Do you think ZOS should eliminate animation cancelling?

RazorCaltrops

No let it stay

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/316098/confessions-of-a-casual-mind#latest

Someone had to do this.

Spottswoode

Yes get rid of it

DoctorDarkspawn wrote:

If they are going to keep it, refine it.

If they are going to remove it, alter abilities and rotations to make up for the loss in damage and reward smarter rotations.

It is not that hard.

Can I give you a medal?

Lookstowindwards

Yes get rid of it

Emencie wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

dramsb14_ESO wrote: »

Yes, if you interrupt an animation, you should also be interrupting the spell/ability associated with it.

As easy as that sounds, it's not so simple. Latency would better very impactful if the game were set up like that. Was the animation finished or was it not? It's the same with a % of damage lost based on the length of the animation before it was clipped. There are three instances of what is happening in an online game. What you see, what the other player sees, and what thevserver sees. The server tries to translate the data from the other two so that both see a continuous and seemless instance, but as we all know that is not always the case.

You'd be leaving it up to the server as to whether or not the animation was completed. That would cause a lot of problems in it's own right, on top of increased server load due to the increased processing needed to calculate the effect of each animation as it's used vs a blanket behavior for all of them.

This is why skills are generally limited by things like global cooldowns, weapon speeds, or normalized animations. So that there is no overlap, no cancellation and no need for the server to deal with additional processes.

Though I agree it is not simple for ESO because they built the entire game before they realized this problem, and it would be insane to go back and redo everything to fix it. But that still doesn't make it good for the game IMHO.

But they dont see it as a problem. They even redesigned ultimate gain and skills like grim focus to benifit more from it.

I remember when the problem was first brought up the devs did want to fix it. But it's simply too ingrained in the game code. So it was decided to simply make it apart of the game.

The problem with it is, it makes gameplay normalization impossible.

Example.
If we are trying to balance dps skill A. We take many things into account, but primarily we need to know how much dps does skill A do. In eso that basic question is nearly impossible to answer but not just because of the basic things all mmos have like buffs and gear, but also because players and latency play a pivotal role.

1. A player who has no idea what AC is
2. The player who is learning to AC
3. The AC pro
4. The AC pro with bad latency
5. The macro keyboard user

All of these people in eso will have drastically different dps while using a single skill even if they have the exact same gear and buffs.

In other mmos these 5 people (using simple auto attack and spamming one skill) will do nearly the same if not the exact same damage.

This is why we have content that is too hard for a group of 4, but also so easy someone can solo it. This is why people complain about unkillable tanks, and instant death gankers in pvp.

drastically different => less than 5k => 10% difference

are you serious?

Very serious.

1 skill + light attck/block/bash weaving
VS
1 skill + spamming it while waiting out the animation.

Is a lot more than a 10% damage difference.

@Emencie

This is simply a false statement. Animation canceling, especially the type i think you are describing, does not decrease the global cooldown of skills. If we are talking about a basic light weave, the number one type of animation canceling done in this game, well it usually adds about 5-6 percent Damage.

Looking at a 50k parse on the PTS (not mine), light attacks accounted for about 2800 DPS (5.6 percent). That is with a near perfect weave. Most people are going to be less than that. All the weaving in the world is not going to allow you to get off more skills. Skills have global cooldowns.

I'll try to reiterate what I meant.

In WoW "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a global cool down of 2 seconds, and while using it the player auto attacks once a second for 100 damage.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button once every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button like a maniac, it still only goes off every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A person with bad lag still sees the fight client side and pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, when the server gets the info guess what? He gets 350 DPS.

In GW2 "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a normalized animation of 2 seconds there is no auto attack.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds giving them 250 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button but it only goes after the last animation completed, giving them 250 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, again 250 DPS.

In ESO "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it can be ACed and weaved it has an animation of 1.5 seconds and a global cool down of .9 seconds. Light attacks deal 100 damage and can be weaved in, bashes can be used to cancel animation for 50 damage
A Pro player can weave a light attack in between every "Skill A" button press and ends it with a bash canceling the animation down to 1 second, giving them 650 DPS
A noob player hits the "Skill A" button every time the animation ends with no weaving and no AC giving them 333 DPS
A person learning AC may weave a light attack in every other "Skill A" button press, but miff a block cancel or two and put their DPS somewhere between 333 and 650.
A perfect macro system will get the AC down to .9 seconds every "Skill A" use, while weaving the light attacks and bashes giving the bot 715 DPS

I brought this up because I feel this is the biggest problem with weaving and AC. My numbers are made up (obviously) but I was just trying to show that weaving/AC has quite an impact on simply how we view/balance skills because it's not, and never can be normalized. This is a problem fairly unique to ESO because most games normalize skills.

