Quote Hey everyone!



I wanted to let all of you know that next week in Game Update 2.5.2, there is a fix in place for the "GCD/Ability misfire" bug which some of you have experienced. I spoke to our Lead Engineer for Combat and Visuals to get some more details on the fix, here is his explanation:



Quote: So I wanted to explain a bit about a fix that is coming in 2.5.2 that we hope will address most cases where players are charged a global cool down (GCD) when their ability fails to activate. There are two cases we know of that may cause symptoms similar to the ones reported on the forums and in videos.



The first case occurs when an area is experiencing a severe spike in performance. In this case, the client has predicted the result of your ability activation and has already begun a GCD. If the server determines that the ability is not able to activate for any reason, it will tell the client to clear its GCD and display a red failure message on the screen. Ordinarily, this happens very quickly and it feels responsive since your client is able to start animating as soon as you press the button. When the server response does not arrive quickly, you may see an extended portion of the GCD get charged before you are able to act again. We are constantly monitoring server performance and taking steps to improve it and we suspect this is not a majority of the problems reported.



The second case is an actual logic issue in the ability system and this is what we are fixing in 2.5.2. In this case, when the player is trying to activate an ability immediately following a GCD the client sometimes fails to initiate the server request but still charges a GCD for the action. The player would have to wait for the additional GCD to finish without having the ability activate as intended.



We hope fixing the second issue addresses the most common cause of unnecessary GCDs. If you still encounter issues after 2.5.2 with global cool downs, let us know with as much detail as possible. Try to keep an eye on whether other aspects of the game are becoming less responsive at the time (other objects moving erratically, the connection bar going red, etc…).



-eric

Eric Musco | Community Manager

Follow us on Twitter @SWTOR | Like us on Facebook

[Contact Us] [Rules of Conduct] [F.A.Q.]