Has there been Official Response to the animation canceling issue?

Semfim · January 2015

I'd like to know if there has been an official response to the issue of animation canceling. I know that they stated block casting is a big trouble for the responsive type of engine they intended to build, but has any word come out on animation canceling?

I for one have a big issue with this (and with light/heavy attacks during animations that trigger after the animations are through) and in my mind its a ugly gimmick (if not an exploit) that is now a required mechanic to achieve the dps numbers all PUG's seem to ask for nowadays.

I've seen people say its kind of a game evolution, where "player skill" (with mashing buttons) comes to its full potential, but when a game forces me to macro to be effective that is not a game evolution.

Bottom line is: will I be forced to get a macro ready keyboard and mouse to continue to play this game? I would like to know the official stance on this issue because (and its not only for me) it's a make or break, as no ammount of balance will erase this mechanics abuse.

Rodario · January 2015

The first official response to this (a few months back, I can't be bothered to go find it) went along the lines of "We didn't expect this, but we don't consider it cheating unless it's automated".

To me, this means they didn't intend for ac to be a thing, but they can't figure out how to fix it without rewriting the entire combat system. So now they're just going with it and instead balance content around it.

Jaerlach · January 2015

Here are some links to things that might help the people who are upset with animation cancelling. It is a natural byproduct of any competitive (and MMOs are competitive, both in PVE GvG progression, and in having a PvP environment) video game.

http://www.techopedia.com/definition/27043/emergent-gameplay

Here is the basic concept, it is not uncommon.

Here are some of the most famous examples:

Quake: Rocket jumping: http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Rocket_Jump

Quake: Strafe jumping:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g24fe4bwu0

DOTA: Orb Walking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb3xCxJ1Ap4

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Twitch attacking (animation cancelling)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMNKRrRrYP8

Riven Animation Cancelling: League of Legends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXsJ3kqpzJc

And finally, a link to the ESO guild summit where this question was asked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjSDQoMG1Gk

Manual animation cancelling is an unintended but embraced game mechanic. Content is now balanced around its existence.

This is why Magnus is telling you to move on. There is a definitive answer, and it isn't that he is cheating.

jeevin · January 2015

Officially it's not cheating unless you macro it. I don't think it can be policed either way. The problem is that in order to achieve the desired dps you actually need to cancel those animations which is really dumb design for those players who don't know or don't want to use a/c. To say a/c requires "skill" is bollocks too.

Morthur · January 2015

Vizier · January 2015

It's not bad game design if they intended it to be that way. From my perspective it doesn't matter one way or the other. They said it's not exploiting or cheating and everyone has access to it. A person's unwillingness to A/C isn't my problem.

There are those that like A/C. I really couldn't care one way or the other

Drasn · January 2015

Semfim wrote: »

Bottom line is: will I be forced to get a macro ready keyboard and mouse to continue to play this game? I would like to know the official stance on this issue because (and its not only for me) it's a make or break, as no ammount of balance will erase this mechanics abuse.

Doubt you would have much luck macroing it, as it does require timing to pull off and with latency and whatnot a macro probably won't cut it.

Just learn the timing or don't. Light/heavy weaving is going to become more of a thing with the new ultimate gain mechanics anyway, might as well get the most out of it.

Soris · January 2015

Animation cancelling with light+skill+bash combo has just gone mad. I mean really MAD. You see just one hit, but there are actually 3 hits in your face.

It doesn't matter if you do it manually or using macro. It's just awful gameplay, like the kids do it in cheap F2P games with lots of cheats and exploits.

I can't believe they are still allowing this ***, bah.

TehMagnus · January 2015

What issue? If you're referring to the issue of people who can't do it, all you need is practice

.

Tavore1138 · January 2015

The removal of soft caps & introduction of CP may make cancelling less mandatory and beneficial after 1.6.

For example if no caps on stats, damage and regen mean skills can sustain without the heavy weaved in between and the build does not rely on ultimates then the reasons to do it fade as you could hit your DPS without it.

At least in PvE.

Semfim · January 2015

Rodario wrote: »

The first official response to this (a few months back, I can't be bothered to go find it) went along the lines of "We didn't expect this, but we don't consider it cheating unless it's automated".

To me, this means they didn't intend for ac to be a thing, but they can't figure out how to fix it without rewriting the entire combat system. So now they're just going with it and instead balance content around it.

Thx Rodano. here is hoping they will do something about it, and no @TehMagnus its not just a problem to those who dont know how to use it. Its just not the way its meant to be played, no matter how sweet your DPS is with it...