I'm not talking about how much epic damage you get out of AC. I'm talking about on the basic level of "When a character is just using a single skill how much damage does that character do." AC can make that number vary, where most games that number would be consistent across skill lines. This basic idea is seen in game whenever you group with a person that has no idea what AC is and you look at their terrible DPS parse like then promptly kick them. We have situations where people are doing content designed for a group, solo. PvP where people are 1v20 and other insane feats that are simply not seen in other MMORPGs.

Because the difference in ESO between a vet player and a noob is so astronomical not only because of build quality, but also unexplained gameplay mechanics, the biggest of which is AC.

This is why I don't like it. But I understand why it's here to stay, and of course I use it.

I don't know how much clearer I can explain this.

Thank you so much!

A friend of mine just came back from a three month frustration break, because he could not understand, why the difference between noobs and pros would be so great that a dungeon could one time be a walk in the park, while the other time the group could not down a boss even after many hours of trying.

I think your post illustrates the problem with AC quite well: It makes balancing even more impossible then it already is by nature in MMOs, leading to more kicks for noobs and nervous breakdowns for patient veterans trying to run a dungeon with whatever the finder gives them. In other games you would only have to explain mechanics and tactic, tell people to and when use skill a-z, and DONT STAND IN STUPID.

Here in ESO, even if the noob-group does everything of the above right, it is quite possible that they still will not down the boss, because they dont AC and so dont have the DPS for the fight.

Iselin

Other (Please explain)

A better option would be to create an in-game macroing system (similar to what Rift has) to allow the hopelessly uncoordinated to compete on an even footing.

Xerton

No let it stay

Lookstowindwards wrote: »

Thank you so much!

A friend of mine just came back from a three month frustration break, because he could not understand, why the difference between noobs and pros would be so great that a dungeon could one time be a walk in the park, while the other time the group could not down a boss even after many hours of trying.

I think your post illustrates the problem with AC quite well: It makes balancing even more impossible then it already is by nature in MMOs, leading to more kicks for noobs and nervous breakdowns for patient veterans trying to run a dungeon with whatever the finder gives them. In other games you would only have to explain mechanics and tactic, tell people to and when use skill a-z, and DONT STAND IN STUPID.

Here in ESO, even if the noob-group does everything of the above right, it is quite possible that they still will not down the boss, because they dont AC and so dont have the DPS for the fight.

So you are telling me, that when i am in a dungeon with a random DD and i pull 50k and he deals 20k it is because i use AC?
The problem starts at a completely other point and that is, that people are unable to create a damage rotation.
I currently don't have a dmg parse to support the following, but trust me, even if i would not cancel any animation and would not weave a single light attack i would still deal mor than 40k in the same situation.

The people complaining are mostly those you see in other threads whining that their 18k dps should be enough to clear every content. No it should not.

No matter which class or magicka or stamina build, you can pull 25k+ with a crafted only setup.
Just accept the fact, that ZOS intendet AC and wants people to use it.
And furthermore accept the fact, that AC is not the reason you are so far behind in DPS.
First of all it is a general L2P issue, not only mastering AC

FearlessOne_2014

Idinuse wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

Idinuse wrote: »

Do you really believe that a competitive expansion to ESO such as Arenas could ever be possible when it's beyond obvious how many are cheating using macros?

How can you, just by interaction in game, tell if a player is using macros or not? You call it obvious and many. Detail how you deduce, for a matter of fact, that a player is using macros.

Ah, see here is the benefit of doubt mantra, can't prove it, something that macro cheaters are thriving of. I can assure you that I have well over 200 screenshots of death caps showing 5 skills within around 2 seconds according to the visible FTC log.

Next mantra is going to be skillful thumbs or other finger. Please. Every one of these skills needs a weapon swap and an instant cast then yet another weapon swap to be pulled of anywhere near that time space. Every time.

