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A desperate plea for ZOS: Please remove Animation cancelling..

Jowrik
Jowrik
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As early players probably know, Animation Cancelling was never an intended combat mechanic. Back in the day you had skills such as the Nightblade's Haste (now Grim Focus) to buff the player with some extra Attackspeed to get some more Light/Heavyattacks going (it reduced the animationtime).

Zenimax just kind of "rolled" with it when people started (ab)using this, yet they kept focussing their combat around an animation-time mechanic.

Why did they think leaving Animation Cancelling in and then balancing attacks around animation times would work out? If you wanted it like that, might as well remove all DoT's and make all attacks instant cast. Why do the strongest attacks have cc and empowers which do nothing but promote spamming them. Add in animation canceling and you have the mess we have where it's more like rockem sockem robots with button mashing and macros. No setup. No real combinations.

Here's why I think Animation Cancelling should be removed from the game entirely:

• Slower combat pace, making PvP dmg/healing reductions unnecessairy: they implemented this to fight the 'insta-burst/unkilleable' problem.
• More visible combat cues, because that's what they were there for in the first place. Currently you're able to miss one or two ability cues by just blinking your eyes.
• The possibility to make combo's aswell as creating a more unique setup
• In PvP, Animation cancelling gives the target no feedback whatsoever. You stack your attacks and leave targets in the dark about what happened, removing any chance for counter - and in some situations - not providing any clue it got hit. There are skills that work properly - at least from the game mechanics and skill use and effect implementation point of view. One example is Snipe. Now, no matter what you think about the skill itself, the implementation is something that should be considered for any skill and would remove the animation canceling / attack weaving and block casting once and for all.
- Why?
1. It's cast breaks when you interrupt it with blocking, light or heavy attacks.
2. It's cast breaks when your target get's out of sight or range.
3. It has a cast time, which can be set to the appropriate value for each skill.

Given that at least someone at ZOS knows how to properly program a skill like snipe (and the code is already there and readily available), use it for all skills and adapt it accordingly to the length of the animations (taking into account weighted traits and skills like haste, which might speed it up, but also snares and such, which might slow it down) and scale the damage, healing or other effects accordingly to be in line with the typical cast time (based on animation length). This naturally means that all "instant" abilities would have to have a (rather short but non-zero) cast time as well.
This way you - but also your targets - get a proper feedback, which skill is currently used (against them) and when and how long it was used and a clear indication when the next skill can be used.

What you see is what you get,
should be the golden rule of combat animations.


If my shield is not in front of my face actively blocking, then I'm not blocking.
If my sword does not hit my target, I should not be doing dmg.
If I cancel an action, then that should skip the animation and abort the action.
If I cancel an action, then that should not skip the animation and still give me full effect of the action.

If your animation system does dmg with invisible or half spasm or half finished fidgeting attacks, then your animation system is screwed, looks poor, feels weightless, and needs a fix.

Animation skipping in ESO, especially light or heavy attack weaving, does not require any extra skill or player ability to execute.

Its about knowing that it is possible, and about pressing button A at point B instead of at point C.

You just need to identify B, and then look for B instead of C. It is very easy.

Pressing button A at point B, does not require more player skill, then pressing button A at point C.

Pressing button A at point B, does not add more depth to the game, then pressing button A at point C.

At this point you may argue 'but what about block cancelling and bash weaving?'
The answer to that is, within how the current system works, even while you weave a block or bash into a ability like 2H Executioner, the internal cool down for queuing a weapon ability after a weapon ability, or a class ability after a class ability, still remains.
As the game is now, your next Executioner starts casting no earlier then regardless if you weaved bash or block into the first Executioner animation or not. The added benefit is the extra dmg from the bash, while your rate of cast with Executioner remains the same regardless.
Bash cancelling, besides adding the extra hit, does not in itself speed up your attack cycle, if you look at when the next (non - light/heavy attack) ability starts cast.

While animation skipping, especially light and heavy attack weaving, in itself as a mechanic does not add more player skill or depth to the game, it does however increase your rate and number of executed actions. In other words, it makes the combat faster.

Faster combat with more actions does arguably add more skill to the game.
Essentially you could speed up the animations, and still achieve the same thing as animation skipping allows today. The benefit would be that you would also get full complete good looking animations, instead of the invisible/spasm/half-finished fidgeting hits we have today.


