Sources of Frustration in ESO: Combat

spoqster

(Disclaimer: I love ESO, it's a great game and enjoy playing it. I am simply trying to identify things that can be done even better.)

Even the greatest game can contain unnecessarily frustrating elements. These are the ones I have noticed in the combat system.

Summary

1. The tells for important combat situations such as active CC effects and resource drain are not noticeable enough during competitive combat situations. Example: there is no sound if you press you ultimate button and your ultimate is not ready.
2. Combat actions (commands) get lost in an unpredictable manner. This is mainly related to weapon swapping but can also happen in other situations. Example: You push Weapon Swap followed by an ability key. The weapon swap is ignored but the ability is activated, activating the wrong ability which wastes valuable resources.

Combat Tells
These tells are all clear and wonderfully animated. Roots, stuns, the distinct sound when you run out of stamina, they're all great in the context of questing. In a large PVP battle or a busy boss fight, they are hardly noticeable. Here is a list of possible improvements:

• Not able to use an ability: This should be accompanied by a distinct sound a clearly visible visual cue. In a high stress situation this will provide the player with valuable information, telling him that he is on the wrong bar, out of range, his ultimate is not ready, etc.
• Low resources: When an attribute drops below 400 (most abilities are cheaper) the edges of the screen should be colored in the color of the attribute (much like you see red edges when you enter the menu during combat). Nice: Overlaying the colors will mean your screen's edges turn white if all attributes are below 400. This will prevent players from spending all their resources because they get the colored edges if only one spell is left.
• CC tells: The beautiful animated cues are just barely visible with a lot of AOE, mobs, and possibly a Supernova flying around. Either these need to be much more visible, or we'll need some form of symbol somewhere, possibly around the crosshair.

These ideas are only for stressful situations, such as dungeon boss fights and PVP. These interface elements should be optional (like chat bubbles) so players can turn them off when questing.

Combat Actions
I know ZOS is working on improving weapon swapping and that it is apparently a complex issue. Apart from that, in terms of predictability the most important improvement IMHO would be that commands are either all lost if they cannot be executed or stored and then executed in succession.

• It's fine if I can't perform anything and all my commands are being ignored if I get a visual cue that clearly indicates this state.
• It's also fine if I can create a chain of commands to be executed while I am stunned etc.
• But please don't execute some and leave out others. This is terribly frustrating.

I am very interested to hear what other players think. I am running ESO on a Mac, so some of the problems mentioned in the second part may be related to that, so it will be very interesting to hear if Windows users have a different experience.

Rune_Relic

Actually I agree with most of your points.

My suggestion would be:

1. weapon set 1 and weapon set 2 both on the screen at the same time side by side.

2. Keys 1-5 for set 1 and keys 6-0 for set 2

3. Do away with the apostrophes weapon swap.

4. Add a weapon swap animation if I use a 1-5 key after 6-0 or vice versa.

5. lock.. animation time = priority = attack speed for all attacks.. and hence dps (no half finished animation cancelling.). Fix the attack/animation speed depending on damage done.

6. Do not buffer 2x bars....treat them as one bar and remove the buffer. If an attack doesn't fire let us see there and then it hasn't fired and adapt. Rather than the crapshoot as to what will fire when and even if.

7. Enforce a unique skill in all 10 slots for class/ world/ fighters/ mages skill etc. to the weapon of the bar they sit. Its almost like many of the non weapon skills are treated as weapon modifiers rather than a unique weapon animation. Probably why we had cleaving bows and ranged broadswords at one point.

8. Do away with the variable heavy attack. Make the heavy attack a fixed time, fixed animation length and fixed [double light] damage like the light attack with a button hold. Judging when an animation is complete enough to get stamina back is impossible to get right without macros (This will help immensely with the animation clipping).

9. weapons have mass and inertia. Stop defying the laws of physics and common sense. They take a fixed time to perform and complete. Let the user decide what fast,medium, slow attacks/animations to chain together without cancelling. If I committed to a long heavy damage attack...I pay the price by not being able to block until its finished.

Essentially, the more commitment I invest in an attacks damage, the greater the penalty to my defense. It would be wise to scale damage with animation time. That way people wont be forced to use "only" the attack with the best dps leaving 90% of the skills abandoned.

Gorthax

Rune_Relic wrote: »

Actually I agree with most of your points.



5. lock.. animation time = priority = attack speed for all attacks.. and hence dps (no half finished animation cancelling.). Fix the attack/animation speed depending on damage done.


8. Do away with the variable heavy attack. Make the heavy attack a fixed time, fixed animation length and fixed [double light] damage like the light attack with a button hold. Judging when an animation is complete enough to get stamina back is impossible to get right without macros (This will help immensely with the animation clipping).

I liked all your ideas. However, isnt point 5 about animation canceling the same as point 8's "help with animation clipping" Clipping is the same thing as animation canceling/light wave/whatever fancy name you want to call it?

I just wish AC/LW/whatever would be done away with to avoid the scenarios we are in right now with people only wanting AC/LW/whatever people in trials groups because its the only way to get "effective" dps.

Rune_Relic

Gorthax wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

Actually I agree with most of your points.



5. lock.. animation time = priority = attack speed for all attacks.. and hence dps (no half finished animation cancelling.). Fix the attack/animation speed depending on damage done.


8. Do away with the variable heavy attack. Make the heavy attack a fixed time, fixed animation length and fixed [double light] damage like the light attack with a button hold. Judging when an animation is complete enough to get stamina back is impossible to get right without macros (This will help immensely with the animation clipping).

I liked all your ideas. However, isnt point 5 about animation canceling the same as point 8's "help with animation clipping" Clipping is the same thing as animation canceling/light wave/whatever fancy name you want to call it?

I just wish AC/LW/whatever would be done away with to avoid the scenarios we are in right now with people only wanting AC/LW/whatever people in trials groups because its the only way to get "effective" dps.

They are similar just wanted to focus on heavy attacks as well as animation clipping. My editing skills were rushed anyway. Could have done better

Not only is animation clipping required for maximum dps....the only way to get the best dps is with perfect timing = macros = exploit. So even if cancelling isn't an exploit itself...it inevitably leads to a dps race and macros which is an exploit.

As a tap is quicker than a light attack animation, as a button hold is quicker than a heavy attack animation will be, as a key press is faster than any attack skill animation can be without animation cancelling...macros are pointless. Everyone can attack at full speed...they just wait for the animation to finish or before the animation is finished. ie the next attack is visually explicit to everyone and can be chained with zero gap.

But that also depends on the TTK. The lower the TTK the more critical the chaining becomes.