Next mantra is lag or latency. Amazingly nothing else in the vicinity of the environment I'm in during this 5 skills in 2 seconds death is lagging or suffering any latency. None of the caps of this particular nature have ever included any sort of channeled skill. They seem to bee immune to latency and lag in this regard.

Last, I know people who have admitted to using Razer macros after being confronted with what I have on screenshot. If nothing else, these would invalidate any kind of competitions such as Arenas, as long as macros are or even can be present in game. Cancelling skills with animation at least lowers the chances of cheaters competing in a competitive game.

I would have guessed most players would find that a welcoming thought.

Not if ZOS officially lifts it's ToS violation of macros. If macros was officially legal to all players then we can still have a decent competition even with animation cancelling and macros.

As long multi skill macroing is a reason for ban in terms of the ToS then no, absolutely no competition could be had. Because the pirates who have bare bones accounts and don't care about getting banned will always have the unfair upper hand.

GreenhaloX

No! This is the closest thing to matching a sorc's damages of 50k or more hit!

OdinForge

No let it stay

Johngo0036 wrote: »

I dont say get rid of them,

However i usually run in pvp with more than 300 latency,
Try to animation cancel then,

Even Alcast mentioned that on the pts he was having issues getting animation cancelling 100% correct.

Ninja San was or still is one of the best players NA, and he played every time with high ping 200-300+. He was still able to animation cancel better than most NA players, and he dominated 1v1s. High ping isn't an excuse for not being able to animation cancel, if high ping is causing you problems it will continue to do so even without animation canceling.

Most NA players play with fine ping (as fine as possible in a game like ESO), if your ping is bad that's your problem. You can't balance the game around the few people with *** ping, when most NA players are indeed NA with acceptable ping.

PTS has a ton of issues for a multitude of reasons, mostly coming down to ZOS not having a clue how to patch games.

Iselin

Other (Please explain)

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

Idinuse wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

Idinuse wrote: »

Do you really believe that a competitive expansion to ESO such as Arenas could ever be possible when it's beyond obvious how many are cheating using macros?

How can you, just by interaction in game, tell if a player is using macros or not? You call it obvious and many. Detail how you deduce, for a matter of fact, that a player is using macros.

Ah, see here is the benefit of doubt mantra, can't prove it, something that macro cheaters are thriving of. I can assure you that I have well over 200 screenshots of death caps showing 5 skills within around 2 seconds according to the visible FTC log.

Next mantra is going to be skillful thumbs or other finger. Please. Every one of these skills needs a weapon swap and an instant cast then yet another weapon swap to be pulled of anywhere near that time space. Every time.

Next mantra is lag or latency. Amazingly nothing else in the vicinity of the environment I'm in during this 5 skills in 2 seconds death is lagging or suffering any latency. None of the caps of this particular nature have ever included any sort of channeled skill. They seem to bee immune to latency and lag in this regard.

Last, I know people who have admitted to using Razer macros after being confronted with what I have on screenshot. If nothing else, these would invalidate any kind of competitions such as Arenas, as long as macros are or even can be present in game. Cancelling skills with animation at least lowers the chances of cheaters competing in a competitive game.

I would have guessed most players would find that a welcoming thought.

Not if ZOS officially lifts it's ToS violation of macros. If macros was officially legal to all players then we can still have a decent competition even with animation cancelling and macros.

As long multi skill macroing is a reason for ban in terms of the ToS then no, absolutely no competition could be had. Because the pirates who have bare bones accounts and don't care about getting banned will always have the unfair upper hand.

Not good enough to just lift the macro ban as that would still create a separation between those with macro HW and the have nots - especially on the consoles.

Official support in game for animation-cancelling macros would be the only solution along those lines. Even add-on support for macros would not be good enough since that's just a PC/Mac thing.