Rair.Kitani · January 2015

Semfim wrote: »

Bottom line is: will I be forced to get a macro ready keyboard and mouse to continue to play this game? I would like to know the official stance on this issue because (and its not only for me) it's a make or break, as no ammount of balance will erase this mechanics abuse.

No you don't need to!
I manually cancel light attack animation at about 90% success rate.
Macroing is not only cheating, but also lame and dull.
If you cant or dont want to do it, you lose some dps... where the point to get upset?

Semfim · January 2015

Rair.Kitani wrote: »

Semfim wrote: »

where the point to get upset?

I come from a day where you chose your party members for how you saw them perform, not the damage number you have on your counter... shouldnt i get upset if i get turned down from pug's (which happens seldomly cause i prefer the relaxed atmosphere of pvp) because i dont use a broken mechanic? Whats the point in balaning classes or skill choice if using a gimmick overlaps every choice you could possibly do?

Lol at people and freebies...

TehMagnus · January 2015

Semfim wrote: »

Rodario wrote: »

The first official response to this (a few months back, I can't be bothered to go find it) went along the lines of "We didn't expect this, but we don't consider it cheating unless it's automated".

To me, this means they didn't intend for ac to be a thing, but they can't figure out how to fix it without rewriting the entire combat system. So now they're just going with it and instead balance content around it.

Thx Rodano. here is hoping they will do something about it, and no @TehMagnus its not just a problem to those who dont know how to use it. Its just not the way its meant to be played, no matter how sweet your DPS is with it...

Then there really is no issue/problem nor need for any official response since it was already given: Animation canceling was unexpected but not cheating. <= End Of Story. Moreover, the people who actually think this is an issue are a minority.

If they wanted to fix it, it would already have been fixed since it's not like it's a challenge to put a timer once the skill is activated that impedes the activation of other skills or to just completely cancel the effects if the skill is canceled.

Vikestart · January 2015

Vizier wrote: »

It's not bad game design if they intended it to be that way.

Of course it is. The animations are supposed to be visual representations of what's going on in the game. If they can no longer reliably represent that, there's some bad game design going on.

Tavore1138 · January 2015

Vikestart wrote: »

Vizier wrote: »

It's not bad game design if they intended it to be that way.

Of course it is. The animations are supposed to be visual representations of what's going on in the game. If they can no longer reliably represent that, there's some bad game design going on.

But this only really matters in PvP where you might be relying on visual cues to decide on your next move... Or if NPCs start doing it...

RAZORNZL · January 2015

I use this everyday in pvp and pve because i can and it works.
BUT i really wish they would get rid of it.

Vikestart · January 2015

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

Vikestart wrote: »

Vizier wrote: »

It's not bad game design if they intended it to be that way.

Of course it is. The animations are supposed to be visual representations of what's going on in the game. If they can no longer reliably represent that, there's some bad game design going on.

But this only really matters in PvP where you might be relying on visual cues to decide on your next move... Or if NPCs start doing it...

No, it doesn't. It's immersion breaking anywhere in the game.

Cuyler · January 2015

You probably A/C without even knowing it. Just smashing two buttons faster than the animation time will cause it. Everyone does it whether they realize it or not.

Cuyler · January 2015

^I just got my 100th LOL from whoever this was. TY!

Semfim · January 2015

TehMagnus wrote: »

Then there really is no issue/problem nor need for any official response since it was already given: Animation canceling was unexpected but not cheating. <= End Of Story. Moreover, the people who actually think this is an issue are a minority.

If they wanted to fix it, it would already have been fixed since it's not like it's a challenge to put a timer once the skill is activated that impedes the activation of other skills or to just completely cancel the effects if the skill is canceled.

Let me call you buddy south park style, m8...

People who think this is a problem are not a minority. From the forums my reading is that there are people who like it and want to see it as a feature (those i think are few), people who have accepted it and incorporated it into their playstyles, and people who totally do not accept it. Myself, i never use forum statistics to gauge the general feeling of the game population. From experience, most around here are die hards, as casual players just get overwhelmed and usually dont post.

Anyway, what you are disregarding is the huge ammount of people who do not know of the sheer existence of this practice. There is no tutorial on "weaving and animation canceling" or "how to cast and permablock"... those are strategies used by whoever has been around long enough, reads the forums or somehow got word of this.

Thats my side of the story, you may disagree, but please don't throw "End Of Story" and "its a minority" so easily around... its makes you look like you want to to be agreed upon because you are the know all of know alls without any proof to back up your remarks and honestly i just take people with those kinds of atitudes with a kilo of salt.

xMovingTarget · January 2015

Animation Canceling isnt even an issue, period.