You could possibly also add some sort of bonus to executing light attacks, still encouraging their use. That bonus could even vary, depending on what ability is following the light attack.

The code to remove animation skipping while retaining the fluidity of the combat system already exist to some degree in the game. Just look at abilities like Dawnbreaker. Dawnbreaker can be cancelled at any time, but if you do it early in the animation, you also abort the action. This also without having to introduce any form of global cooldown, since it is tied to the individual internal animation timer/cycle of specific abilities.

Another kick in the teeth for players, due to ESO allowing animations to be skipped very early in the animation cycle, while retaining full effect from the attack, is how this ties into latency and attack weaving.
As a rather poor general rule of thumb, you can say that your ability to weave attacks sits at, very roughly/simplified and inaccurately said, about 2x your latency.

For a 65ms connection player, her attack weave cycle sits at 130 ms.
For a 120ms connection player, her attack weave cycle sits at 240 ms.
For a 160ms connection player, her attack weave cycle sits at 320 ms.

If you do not somewhat curb latency advantages either through a global cool down system, or through individual animation cycles/timers for individual abilities, then that will hit the balance in your game.

Since a flat global cool down leads to very static combat, it would be preferable that individual animation cycles cap out your attack rate, in regards to somewhat alleviating and addressing the latency issue.


In regards to Block Casting.

Block casting adds nothing to the game but laziness and comfort. It is a crutch, nothing more and nothing less.

Since you can just blindly hold your block button and keep casting/attacking, and don't have to time your blocks or pay attention to what type of attack is incoming , it removes player skill, thought and depth from the game.


In summary

Give us fast combat
Give us many actions to execute rapidly in combat
Give skill, depth and challenge in combat
Give us visceral and aesthetically pleasing combat
Please don't slap a general generic global cooldown on abilities.

Do all of the above, and discard the fidgeting spasm arm flailing goop slush that is animation skipping today.

I simply don't buy the argument that we need bad and half finished animations in this game in order to have fun and fast paced challenging combat.
I never will.


At minimum todays attack rate and number of buttons pushed + what you see is what you get + better animations + less latency dependency = win.

@Wroebel I hope you see this...and yes, it's a ton of work to fix this, but i'm pretty sure this would make the game's combat.
Nightblade - Khajiit - Rha'Viir
PC - EU - Aldmeri Dominion
  • Jowrik
    Jowrik
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    Jowrik wrote: »
    @Wroebel I hope you see this...and yes, it's a ton of work to fix this, but i'm pretty sure this would make the game's combat.

    That's @Wrobel , sorry about that :)
    Nightblade - Khajiit - Rha'Viir
    PC - EU - Aldmeri Dominion
  • Xvorg
    Xvorg
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    What if you keep animation cancel in PVE, but take it out from PVP?
    Sarcasm is something too serious to be taken lightly

    I was born with the wrong sign
    In the wrong house
    With the wrong ascendancy
    I took the wrong road
    That led to the wrong tendencies
    I was in the wrong place at the wrong time
    For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme
    On the wrong day of the wrong week
    Used the wrong method with the wrong technique
  • NoMoreChillies
    NoMoreChillies
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    some poor devs created all these beautiful animations nobody ever sees them
    Insulting people on the internet is cowardly.
  • Elsonso
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    If ZOS likes it, I think that animation canceling is here to stay. Unintended or not, it makes the combat feel more responsive because you are not waiting for some animation to end before the next attack. Button mashing is much more satisfying when the buttons actually do something.

    Without animation canceling, people will say the game is laggy or that the game is unresponsive. People will /unsubscribe and there will be many vocal complaints about how ZOS nerfed the game, listened to the wrong people, did not listen to the people, etc.

    If ZOS is good with animation canceling, their best play is to leave it alone. They cannot win if they change it.
    PC NA/EU: @Elsonso
    XBox EU/NA: @ElsonsoJannus
    X/Twitter: ElsonsoJannus
  • SmalltalkJava
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    To me animation cancelling is a clunky mechanic. It makes com a less smooth and less fluid. I'd like them to force animation completions. To increase animation fluidity I'd like then to put in ability queuing. Probably 2 deep queues. That way you could have animations lead into each other
  • OdinForge
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    There isn't anything wrong with animation canceling as it stands, it's an extra layer of responsiveness that many people enjoy.