DurzoBlint13

technohic wrote: »

DurzoBlint13 wrote: »

I would be happy if they just got rid of the ridiculous Emote-cancel BS happening right now. I see a lot of comments about a "cool down" but this glitch completely bypasses that. You can stack 5-6 skills up and they all fire at the same time. Maybe it is not a problem on PC but it happens a lot on PS4. Especially the 5 or 6 EP players that use it religiously.

other than that, we all have to accept that AC is here to stay. ZOS has openly said they did not intend it but they will not be removing it either. Deal with it or find another game

Now can we please put Animation Canceling in the same category as Politics and Religion (and Class Balance for that matter) and not speak about them in public? These debates are pointless and unconstructive

Emote cancel? I've seen the dreaded "macroslice" that happens with 2h crit rush and that appeared to be from lag.

on PS4 there is a way to look like you are just standing there doing an emote, but really they are stacking skills up to all fire at the same time. You see a player in the field doing jumping jacks, just turn the other way. As soon as you get in range they fire 6 Snipes at you in less than a second and yet it still looks like they are doing jumping jacks. My guildies have vids of a couple of us attacking a guy that was playing the drums, one guy dies and we can not figure out what happened. Death recap is 5 Snipes from guy that is still playing drums. Another guy goes down- same death recap. The last two of us hold block and look for hidden NBs but just this guy is still playing the drums. Since then we have all watched vids on how to counter it and how powerful it is. I do not want to know how to do it, and I certainly do not want anyone else using it that is not already. There are a handful of EP players (PS4/NA) that use this all the time. There may be DC and AD players that do it too but I have never seen them. We just avoid them now unless we have the numbers to steamroll them over. The only counter is to block, avoid them or stay stealth until it is too late for them to defend. As soon as they see anyone in range they kill them. Yes, we filled a couple tickets already about it. Has been around for a month or so, as far as I know

bowmanz607

No let it stay

Learn to AC.

Takes skill and practice for consistency.

Does not rely on gear, cp, lvl, etc. Only skill to do properlly. Anything that takes skill and practice should always stay.

MEBengalsFan2001

SameMeteor26 wrote: »

It's sad because all of you are talking about it like it's some exploit or mod. Animation canceling is simply skill. It is not something they can get rid of. Animation canceling is a skill anyone can have.

You must have missed my post prior to yours post. I even stated that player who support animation cancellation will state exactly what you stated, it takes skill. It takes no skill to hit another button to cancel animation.

MEBengalsFan2001

Emencie wrote: »

EnemyOfDaState wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

EnemyOfDaState wrote: »

Can someone tell me the last big MMO that didn't have animation canceling?

Swtor

I skipped that one. I know DCUO and GW2 had it. Seems like a staple in action MMO'S.

To be fair they almost immediately fixed it in guild wars 2 because it was terrible.

It continues to completely drive the meta in DCUO to this day. As in, if your class build does not have skills that can be jump canceled, then they are trash. 90% of abilities that cannot be cancelled are considered trash and the cookie cutter is out of control at end game.

With ESO at least we don't run into that problem since just about everything can be ACed.

Even Wildstar patched out animation canceling quickly when it cropped up, because it can get out of control and ruin a game.

Right now in ESO end content is balanced around AC a function that many people do not know about, something that drives the meta and requires outside game knowledge to perform. It is a terrible system.

Jump cancelling in DCUO? That is so 2014 or prior. Since GU36 jump cancelling has gone to the wayside in DCUO; however, animation cancellation in the form of using an ability right before the animation of a weapon attack finishes is very common.

However, DCUO is working on a major update and removing many of the things that make all players cookie cutter and animation cancellation will reduce your damage of your weapon or ability if you do it, and this will result in more players allowing animation to complete, but that update is months away from being ready for release.

Animation cancellation is very common but as more casual players join the hardcore players, AC starts to rear its head and becomes a problem for the overall community and eventually something has to be done to level the playing field and typically there are three solutions. 1) If you cancel animation you get zero damage from the animation you cancelled, 2) you get 50% of the damage, 3) developers spend countless hours modifying each ability and weapon to remove animation cancellation.

I like the second option as it still offers some damage as you did allow a portion of the animation to complete and you should get some benefit from that time.

Sigtric

No let it stay

Lookstowindwards wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

dramsb14_ESO wrote: »

Yes, if you interrupt an animation, you should also be interrupting the spell/ability associated with it.

As easy as that sounds, it's not so simple. Latency would better very impactful if the game were set up like that. Was the animation finished or was it not? It's the same with a % of damage lost based on the length of the animation before it was clipped. There are three instances of what is happening in an online game. What you see, what the other player sees, and what thevserver sees. The server tries to translate the data from the other two so that both see a continuous and seemless instance, but as we all know that is not always the case.

You'd be leaving it up to the server as to whether or not the animation was completed. That would cause a lot of problems in it's own right, on top of increased server load due to the increased processing needed to calculate the effect of each animation as it's used vs a blanket behavior for all of them.

