad ui lag day, dps down by 15-20k, cd timers 2-4 sec slower in combat than out of combat, when using invincible i blow up befor it has chance to work, heals dont work, weapons stop working, i dont use keybinds & no i have no problems with my internet.
But...I actually do experience the real activation timers. The power icon goes white and then for half a second you can't activate anything else because the white doesn't go away. That thing is what I thought this thread was about.
I actually do run into that being a problem semi-frequently, especially in situations with a borg hyper torpedo or a warp core breach, and I would need to hit engineering team as fast as possible, but it doesn't work because it is too busy also turning on tactical team or something like that. No idea what any of you mean by UI lag or whatever.
UI lag is where you click a button on the user interface or HUD andit does nothing, does not respond, does not click to activate, does not go onto cooldown.
It is caused by the game not registering your "click" when you think it does, probably because lag is slowing down the command from your PC to the server, or the game engine/UI engine is simply not able to handle so much at one time.
Had the cooldown issue again earlier where my rommies singularity charge was used but the weapons didn't get the buff which is a very obvious visible change.
Another favourite trick the game loves is when you're trying to use the ability on something like ctrl-1 and it'll decide to trigger the 1 ability instead.
Mechanical keyboards make key presses very noticable and it still can happen even if you're out of combat and simply trying to preload stuff or summon pets in an unrushed setting.
Happens a lot on ground as well where I find myself having to button mash so activate a drone or trying to F with an npc or console. (sounds bad but cryptic chose the f as use key so their fault)
numpad1 is for all my abilities that debuff the target as well as buff self. The debuffs go first followed by the buffs. That is entirely row1
row2 consists of numpad2 and numpad3 and is split using maneuvering buffs for the comp eng.
numpad4 (row3) consists of all my healing or defense buffs
for my 4th power tray row, which is usually shift + number, I manually trigger those when needed as those are mostly tier5 rep abilities or specialization powers.
The posters above must be spending all their time in argala at a leisurely pace to be able to manually click on those abilities, and when playing that style of play, sure, makes perfect sense. They have no need to buff in a hurry because 1) none of the enemies are really that threatening and 2) the enemies are slow and not flying around the map with flight speed equal to full impulse due to comp engine procs and 3) have limited weapons or abilities and 4) are just stupid NPCs.
Makes perfect sense why those guys with leisurely playstyles don't notice any problems, although some has stated that when they click an ability, it does not activate. Same holds true with keybinds in that the ability does not activate when needed. This is a bug in the UI. More than that, however, is that the first assault is sometimes the most important of all of them. If you do enough damage, sometimes the enemy can never fully recover quickly enough to pose a responding threat.
Anyway, I still believe activation times should be decreased and Cryptic should also deal with UI problems with powers not activating. Surely they can reproduce that without a video upload from one of us. I even have abilities like aux2sif who are out of cooldown but stay greyed out. I usually have to left click on those powers several times to get them to their color back so that I can activate the power.. meanwhile, all other abilities are not greyed out. Aux2sif will target self when no target is selected and the fact that there is no cooldown timer but it is greyed out is a problem.
Lol I may be clicking my abilities, but I usually do so as if my life depends on it. I'm no 'leisurely' player, just a fast clicker
> @fleetcaptain5#1134 said:
> azrael605 wrote: »
>
> Sounds like something only min/maxers would care about, therefore not of interest to me.
>
>
>
>
> It's not just min/maxers who care about such a thing. To even use some of the basic functionalities of most abilities, it makes sense to combine them and activate them at the same time. It's called synergy and that's not necessarily the same thing as min/maxing.
>
> What is, for example, the use of Endothermic Induction Beam's resistance lowering effect if you don't fire your weapons and other damaging abilities at the same time? What purpose does Emergency power to Auxiliary have if you don't activate most of your exotic abilities to use that exotic damage boost it gives?
>
> What's the point of activating Distributed Targeting if you don't also activate other abilities that boost the damage (such as Overload subsystem safeties and Surgical strikes and Emergency power to Weapons to counter some of the downsides of Surgical strikes) you are dealing to the target that you applied Distributed Targeting to?
>
>
>
> While @seaofsorrows has a point in that it doesn't always make sense to activate everything at once even if it's just to ensure you always have some buffs active, in many cases the entire purpose of abilities is to use them in combination with others.
There is no possible way for a player manually activating abilities from the power tray to be going too fast for activation times to interfere with anything. So anyone not using macros & not min/maxing isn't ever going to have this even be a noticable issue. As for synergy, that does not require macros, and is therefore quite doable without anything from this thread being a concern at all.
You're speaking from a point of ignorance and it's really showing. You are dead wrong. You even said you don't use keybinds.
I don't min-max. I use 6 abilities, 3 at a time. Attack Pattern Beta, Tac Team and Cannons-Rapid Fire then I repeat them after the others have run out. If I press the buttons too quickly then some of the abilities won't activate, though I have found having them in a slightly different order does improve it slightly.
If you don't use keybinds then you're a clicker, which is a lot slower and that is why you have probably never seen/noticed it.
If you're gonna talk about a subject with authority then at least know what you're talking about.
And even if you would min max it should not bring you into a position where the game flat out bugs out on you as result.
Cryptic hands out the powers, they should see to it that their infrastructure can handle them and times and again it shows that it cannot.