    Taking it away would slow down combat way too much.
    The Age of Wrobel.
  • Jowrik
    Jowrik
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    OdinForge wrote: »
    There isn't anything wrong with animation canceling as it stands, it's an extra layer of responsiveness that many people enjoy.

    Taking it away would slow down combat way too much.

    Essentially you could speed up the animations, and still achieve the same thing as animation skipping allows today. The benefit would be that you would also get full complete good looking animations, instead of the invisible/spasm/half-finished fidgeting hits we have today.
    Nightblade - Khajiit - Rha'Viir
    PC - EU - Aldmeri Dominion
  • zornyan
    zornyan
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    Why do people still make these threads? They've already stated it's here to stay, it would take them a lot of man hpurs, therefor money to implement .

    Animation cancelling isn't that bad, you still have the 1 sec GCD anyway, so you can't cast more than 1 skill every second.

    It would break a lot of classes.

    Take suprise attack, it's insta cast, and with basically zero animation you would be able to spam it 3 or 4 times in the time it would take to wind up and use a wrecking blow.

    A lot of classes would be dead in the water.
  • Gilliamtherogue
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    Removing animation canceling makes this game another copy pasted generic MMO with uninspired combat that plays itself for you once you get geared out. Animation canceling adds a whole new layer of depth to this game that sets it aside from other current MMO's and even most games. ESO is filled with poor coding, issues, lag, and bug all abound. If you remove the redeeming quality of this game, the combat satisfaction, you kill this game.

    What ZoS needs to do is further embrace animation canceling and explain it in game via questing/combat queue tips. Instead of making a few comments here and there about how it's here to stay they need to flat out make sure it is seen and accepted by the community to the extent where all of these utterly stupid and pointless threads disappear. Opinions are great, but a lot of this community's opinions are based on extremely outdated or flat out incorrect information. If people would take more time researching and dissecting/thinking about things like balance, mechanics, etc- so much negativity would wash away and these forums could move forward to more civil and rational discussions.

    ZoS has even made a lot of strides in trying to appease the small crowds who insist on refusing to learn these mechanics by making sets that revolve around non animation canceling builds/play styles. While I personally think it's a waste, at least they've understood some people don't like that sort of mechanical demand in this game.

    If you're going to say this game feels clunky with animation canceling or immersion breaking because you can't watch your enemy do a light attack in between a cast or ability, you really think adding a half second animation to it that you can't override is going to be any different? Combat will be filled with artificial time that is spent just watching, rather than reacting. If I have 20k health and you can only do one attack every second, and someone hits me with an instant cast ability for 5k, that's 4 seconds of those attacks before I'm dead. In between each of my responses to his attack, I can't change my mind or queue up my next attack because I'm locked into an animation. Animations rip freedom of reaction and force you to into something that may spell your doom. You force people into animations and nothing is going to change. People will still die in PvP and complain about all the same stuff they do now, but even louder.

    If you want skill, learn animation canceling beyond what most people know about. There's so much more to this game's combat system other than clipping animations, there are special rules that are in place that dictate the flow of combat, but there are many ways to alter the flow with special tricks you can learn and master.
    Edited by Gilliamtherogue on November 17, 2015 2:49PM
    Old member of The Order of Mundus, Mostly Harmless, Hostile, and Genesis Elite. Avid theorycrafter. Herald to competitive stamina DPS pre 1.5. How far we've come!

    Have questions? Send me a message on the forums or my other social media. Seeing people learn is my dream and passion.

    Guides and other fun videos at https://youtube.com/c/gilliamtherogue
  • jim_mau
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    oh no how dare you speak of this "casting time" thing, ive never seen this in a game ever... inconceivable!!

    or make men and mer have another set of arms so that i can get hit by a heavy attack and a WB at the same time, cancelling should be complete, animation + skill.. attacks faster than you can wave arms is just wrong.