This is why skills are generally limited by things like global cooldowns, weapon speeds, or normalized animations. So that there is no overlap, no cancellation and no need for the server to deal with additional processes.

Though I agree it is not simple for ESO because they built the entire game before they realized this problem, and it would be insane to go back and redo everything to fix it. But that still doesn't make it good for the game IMHO.

But they dont see it as a problem. They even redesigned ultimate gain and skills like grim focus to benifit more from it.

I remember when the problem was first brought up the devs did want to fix it. But it's simply too ingrained in the game code. So it was decided to simply make it apart of the game.

The problem with it is, it makes gameplay normalization impossible.

Example.
If we are trying to balance dps skill A. We take many things into account, but primarily we need to know how much dps does skill A do. In eso that basic question is nearly impossible to answer but not just because of the basic things all mmos have like buffs and gear, but also because players and latency play a pivotal role.

1. A player who has no idea what AC is
2. The player who is learning to AC
3. The AC pro
4. The AC pro with bad latency
5. The macro keyboard user

All of these people in eso will have drastically different dps while using a single skill even if they have the exact same gear and buffs.

In other mmos these 5 people (using simple auto attack and spamming one skill) will do nearly the same if not the exact same damage.

This is why we have content that is too hard for a group of 4, but also so easy someone can solo it. This is why people complain about unkillable tanks, and instant death gankers in pvp.

drastically different => less than 5k => 10% difference

are you serious?

Very serious.

1 skill + light attck/block/bash weaving
VS
1 skill + spamming it while waiting out the animation.

Is a lot more than a 10% damage difference.

@Emencie

This is simply a false statement. Animation canceling, especially the type i think you are describing, does not decrease the global cooldown of skills. If we are talking about a basic light weave, the number one type of animation canceling done in this game, well it usually adds about 5-6 percent Damage.

Looking at a 50k parse on the PTS (not mine), light attacks accounted for about 2800 DPS (5.6 percent). That is with a near perfect weave. Most people are going to be less than that. All the weaving in the world is not going to allow you to get off more skills. Skills have global cooldowns.

I'll try to reiterate what I meant.

In WoW "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a global cool down of 2 seconds, and while using it the player auto attacks once a second for 100 damage.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button once every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button like a maniac, it still only goes off every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A person with bad lag still sees the fight client side and pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, when the server gets the info guess what? He gets 350 DPS.

In GW2 "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a normalized animation of 2 seconds there is no auto attack.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds giving them 250 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button but it only goes after the last animation completed, giving them 250 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, again 250 DPS.

In ESO "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it can be ACed and weaved it has an animation of 1.5 seconds and a global cool down of .9 seconds. Light attacks deal 100 damage and can be weaved in, bashes can be used to cancel animation for 50 damage
A Pro player can weave a light attack in between every "Skill A" button press and ends it with a bash canceling the animation down to 1 second, giving them 650 DPS
A noob player hits the "Skill A" button every time the animation ends with no weaving and no AC giving them 333 DPS
A person learning AC may weave a light attack in every other "Skill A" button press, but miff a block cancel or two and put their DPS somewhere between 333 and 650.
A perfect macro system will get the AC down to .9 seconds every "Skill A" use, while weaving the light attacks and bashes giving the bot 715 DPS

I brought this up because I feel this is the biggest problem with weaving and AC. My numbers are made up (obviously) but I was just trying to show that weaving/AC has quite an impact on simply how we view/balance skills because it's not, and never can be normalized. This is a problem fairly unique to ESO because most games normalize skills.

I'm not talking about how much epic damage you get out of AC. I'm talking about on the basic level of "When a character is just using a single skill how much damage does that character do." AC can make that number vary, where most games that number would be consistent across skill lines. This basic idea is seen in game whenever you group with a person that has no idea what AC is and you look at their terrible DPS parse like then promptly kick them. We have situations where people are doing content designed for a group, solo. PvP where people are 1v20 and other insane feats that are simply not seen in other MMORPGs.

Because the difference in ESO between a vet player and a noob is so astronomical not only because of build quality, but also unexplained gameplay mechanics, the biggest of which is AC.

This is why I don't like it. But I understand why it's here to stay, and of course I use it.

I don't know how much clearer I can explain this.

Thank you so much!