Semfim wrote: »

Bottom line is: will I be forced to get a macro ready keyboard and mouse to continue to play this game? I would like to know the official stance on this issue because (and its not only for me) it's a make or break, as no ammount of balance will erase this mechanics abuse.

Only if you cant press 2 buttons lol. If you cant do it without macros you should go and play something else, seriously. Its not hard.

TehMagnus · January 2015

Semfim wrote: »

TehMagnus wrote: »

Then there really is no issue/problem nor need for any official response since it was already given: Animation canceling was unexpected but not cheating. <= End Of Story. Moreover, the people who actually think this is an issue are a minority.

If they wanted to fix it, it would already have been fixed since it's not like it's a challenge to put a timer once the skill is activated that impedes the activation of other skills or to just completely cancel the effects if the skill is canceled.

Let me call you buddy south park style, m8...

People who think this is a problem are not a minority. From the forums my reading is that there are people who like it and want to see it as a feature (those i think are few), people who have accepted it and incorporated it into their playstyles, and people who totally do not accept it. Myself, i never use forum statistics to gauge the general feeling of the game population. From experience, most around here are die hards, as casual players just get overwhelmed and usually dont post.

Anyway, what you are disregarding is the huge ammount of people who do not know of the sheer existence of this practice. There is no tutorial on "weaving and animation canceling" or "how to cast and permablock"... those are strategies used by whoever has been around long enough, reads the forums or somehow got word of this.

Thats my side of the story, you may disagree, but please don't throw "End Of Story" and "its a minority" so easily around... its makes you look like you want to to be agreed upon because you are the know all of know alls without any proof to back up your remarks and honestly i just take people with those kinds of atitudes with a kilo of salt.

So buddy, look at any poll made on this subject in the forums and you'll see it was always a majority stating they either didn't think it was cheating or just didn't care. So numbers wise according to polls you can find through search and not "according to what I feel from reading the forums", most people: don't think this is a problem or don't care.

As for people here being die hard, you couldn't be further from the truth. Majority of people in the forums are actually casuals (there are also polls about this in forums that you can also find through search). I'd also like to point out that you begin by saying "From what I read on forums, people disagree, but in any case I don't trust forums because it's die hard people which kinda means: If feel like I'm right but in any case I don't trust that feeling (might as well not speak of your feeling at all then).

Anyways, buddy, there are tutorials on weaving/animation canceling that you can find through Google search. If you're talking about official tutorial, none of the game systems are explained officially anyways.

As to how to cast on perma block it's kinda easy, just hold the right key button

. Regarding "people who don't know about this practice", people who want to be competitive (and are the only ones that care if other people are weaving to pull DPS) obviously know about this or end up knowing about it since they do research about DPS. And once again, many game systems aren't explained and you have to find out on your own like the fact that in order to make your horse go faster you don't have to keep the space bar pushed but spam it until you're nearly out of horse stamina. Should this sprint on horse system also be discarded and fixed because "only a minority knows about it and there is no tutorial about it?".

You can say what ever you want, pant, kick, cry, in the end, ZOS already responded to this, do not see it as an issue and obviously haven't felt like it was a priority to change this.

Edit: Oh and you're obviously just mad because you can't manually wave and obviously just want the system removed because you're unable to use it. Flash news: Macroing won't help you wave during trials or PVP because of animation lag, I've tried. So instead of asking for non issue things to be fixed, maybe just learn to push three buttons in a row?

So please, just stop, it's getting old, and nobody cares anymore.

melodeath · January 2015

i wish it was "fixed" to be honest..

i cant see the fun in having to smash buttons like a maniac 24/7 just to be the "1337" dude like all the a/c defenders here.. i play to have fun and consider myself to be a good player.. but having to wreck my keyboard just to be as powerfull as the rest is just a dumb game mechanic.

+ this is an elder scroll game, wich are known for immersion..
let me say that after a hard day of labor to be able to pay the bills and wanting to relax by playing a video game.. than having be the keyboard warrior is not really "relaxing/skillfull/immersive".

TehMagnus · January 2015

melodeath wrote: »

i wish it was "fixed" to be honest..

i cant see the fun in having to smash buttons like a maniac 24/7 just to be the "1337" dude like all the a/c defenders here.. i play to have fun and consider myself to be a good player.. but having to wreck my keyboard just to be as powerfull as the rest is just a dumb game mechanic.

+ this is an elder scroll game, wich are known for immersion..
let me say that after a hard day of labor to be able to pay the bills and wanting to relax by playing a video game.. than having be the keyboard warrior is not really "relaxing/skillfull/immersive".