    MMO button masher? i dont know...
  • Sharmony
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    Animation cancelling is a skill, and a vital one at that for PvE, as far as we know they've come to accept it, and it's certainly a thing that won't be changed soon as far as we can tell. I personally hope it will stay in the game, I also agree with the points raised by @Gilliamtherogue . No one wishes to see the homogeneous nature of mmo's which ZOS has actually done a great job at being individualistic.
    @Wjleppard - EU - Sharmony Youtube
    Holyfire - V16 Stamina Templar | Auriels Bow - V16 Stamina Nightblade | Sharmony - V16 Magicka Templar | Flaming Rose - V16 Magicka Dragonknight | Rejuvenation - V16 Magicka Nightblade | Dora The (Explorer Title) - V16 Magicka Sorcerer | Critjiit - V16 Stamina Dragonknight | Just Hold Block - V16 Stamina Dragonknight | Stormburst - V16 Stamina Sorcerer | Ashenbourne - V16 Magicka Templar | Swims-At-Speed - V16 Magicka Templar | Sharmonknee - V16 Stamina Nightblade | Sharmoney - V16 Magicka Warden
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  • OdinForge
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    Jowrik wrote: »
    OdinForge wrote: »
    There isn't anything wrong with animation canceling as it stands, it's an extra layer of responsiveness that many people enjoy.

    Taking it away would slow down combat way too much.

    Essentially you could speed up the animations, and still achieve the same thing as animation skipping allows today. The benefit would be that you would also get full complete good looking animations, instead of the invisible/spasm/half-finished fidgeting hits we have today.

    No that's not how it works.

    Animation canceling is a layer of "skill", as in it's something one should practice to get better at to do more consistently. The game can be viewed as a mindless button smash, but removing canceling and speeding up animations would worsen this. It separates one person from another, allows for variations in build numbers that otherwise wouldn't exist if everyone consistently hit at the same speed.

    In the case of ESO, animation canceling is good.

    The Age of Wrobel.
  • eliisra
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    If you want skill, learn animation canceling beyond what most people know about. There's so much more to this game's combat system other than clipping animations, there are special rules that are in place that dictate the flow of combat, but there are many ways to alter the flow with special tricks you can learn and master.

    Ok than maestro. Please teach my templar how to effectively animation cancel Puncturing Sweep, Radiant Oppression or the travelling time of Blazing Spear lol. You can also teach me how to animation cancel Flurry please.

    This while my NB can clip 90% of her offensive skills. Classes, weapons and skills where never balanced with animation cancelling in mind(as well as latency), that's the big issue here. ZoS already stated countless of times that never indented, but they're going with it anyway.

    Cones, channelling, ground target and casting timed skills cant clipped at all or only clipped very little. While instant skills or shorter casting timed, can be cancelled extremely well.

    Either ZoS goes and re-tweaks every single skills out there and measure it's effectiveness with clipping in mind, or they should remove it altogether. You cant have it both ways.


  • Sharmony
    Sharmony
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    eliisra wrote: »
    If you want skill, learn animation canceling beyond what most people know about. There's so much more to this game's combat system other than clipping animations, there are special rules that are in place that dictate the flow of combat, but there are many ways to alter the flow with special tricks you can learn and master.

    Ok than maestro. Please teach my templar how to effectively animation cancel Puncturing Sweep, Radiant Oppression or the travelling time of Blazing Spear lol. You can also teach me how to animation cancel Flurry please.

    You can cancel quite a few things on this list, spear can be done with bar swap easily and puncturing sweep & flurry give the user the ability to pre cast heavy attacks for medium weaving.
    Edited by Sharmony on November 17, 2015 3:21PM
    @Wjleppard - EU - Sharmony Youtube
    Holyfire - V16 Stamina Templar | Auriels Bow - V16 Stamina Nightblade | Sharmony - V16 Magicka Templar | Flaming Rose - V16 Magicka Dragonknight | Rejuvenation - V16 Magicka Nightblade | Dora The (Explorer Title) - V16 Magicka Sorcerer | Critjiit - V16 Stamina Dragonknight | Just Hold Block - V16 Stamina Dragonknight | Stormburst - V16 Stamina Sorcerer | Ashenbourne - V16 Magicka Templar | Swims-At-Speed - V16 Magicka Templar | Sharmonknee - V16 Stamina Nightblade | Sharmoney - V16 Magicka Warden
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  • Jowrik
    Jowrik
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    Nightblade - Khajiit - Rha'Viir
    PC - EU - Aldmeri Dominion
  • Gilliamtherogue
    Gilliamtherogue
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    eliisra wrote: »
    If you want skill, learn animation canceling beyond what most people know about. There's so much more to this game's combat system other than clipping animations, there are special rules that are in place that dictate the flow of combat, but there are many ways to alter the flow with special tricks you can learn and master.

