As for the WoW responsiveness being an illusion, well, I believe that there’s a lot about that game which is smoke and mirrors, and it’s the fact that they’re very good at not letting most players see how the trick is done that makes the game seem so miraculous to many.

Producing a convincing illusion is not necessarily a feat to be taken lightly.

Also, the responsiveness in WoW is just a client illusion to mask server latency. Most of the time it seems responsive, but in bad latency situations, I think LotRO’s system holds up a little better.

And I expect I have a greater tolerance for the delay because I play a Burglar, who even at their slowest, are probably similar in attack speed to an average Champion.

I will say, however, that some of my most ‘exciting’ moments of re-toggling eight defensive powers for the fortieth time in as many seconds were against Malta Operatives Sappers and Longbow Spec Ops, so it will be interesting to know if the ‘out of endurance’ case still applies.

Start —> Button press —> Feedback (be it ‘skill activated’ or ‘skill not ready yet’) —> Goto Start

And

Start —> Button press —> Feedback (skill queued, will activate when next ready) —> Wait —> Wait —> Um, is this thing on? —> Goto Start

The feedback in the first instance can be directly acted upon, it’s a feedback system. The second instance provides a disconnect.

As an extra thought: I’ve been trying to think of a consumer electronic device that would use the second system of feedback over the first; I think it is rare thing, and the reason for that is that the second option is a confusing system of operation. Perhaps others would consider this to be an unfair comparison, but I see these combat systems – and gaming in general – at their basic level as continuous feedback systems, and as such I feel the simplest and least confusing feedback systems provide the best game-play experience.

I understood the weapon speed issue, which is a bit of a dilemma when you want a nice slow (read high damage range) weapon for crits and abilities based on weapon damage (assuming I have that correct), and yet this leaves you unable to effectively use one of your more useful non-damage skills. If this is by design, then I guess I just have to accept it.

The skill queuing I have real trouble with; I have no problem with skill queuing in general, but the way LotRO implements it causes me conflict. So often I have queued an ability and waited what feels like an inordinate amount of time, and then pressed the next ability (based on a sense of urgency, perhaps due to a hairy combat encounter), only to find the first skill de-queued and the new skill queued instead. Initially I thought it was the lack of feedback that irked me, but one just has to sit and wait for the highlighted skill to activate, I see that now, therefore I think it’s the fact that it prevents any sort of flow in the way the combat works. It feels erratic, which would be a fine way to express more realism in combat if it didn’t also feel as though I had no predictable control over how my character operates, which is a major disconnect between myself and the game. I think the primary problem for me is due to the fact that an animation can have finished on the screen but the actual ‘animation time’ has not yet expired. It’s probably only a very fine timing line, but it’s just enough to cause me a great deal of frustration when playing my Champion. Having to learn the potentially-invisible-to-me animation timing for each skill, and remember which one I used previously to be able to know when I can expect to be able to queue the next skill seems clunky.

As I say, the Warden seems to operate in a much ‘cleaner’ fashion, which only leads me to believe that this is an ‘issue’ that has been addressed in that class, perhaps simply through the prudence of having the Warden’s combat animations cycle so quickly that there is rarely an opportunity to queue, or perhaps it is down to a faster weapon speed. I’d have to investigate further to work out why that class works so much better for me.

I haven’t read around the topic though, so I’m sure this has all been hashed out many times elsewhere. At the end of the day I think I just prefer the more immediate and visceral combat systems provided in other games.

It is perhaps a testament to the excellence of LotRO that I can happily ignore the annoyances that I find in what is the main activity of the game, in order that I can continue playing.

@mbp: I shall seek that option out, I never knew it existed. Many thanks!

One key point that you missed is that you cannot queue more than one skill at a time because the queue is only one skill deep. There is an option to display the skill queue when in combat which I find handy.

- Skills and auto-attacks are hard queued, which means that if a skill takes 2 seconds to animate, then another skill cannot fire until those 2 seconds are over. This is the ‘skill delay’ that many people complain about in LotRO.

- If a skill is queued it will fire as soon as the previous skill finishes, providing it isn’t on cooldown. Getting used to the skill queue is the key to getting used to LotRO combat. One benefit of queueing is that it replaces the conspicuous global cooldown inherent in WoW, reducing the need for ‘Skill not ready’ messages and button mashing.

- Slower weapons have slower animations, so a skill that takes 1 second with a dagger might take 2 seconds with a great-axe. If you need a faster skill response (for interrupts), you need to use a faster weapon.

- Auto-attacks won’t fire unless you give them breathing space to do so, and just like any skill, they have their own animation length based upon weapon speed. If you queue other skills fast enough, you may never see an auto-attack, though since auto-attacks are ‘free’ damage, it’s often better to let them fire.

/lotrodemystification