A friend of mine just came back from a three month frustration break, because he could not understand, why the difference between noobs and pros would be so great that a dungeon could one time be a walk in the park, while the other time the group could not down a boss even after many hours of trying.

I think your post illustrates the problem with AC quite well: It makes balancing even more impossible then it already is by nature in MMOs, leading to more kicks for noobs and nervous breakdowns for patient veterans trying to run a dungeon with whatever the finder gives them. In other games you would only have to explain mechanics and tactic, tell people to and when use skill a-z, and DONT STAND IN STUPID.

Here in ESO, even if the noob-group does everything of the above right, it is quite possible that they still will not down the boss, because they dont AC and so dont have the DPS for the fight.

It's a good example for sure but I disagree that it shows any problem with AC but rather shows how much more interactive and dynamic combat in ESO is compared to other games. This sets ESO miles ahead of other games in terms of combat fun for me. I find it extremely boring when I go back and try to play games that have combat systems that look anything similar to the WOW example given in the post you replied to.

In ESO I feel like I am actually controlling the character. I choose when to hit, I choose when to block or dodge. In WOW/Etc, it is single button presses when the timer says it's time to go. That's boring AF.

What's really sad about it, is that it's not very hard to get proficient enough at AC for it to bring most players on par, and yet many even refuse to take 5 minutes to learn how.

ZOS probably would do well to include some sort of tutorial for it, but I'm guessing there's already a lot of stuff in the Help menu tutorial area that never gets looked at.

hydrocynus

No let it stay

Replying to see what I voted for because it was a while ago and I can't remember

hydrocynus

No let it stay

hydrocynus wrote: »

Replying to see what I voted for because it was a while ago and I can't remember

Yup. Still no. Now shush!

AhPook_Is_Here

Yes get rid of it

I'm pretty sure that way back in the day when this was first discussed zos couldn't find a good way to fix it or it made someones head hurt to think about it so they just decided it was going to stay the way it is and call it working as intended.

I'm fine with it, i just want better messaging so you can see what's going off and at what time-stamps so you can counter via text instead of counter via animations.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

No let it stay

Why would you try to completely rewrite how people have played for the last 3 years? Ani canceling is an art in itself and I see plenty of people who can't do it. Don't make the people who have spent the time perfecting lose that progress. Example, in PvP you can break free so fast that some CC animations with ani cancel take so long the enemy has broken free before you can even take advantage of the CC, and the whole point of a CC is to get momentary control over an enemy to exploit their time of weakness.

No to getting rid of animation canceling. Just no.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

No let it stay

Lookstowindwards wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

dramsb14_ESO wrote: »

Yes, if you interrupt an animation, you should also be interrupting the spell/ability associated with it.

As easy as that sounds, it's not so simple. Latency would better very impactful if the game were set up like that. Was the animation finished or was it not? It's the same with a % of damage lost based on the length of the animation before it was clipped. There are three instances of what is happening in an online game. What you see, what the other player sees, and what thevserver sees. The server tries to translate the data from the other two so that both see a continuous and seemless instance, but as we all know that is not always the case.

You'd be leaving it up to the server as to whether or not the animation was completed. That would cause a lot of problems in it's own right, on top of increased server load due to the increased processing needed to calculate the effect of each animation as it's used vs a blanket behavior for all of them.

This is why skills are generally limited by things like global cooldowns, weapon speeds, or normalized animations. So that there is no overlap, no cancellation and no need for the server to deal with additional processes.

Though I agree it is not simple for ESO because they built the entire game before they realized this problem, and it would be insane to go back and redo everything to fix it. But that still doesn't make it good for the game IMHO.

But they dont see it as a problem. They even redesigned ultimate gain and skills like grim focus to benifit more from it.

I remember when the problem was first brought up the devs did want to fix it. But it's simply too ingrained in the game code. So it was decided to simply make it apart of the game.

The problem with it is, it makes gameplay normalization impossible.

Example.
If we are trying to balance dps skill A. We take many things into account, but primarily we need to know how much dps does skill A do. In eso that basic question is nearly impossible to answer but not just because of the basic things all mmos have like buffs and gear, but also because players and latency play a pivotal role.

1. A player who has no idea what AC is
2. The player who is learning to AC
3. The AC pro
4. The AC pro with bad latency
5. The macro keyboard user

All of these people in eso will have drastically different dps while using a single skill even if they have the exact same gear and buffs.