    Ok than maestro. Please teach my templar how to effectively animation cancel Puncturing Sweep, Radiant Oppression or the travelling time of Blazing Spear lol. You can also teach me how to animation cancel Flurry please.

    This while my NB can clip 90% of her offensive skills. Classes, weapons and skills where never balanced with animation cancelling in mind(as well as latency), that's the big issue here. ZoS already stated countless of times that never indented, but they're going with it anyway.

    Cones, channelling, ground target and casting timed skills cant clipped at all or only clipped very little. While instant skills or shorter casting timed, can be cancelled extremely well.

    Either ZoS goes and re-tweaks every single skills out there and measure it's effectiveness with clipping in mind, or they should remove it altogether. You cant have it both ways.


    ... Not sure you'd be able to grasp what I'd tell you, but every ability is allowed to be weaved with. All you have to do is light attack in between each attack, and go into the next attack. There are different levels of animation cancelling, as I mentioned in my previous post. If people took the time to tinker with it and learn instead of just running to this cesspool of a forum and form never changing opinions on misinformation I swear. Not every attack even benifits from clipping it, some actually lose efficiency. Look into something called the priority system, maybe then you'll be able to learn more instead of just spew nonesense.
    Old member of The Order of Mundus, Mostly Harmless, Hostile, and Genesis Elite. Avid theorycrafter. Herald to competitive stamina DPS pre 1.5. How far we've come!

    Have questions? Send me a message on the forums or my other social media. Seeing people learn is my dream and passion.

    Guides and other fun videos at https://youtube.com/c/gilliamtherogue
  • Hiero_Glyph
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    The problem is that animation canceling is not done skillfully in ESO. If you compare ESO's animation cancels to that of your average shooter, where reload canceling is critical, you will note that every weapon has a different reload animation and requires intimate knowledge of exactly when the magazine is inserted and the reload actually registers so that you can cancel the animation. ESO is about as unskilled as you can get when it comes to animation cancels as you can literally light weave and never even see the light attack animation.

    The only skills that require any amount of skill are the ones with cast times as you need to know eactly when you can clip them or use a followup action without aborting the current action. If ESO had skillful animation canceling then unskilled players would actually abort their own actions and severely handicap themselves. Instead, unskilled players still cancel the animation just with more of it animated before the next action is started. A skilled player can weave a light attack, skill, bash where you really only see the bash. An unskilled player can weave a light attack, skill, bash where you see the first portion of each attack but they still benefit despite not clipping these actions properly.

    I'm sorry but that is not skilled play when you can do it poorly and still gain a huge benefit. The fact that you can cancel the entire animation just demonstrates how little ZOS undertands about skilled animation canceling. No competitive shooter would ever allow such a mistake in the game as it would break the fundamental balance of the weapons, so why is it alright for an ESO to do it?

    EDIT: To be clear, I'm not against animation canceling but there should not be a way to cancel the entire animation as this would penalize unskilled players since they could actually abort their own action without gaining any benefit. If you animation cancel badly then you should be worse off than someone who is not using animation canceling. This would promote skillful play.
    Edited by Hiero_Glyph on November 17, 2015 4:52PM
  • Forestd16b14_ESO
    Forestd16b14_ESO
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    Animation cancellation needs to go. No arguing about it it is a broken mechanic, a exploit, a glitch. This who stuff about it's fine and adds more reactivity is a silly counter argument saying players are better if they use something broken and exploit it. Of course the exploiter is gonna be better that's how exploits work gaining a un-fair advantage over some one else.

    It is a broken exploit that needs removed and yes you can counter argue but end of the day animation cancellation is a broken dirty mechanic and any one for it clearly doesn't care for the growth of the game. Games die because of broken stuff like this.
  • Hexyl
    Hexyl
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    learn animation canceling ? skilled player use it ?

    that joke. All players who use it, do it with macro. Macro is skilled ? u_u
  • MrGrimey
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    You still have to wait for the global cool down so this is a non issue.

    There are so many other issues and bugs that the dev team needs to fix before they even waste their time reading this thread.