> @fleetcaptain5#1134 said:
> azrael605 wrote: »
>
> Sounds like something only min/maxers would care about, therefore not of interest to me.
>
>
>
>
> It's not just min/maxers who care about such a thing. To even use some of the basic functionalities of most abilities, it makes sense to combine them and activate them at the same time. It's called synergy and that's not necessarily the same thing as min/maxing.
>
> What is, for example, the use of Endothermic Induction Beam's resistance lowering effect if you don't fire your weapons and other damaging abilities at the same time? What purpose does Emergency power to Auxiliary have if you don't activate most of your exotic abilities to use that exotic damage boost it gives?
>
> What's the point of activating Distributed Targeting if you don't also activate other abilities that boost the damage (such as Overload subsystem safeties and Surgical strikes and Emergency power to Weapons to counter some of the downsides of Surgical strikes) you are dealing to the target that you applied Distributed Targeting to?
>
>
>
> While @seaofsorrows has a point in that it doesn't always make sense to activate everything at once even if it's just to ensure you always have some buffs active, in many cases the entire purpose of abilities is to use them in combination with others.
There is no possible way for a player manually activating abilities from the power tray to be going too fast for activation times to interfere with anything. So anyone not using macros & not min/maxing isn't ever going to have this even be a noticable issue. As for synergy, that does not require macros, and is therefore quite doable without anything from this thread being a concern at all.
You're speaking from a point of ignorance and it's really showing. You are dead wrong. You even said you don't use keybinds.
I don't min-max. I use 6 abilities, 3 at a time. Attack Pattern Beta, Tac Team and Cannons-Rapid Fire then I repeat them after the others have run out. If I press the buttons too quickly then some of the abilities won't activate, though I have found having them in a slightly different order does improve it slightly.
If you don't use keybinds then you're a clicker, which is a lot slower and that is why you have probably never seen/noticed it.
If you're gonna talk about a subject with authority then at least know what you're talking about.
And even if you would min max it should not bring you into a position where the game flat out bugs out on you as result.
Cryptic hands out the powers, they should see to it that their infrastructure can handle them and times and again it shows that it cannot.
Yeah, hopefully they'll at least add in a queue mechanic, but that wouldn't stop some abilities from not activating
when pressed (Looking at you, Torp Spread ) (which has been happening to me a lot more recently)
My problem is with the game picking up key presses. I Full Impulse to near a target and drop out. It misses the key press and I zoom past. Click again, it takes it and I fly back to the target.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
What I notice while playing is when I click on a power. The UI seems to registers the click or displays that it does, but the power doesn't activate. There are times when I need to click half a dozen times for the power to activate. I'm used to it now, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.
> @dracounguis said: > The delay I hate is where I click the power tray icon and the power doesn't activate. Then I have to hit it again!
Yes! This has caused me to die several times. Whether I’m about to die and can’t heal with miracle worker or some other healing ability or not paying attention to health while trying to activate several powers in the middle of a **** storm.
I've noticed recently it's particularly bad for trying to drop out of full impulse, and for me also trying to get Torp Spread to activate. The number of times I've overshot a target or wasted shots on a perfectly lined up ship because of failed activation is becoming more frequent.
I've died numerous times due to this. I activate a power and nothing happens for 2-3 seconds, which is death as an escort. On it's worst, i've hit powers and had them go on cooldown with no visible use of the power. It was bad enough at one point, i thought it was an NPC torpedo buff cancelling it out, it was THAT bat.
Comments
I've never known hitting one ability (or several) via clicking or keybinds to mess up other ones going off. I'm sure that's not likely to be happening.
What IS happening is that the UI and game engine seem to have some serious issues registering that a user has hit an ability (either with a mouse click or a keybind) and that;s why we have to click 2,3 or even 4 times to get things to go off.
Put simply the engine seems to be struggling to handle the UI properly and it's starting to show. It was horrendous whenthe Command ships first came out as the game was too busy measuring the inspiration mechanic, and we've seen the same from how APB was applied to targets also. I have to wonder if all these passive abilities we have from thinbgs like traits, specialisations etc are starting to take their toll.
I actually do run into that being a problem semi-frequently, especially in situations with a borg hyper torpedo or a warp core breach, and I would need to hit engineering team as fast as possible, but it doesn't work because it is too busy also turning on tactical team or something like that. No idea what any of you mean by UI lag or whatever.
It is caused by the game not registering your "click" when you think it does, probably because lag is slowing down the command from your PC to the server, or the game engine/UI engine is simply not able to handle so much at one time.
Another favourite trick the game loves is when you're trying to use the ability on something like ctrl-1 and it'll decide to trigger the 1 ability instead.
Mechanical keyboards make key presses very noticable and it still can happen even if you're out of combat and simply trying to preload stuff or summon pets in an unrushed setting.
Happens a lot on ground as well where I find myself having to button mash so activate a drone or trying to F with an npc or console. (sounds bad but cryptic chose the f as use key so their fault)
Lol I may be clicking my abilities, but I usually do so as if my life depends on it. I'm no 'leisurely' player, just a fast clicker
Quoted for truth.
when pressed (Looking at you, Torp Spread
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
> The delay I hate is where I click the power tray icon and the power doesn't activate. Then I have to hit it again!
Yes! This has caused me to die several times. Whether I’m about to die and can’t heal with miracle worker or some other healing ability or not paying attention to health while trying to activate several powers in the middle of a **** storm.