Then play a pay2win game and you won't have to try hard.

melodeath · January 2015

TehMagnus wrote: »

melodeath wrote: »

i wish it was "fixed" to be honest..

i cant see the fun in having to smash buttons like a maniac 24/7 just to be the "1337" dude like all the a/c defenders here.. i play to have fun and consider myself to be a good player.. but having to wreck my keyboard just to be as powerfull as the rest is just a dumb game mechanic.

+ this is an elder scroll game, wich are known for immersion..
let me say that after a hard day of labor to be able to pay the bills and wanting to relax by playing a video game.. than having be the keyboard warrior is not really "relaxing/skillfull/immersive".

Then play a pay2win game and you won't have to try hard.

wich is exactly the comment i expected from a 24/7 "1337" kiddie that has nothing better to do than be unconstructive...

Semfim · January 2015

melodeath wrote: »

wich is exactly the comment i expected from a 24/7 "1337" kiddie that has nothing better to do than be unconstructive...

The word *** comes to my mind everyone tries to shove their opinion down someones throat in games. In RL i just call them totalitarian [snip].

EDIT: the word which has been censored has to do with french bathin... lol

asteldian · January 2015

Personally I have no issue with attack weaving, however I dislike the active cancellation of skills via block. Mainly because the active skill simply should not have a longer animation than the actual attack (e.g. wrecking blow). Weaving a attack I don't mind because it is essentially smoothly transitioning from one attack to another, whereas using block to stop an animation to move on to the next is a clunky mechanic, it doesn't feel or look right.

TehMagnus · January 2015

melodeath wrote: »

TehMagnus wrote: »

melodeath wrote: »

i wish it was "fixed" to be honest..

i cant see the fun in having to smash buttons like a maniac 24/7 just to be the "1337" dude like all the a/c defenders here.. i play to have fun and consider myself to be a good player.. but having to wreck my keyboard just to be as powerfull as the rest is just a dumb game mechanic.

+ this is an elder scroll game, wich are known for immersion..
let me say that after a hard day of labor to be able to pay the bills and wanting to relax by playing a video game.. than having be the keyboard warrior is not really "relaxing/skillfull/immersive".

Then play a pay2win game and you won't have to try hard.

wich is exactly the comment i expected from a 24/7 "1337" kiddie that has nothing better to do than be unconstructive...

Dude, if you want to play a "sit back & relax" game after a hard day of work: MMORPGS are not for you, pay 2 win games are since you can buy stuff to be OP without needing any skill what so ever or solo games where you can enable console and type "TGM".

I'm merely pointing you to the kind of games where you won't be disappointed

As for being constructive, it still beats saying: "I don't want this in the game because it makes me have to work hard and I don't want to work when I get home and play games".

melodeath · January 2015

this game could be for me if it wasnt because of the toxic behaviour from people like yourself... i have my opinion wich i made from looking at the other "elder scroll" games + in every other game an animation that is is beeing stopped, yet still goes off with on top of that another attack would be considered a bug.

but looking at your signature it seems that having a discussion about this subject with you is more than pointless because of the fact that all you achieved in this game is because of the broken mechanic..

Razzak · January 2015

When is damage applied? At the start of skill animation or at the end?
Animation can be something that takes a certain amount of time, but damage is applied instantly, so it is this moment that defines our attack and not what we see.
If damage is applied at the start of our skill, animation is pointless in a way. It's there only so we can identify what we are doing and our moves look better, more "realistic". If, on the other hand, damage is applied at the end of our skill execution, any kind of canceling would be pointless. The third option is that damage is applied at the moment our weapon or spell connects with the enemy, but considering this is online game, it would probably be very dependent on lag or similar.

Flurry (DW skill) is a skill that takes 1.25 sec and it has to be completed in full in order to do it's maximal damage. So, this would imply damage is done at the end of skill completion. Do light and heavy attacks follow the same logic?

TehMagnus · January 2015

melodeath wrote: »

this game could be for me if it wasnt because of the toxic behaviour from people like yourself... i have my opinion wich i made from looking at the other "elder scroll" games + in every other game an animation that is is beeing stopped, yet still goes off with on top of that another attack would be considered a bug.

but looking at your signature it seems that having a discussion about this subject with you is more than pointless because of the fact that all you achieved in this game is because of the broken mechanic..

This is not an elder scrolls game, this is an MMORPG set in the elder scrolls unvierse. Go back to Skyrim, it's people like you who ruin perfectly good MMOs.

As for a bug, the game makers said it wasn't one, so go on with your life please. Even if animation canceling or attack waving wasn't possible I'd would be the same thing. If you don't have the skill to do something as easy as weave you can't expect to do anything actually difficult in this game.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Has there been Official Response to the animation canceling issue?

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