    Go play WoW or final fantasy if slow, turn based type MMOs are your thing. The combat system is this game's saving grace and should not be tampered with
  • Ishammael
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    There is no point to light or heavy attacks w/o animation canceling besides the artificial requirement for ultimate generation.
  • Gilliamtherogue
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    The problem is that animation canceling is not done skillfully in ESO. If you compare ESO's animation cancels to that of your average shooter, where reload canceling is critical, you will note that every weapon has a different reload animation and requires intimate knowledge of exactly when the magazine is inserted and the reload actually registers so that you can cancel the animation. ESO is about as unskilled as you can get when it comes to animation cancels as you can literally light weave and never even see the light attack animation.

    The only skills that require any amount of skill are the ones with cast times as you need to know eactly when you can clip them or use a followup action without aborting the current action. If ESO had skillful animation canceling then unskilled players would actually abort their own actions and severely handicap themselves. Instead, unskilled players still cancel the animation just with more of it animated before the next action is started. A skilled player can weave a light attack, skill, bash where you really only see the bash. An unskilled player can weave a light attack, skill, bash where you see the first portion of each attack but they still benefit despite not clipping these actions properly.

    I'm sorry but that is not skilled play when you can do it poorly and still gain a huge benefit. The fact that you can cancel the entire animation just demonstrates how little ZOS undertands about skilled animation canceling. No competitive shooter would ever allow such a mistake in the game as it would break the fundamental balance of the weapons, so why is it alright for an ESO to do it?

    EDIT: To be clear, I'm not against animation canceling but there should not be a way to cancel the entire animation as this would penalize unskilled players since they could actually abort their own action without gaining any benefit. If you animation cancel badly then you should be worse off than someone who is not using animation canceling. This would promote skillful play.

    As I mentioned before, some abilities actually do take a loss in performance if they clipped improperly. Queuing additional attacks with many casts throws off the priority system by fractions of a second, and quickly adds up over time to equate to a total loss of attacks in comparison to non clipping or properly weaving them. I've done a lot of testing to prove this and it mainly deals with medium weaving attacks or attempting to clip casted/channeled abilities. Each failed attempt to weave adds anywhere from .3 to .5 seconds to the queued attack, which throws off your entire rotation over time. Lets say you have a fight like Hardmode Serpent in an average group. This fight lasts roughly 5-7 minutes and you end with nearly 400-500 overall preformed abilities. If you fail 80% of your queued attacks (or weaves) to the point of an average of the queue system gaining .4 seconds to each next attack, that would equate to loss of 128-160 seconds of combat, which would be ~ 60-80 abilities casted. Each priority system takes roughly 1-1.5 seconds to complete, if you're wondering where I'm getting these numbers from. Human error inflicts heavily upon weaving, and thus is why Macroing is often so tempting to succumb to (don't macro, even in PvE it totally makes you look like a jag, it is directly against ToS and the spirit of skill based competition). In PvP the loss incurred by human error or improper weaving is much more subtle as combat is less controlled and doesn't flow with more stationary fights, due to human vs human contact. The amount of skill one can learn and improve on with the Priority system is almost mind boggling, and a lot of people are completely unaware of just how deep ESO's combat can get.
    Old member of The Order of Mundus, Mostly Harmless, Hostile, and Genesis Elite. Avid theorycrafter. Herald to competitive stamina DPS pre 1.5. How far we've come!

    Have questions? Send me a message on the forums or my other social media. Seeing people learn is my dream and passion.

    Guides and other fun videos at https://youtube.com/c/gilliamtherogue
  • dday3six
    dday3six
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    Animation cancellation needs to go. No arguing about it it is a broken mechanic, a exploit, a glitch. This who stuff about it's fine and adds more reactivity is a silly counter argument saying players are better if they use something broken and exploit it. Of course the exploiter is gonna be better that's how exploits work gaining a un-fair advantage over some one else.

    It is a broken exploit that needs removed and yes you can counter argue but end of the day animation cancellation is a broken dirty mechanic and any one for it clearly doesn't care for the growth of the game. Games die because of broken stuff like this.

    So you have no real arguments? Only buzzwords and doomsaying? You're just going label anyone who disagrees with you as harmful to the game and a cheater? Yeah that's real convincing chief ;)
  • Cuyler
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    NO.

    "Skill Weaving" adds complexity and dynamics to the combat system. If your only gripe is that the animation doesn't match what is happening, then request the animations be shortened. The combat system is more intuitive than any other I've played.