In other mmos these 5 people (using simple auto attack and spamming one skill) will do nearly the same if not the exact same damage.

This is why we have content that is too hard for a group of 4, but also so easy someone can solo it. This is why people complain about unkillable tanks, and instant death gankers in pvp.

drastically different => less than 5k => 10% difference

are you serious?

Very serious.

1 skill + light attck/block/bash weaving
VS
1 skill + spamming it while waiting out the animation.

Is a lot more than a 10% damage difference.

@Emencie

This is simply a false statement. Animation canceling, especially the type i think you are describing, does not decrease the global cooldown of skills. If we are talking about a basic light weave, the number one type of animation canceling done in this game, well it usually adds about 5-6 percent Damage.

Looking at a 50k parse on the PTS (not mine), light attacks accounted for about 2800 DPS (5.6 percent). That is with a near perfect weave. Most people are going to be less than that. All the weaving in the world is not going to allow you to get off more skills. Skills have global cooldowns.

I'll try to reiterate what I meant.

In WoW "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a global cool down of 2 seconds, and while using it the player auto attacks once a second for 100 damage.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button once every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button like a maniac, it still only goes off every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A person with bad lag still sees the fight client side and pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, when the server gets the info guess what? He gets 350 DPS.

In GW2 "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a normalized animation of 2 seconds there is no auto attack.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds giving them 250 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button but it only goes after the last animation completed, giving them 250 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, again 250 DPS.

In ESO "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it can be ACed and weaved it has an animation of 1.5 seconds and a global cool down of .9 seconds. Light attacks deal 100 damage and can be weaved in, bashes can be used to cancel animation for 50 damage
A Pro player can weave a light attack in between every "Skill A" button press and ends it with a bash canceling the animation down to 1 second, giving them 650 DPS
A noob player hits the "Skill A" button every time the animation ends with no weaving and no AC giving them 333 DPS
A person learning AC may weave a light attack in every other "Skill A" button press, but miff a block cancel or two and put their DPS somewhere between 333 and 650.
A perfect macro system will get the AC down to .9 seconds every "Skill A" use, while weaving the light attacks and bashes giving the bot 715 DPS

I brought this up because I feel this is the biggest problem with weaving and AC. My numbers are made up (obviously) but I was just trying to show that weaving/AC has quite an impact on simply how we view/balance skills because it's not, and never can be normalized. This is a problem fairly unique to ESO because most games normalize skills.

I'm not talking about how much epic damage you get out of AC. I'm talking about on the basic level of "When a character is just using a single skill how much damage does that character do." AC can make that number vary, where most games that number would be consistent across skill lines. This basic idea is seen in game whenever you group with a person that has no idea what AC is and you look at their terrible DPS parse like then promptly kick them. We have situations where people are doing content designed for a group, solo. PvP where people are 1v20 and other insane feats that are simply not seen in other MMORPGs.

Because the difference in ESO between a vet player and a noob is so astronomical not only because of build quality, but also unexplained gameplay mechanics, the biggest of which is AC.

This is why I don't like it. But I understand why it's here to stay, and of course I use it.

I don't know how much clearer I can explain this.

Thank you so much!

A friend of mine just came back from a three month frustration break, because he could not understand, why the difference between noobs and pros would be so great that a dungeon could one time be a walk in the park, while the other time the group could not down a boss even after many hours of trying.

I think your post illustrates the problem with AC quite well: It makes balancing even more impossible then it already is by nature in MMOs, leading to more kicks for noobs and nervous breakdowns for patient veterans trying to run a dungeon with whatever the finder gives them. In other games you would only have to explain mechanics and tactic, tell people to and when use skill a-z, and DONT STAND IN STUPID.

Here in ESO, even if the noob-group does everything of the above right, it is quite possible that they still will not down the boss, because they dont AC and so dont have the DPS for the fight.

@Emencie @Lookstowindwards

I still think you are wildly overstating the issue in PVE. Almost nobody is doing any type of bash canceling there in a DPS rotation. Its light weaving and bar swap cancelling 99% of the time. As I stated before, this is going to amount to about 3K DPS tops. This has nothing to do with your friend that cant pull adequate DPS in dungeons. He has a build and or rotation problem. The other advantage to weaving is that it can help with sustain in longer trial fights. On a staff, it procs elemental drain and you can adjust the length of your weave (at the expense of slowing down your globals) to allow time to regen. That's it. If your buddy is pully 15K, becoming an expert in weaving (or using macros) is not going to turn him into a 40k DPS. He has a fundamental problem somewhere else.