    I sincerely hope ZOS never makes this game a boring combat copy of other games where I can literally take a smoke break after activating an ability while watching my animations.

    ps. block casting is not lazy, it's the opposite actually. NOT blocking is lazy. Plus they addressed this with the no stam regen while blocking. moving on.
    Hexyl wrote: »
    learn animation canceling ? skilled player use it ?

    that joke. All players who use it, do it with macro. Macro is skilled ? u_u

    Here's an obligatory L2P post for you. Where is my LOL button?! Skill weaving (aka animation canceling, whatever you want to call it) is SO FREAKING EASY. Just get over it and L2P already. No macros needed.
    Edited by Cuyler on November 17, 2015 7:53PM
    Guild: STACK n BURN (gm) PC - NA
    CP 810 18 Maxed Characters:
    "How hard can u guar?" - Rafishul[/spoiler]
  • zornyan
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    Hexyl wrote: »
    learn animation canceling ? skilled player use it ?

    that joke. All players who use it, do it with macro. Macro is skilled ? u_u

    Don't spout bollocks, macros are actually ban-able and are counted as cheating.

    Animation cancelling isn't .

    Oh btw I animation cancel on console, so how am I using macros?
  • zornyan
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    The problem is that animation canceling is not done skillfully in ESO. If you compare ESO's animation cancels to that of your average shooter, where reload canceling is critical, you will note that every weapon has a different reload animation and requires intimate knowledge of exactly when the magazine is inserted and the reload actually registers so that you can cancel the animation. ESO is about as unskilled as you can get when it comes to animation cancels as you can literally light weave and never even see the light attack animation.

    The only skills that require any amount of skill are the ones with cast times as you need to know eactly when you can clip them or use a followup action without aborting the current action. If ESO had skillful animation canceling then unskilled players would actually abort their own actions and severely handicap themselves. Instead, unskilled players still cancel the animation just with more of it animated before the next action is started. A skilled player can weave a light attack, skill, bash where you really only see the bash. An unskilled player can weave a light attack, skill, bash where you see the first portion of each attack but they still benefit despite not clipping these actions properly.

    I'm sorry but that is not skilled play when you can do it poorly and still gain a huge benefit. The fact that you can cancel the entire animation just demonstrates how little ZOS undertands about skilled animation canceling. No competitive shooter would ever allow such a mistake in the game as it would break the fundamental balance of the weapons, so why is it alright for an ESO to do it?

    EDIT: To be clear, I'm not against animation canceling but there should not be a way to cancel the entire animation as this would penalize unskilled players since they could actually abort their own action without gaining any benefit. If you animation cancel badly then you should be worse off than someone who is not using animation canceling. This would promote skillful play.

    As I mentioned before, some abilities actually do take a loss in performance if they clipped improperly. Queuing additional attacks with many casts throws off the priority system by fractions of a second, and quickly adds up over time to equate to a total loss of attacks in comparison to non clipping or properly weaving them. I've done a lot of testing to prove this and it mainly deals with medium weaving attacks or attempting to clip casted/channeled abilities. Each failed attempt to weave adds anywhere from .3 to .5 seconds to the queued attack, which throws off your entire rotation over time. Lets say you have a fight like Hardmode Serpent in an average group. This fight lasts roughly 5-7 minutes and you end with nearly 400-500 overall preformed abilities. If you fail 80% of your queued attacks (or weaves) to the point of an average of the queue system gaining .4 seconds to each next attack, that would equate to loss of 128-160 seconds of combat, which would be ~ 60-80 abilities casted. Each priority system takes roughly 1-1.5 seconds to complete, if you're wondering where I'm getting these numbers from. Human error inflicts heavily upon weaving, and thus is why Macroing is often so tempting to succumb to (don't macro, even in PvE it totally makes you look like a jag, it is directly against ToS and the spirit of skill based competition). In PvP the loss incurred by human error or improper weaving is much more subtle as combat is less controlled and doesn't flow with more stationary fights, due to human vs human contact. The amount of skill one can learn and improve on with the Priority system is almost mind boggling, and a lot of people are completely unaware of just how deep ESO's combat can get.

    Have an awesome sir!

    Any idea on sweeps? Only skill I can't animation cancel properly, or should I saw med-heavy weave, I can clip just after the last jab a quick light attack and straight into the next sweeps, but that's about it.

    Oh and dark flare, pretty much same as above.
  • zornyan
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    Cuyler wrote: »
    NO.

    "Skill Weaving" adds complexity and dynamics to the combat system. If your only gripe is that the animation doesn't match what is happening, then request the animations be shortened. The combat system is more intuitive than any other I've played.

    I sincerely hope ZOS never makes this game a boring combat copy of other games where I'm literally taking smoke breaks and watching animations.

    ps. block casting is not lazy, it's the opposite actually. NOT blocking is lazy. Plus they addressed this with the no stam regen while blocking. moving on.
    Hexyl wrote: »
    learn animation canceling ? skilled player use it ?

    that joke. All players who use it, do it with macro. Macro is skilled ? u_u

    Here's an obligatory L2P post for you. Where is my LOL button?! Skill weaving (aka animation canceling, whatever you want to call it) is SO FREAKING EASY. Just get over it and L2P already. No macros needed.

    But that require time spent in the game playing, and learning, it's far easier for the crybabies to come on here and QQ.

    What else have they got to do? Play the game? Bah
  • usmcjdking
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    OdinForge wrote: »
    Jowrik wrote: »
    OdinForge wrote: »
    There isn't anything wrong with animation canceling as it stands, it's an extra layer of responsiveness that many people enjoy.

    Taking it away would slow down combat way too much.

    Essentially you could speed up the animations, and still achieve the same thing as animation skipping allows today. The benefit would be that you would also get full complete good looking animations, instead of the invisible/spasm/half-finished fidgeting hits we have today.

    No that's not how it works.

    Animation canceling is a layer of "skill", as in it's something one should practice to get better at to do more consistently. The game can be viewed as a mindless button smash, but removing canceling and speeding up animations would worsen this. It separates one person from another, allows for variations in build numbers that otherwise wouldn't exist if everyone consistently hit at the same speed.

    In the case of ESO, animation canceling is good.

    lol wtf. Layer of skill? Animation cancelling is the exact definition of button mashing. Mash buttons with no respect to your enemy.

    Animation cancelling, for the sake of this thread can be fixed. Damage simply needs to be tied to the ending animation frames instead of halfway through.
    0331
    0602
  • Bogdan_Kobzar
    Bogdan_Kobzar
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    :(
    Edited by Bogdan_Kobzar on November 17, 2015 10:46PM
    "Being honorable might make you a good man, but it doesn't make you right. Be a better world if it did."
    Be mindful of Community Rules
  • Emma_Overload
    Emma_Overload
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    usmcjdking wrote: »
    OdinForge wrote: »
    Jowrik wrote: »
    OdinForge wrote: »
    There isn't anything wrong with animation canceling as it stands, it's an extra layer of responsiveness that many people enjoy.

    Taking it away would slow down combat way too much.

    Essentially you could speed up the animations, and still achieve the same thing as animation skipping allows today. The benefit would be that you would also get full complete good looking animations, instead of the invisible/spasm/half-finished fidgeting hits we have today.

    No that's not how it works.

    Animation canceling is a layer of "skill", as in it's something one should practice to get better at to do more consistently. The game can be viewed as a mindless button smash, but removing canceling and speeding up animations would worsen this. It separates one person from another, allows for variations in build numbers that otherwise wouldn't exist if everyone consistently hit at the same speed.

    In the case of ESO, animation canceling is good.

    lol wtf. Layer of skill? Animation cancelling is the exact definition of button mashing. Mash buttons with no respect to your enemy.

    Animation cancelling, for the sake of this thread can be fixed. Damage simply needs to be tied to the ending animation frames instead of halfway through.

    Out of all the unnecessary "solutions" to this imaginary problem, yours is the worst I've ever seen. People would waste time on cancelled attacks frequently... it would be incredibly frustrating. Then, in order to compensate, players would slow their attacks WAY down, so slow that they were wasting a second or more in between attacks, just to make sure they didn't miss one. And THEN you know what would happen?

    Everyone and their mother would start using MACROS in order to time their attacks perfectly so that they don't waste time or cancel attacks by mistake. Your "solution" would cause more cheating than ESO has seen yet.

    Edited by Emma_Overload on November 17, 2015 6:27PM
    #CAREBEARMASTERRACE
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