As to the PVP side of things, well you post illustrates exactly why it shouldnt go anywhere. A skilled player should have an advantage over someone that is just button mashing. In ESO, they do.

the_man_of_steal

No let it stay

Animation cancelling gives combat and DPS in this game such a dynamic progression and it helps separate skilled players from spamming players. It should be REVERTED back to its original algorithm and keep it how it originally was!

MAKE ESO GREAT AGAIN! @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @Wrobel

Tinus_92

No let it stay

Imagine completing vmol or any other trial without animation cancelling or weaving.

bowmanz607

No let it stay

AhPook_Is_Here wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that way back in the day when this was first discussed zos couldn't find a good way to fix it or it made someones head hurt to think about it so they just decided it was going to stay the way it is and call it working as intended.

I'm fine with it, i just want better messaging so you can see what's going off and at what time-stamps so you can counter via text instead of counter via animations.

Was unintended but zos said they liked it and that a brought an element of skill which I agree with. So they left it.

Emencie

Yes get rid of it

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Lookstowindwards wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

dramsb14_ESO wrote: »

Yes, if you interrupt an animation, you should also be interrupting the spell/ability associated with it.

As easy as that sounds, it's not so simple. Latency would better very impactful if the game were set up like that. Was the animation finished or was it not? It's the same with a % of damage lost based on the length of the animation before it was clipped. There are three instances of what is happening in an online game. What you see, what the other player sees, and what thevserver sees. The server tries to translate the data from the other two so that both see a continuous and seemless instance, but as we all know that is not always the case.

You'd be leaving it up to the server as to whether or not the animation was completed. That would cause a lot of problems in it's own right, on top of increased server load due to the increased processing needed to calculate the effect of each animation as it's used vs a blanket behavior for all of them.

This is why skills are generally limited by things like global cooldowns, weapon speeds, or normalized animations. So that there is no overlap, no cancellation and no need for the server to deal with additional processes.

Though I agree it is not simple for ESO because they built the entire game before they realized this problem, and it would be insane to go back and redo everything to fix it. But that still doesn't make it good for the game IMHO.

But they dont see it as a problem. They even redesigned ultimate gain and skills like grim focus to benifit more from it.

I remember when the problem was first brought up the devs did want to fix it. But it's simply too ingrained in the game code. So it was decided to simply make it apart of the game.

The problem with it is, it makes gameplay normalization impossible.

Example.
If we are trying to balance dps skill A. We take many things into account, but primarily we need to know how much dps does skill A do. In eso that basic question is nearly impossible to answer but not just because of the basic things all mmos have like buffs and gear, but also because players and latency play a pivotal role.

1. A player who has no idea what AC is
2. The player who is learning to AC
3. The AC pro
4. The AC pro with bad latency
5. The macro keyboard user

All of these people in eso will have drastically different dps while using a single skill even if they have the exact same gear and buffs.

In other mmos these 5 people (using simple auto attack and spamming one skill) will do nearly the same if not the exact same damage.

This is why we have content that is too hard for a group of 4, but also so easy someone can solo it. This is why people complain about unkillable tanks, and instant death gankers in pvp.

drastically different => less than 5k => 10% difference

are you serious?

Very serious.

1 skill + light attck/block/bash weaving
VS
1 skill + spamming it while waiting out the animation.

Is a lot more than a 10% damage difference.

@Emencie

This is simply a false statement. Animation canceling, especially the type i think you are describing, does not decrease the global cooldown of skills. If we are talking about a basic light weave, the number one type of animation canceling done in this game, well it usually adds about 5-6 percent Damage.

Looking at a 50k parse on the PTS (not mine), light attacks accounted for about 2800 DPS (5.6 percent). That is with a near perfect weave. Most people are going to be less than that. All the weaving in the world is not going to allow you to get off more skills. Skills have global cooldowns.

I'll try to reiterate what I meant.

In WoW "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a global cool down of 2 seconds, and while using it the player auto attacks once a second for 100 damage.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button once every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button like a maniac, it still only goes off every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds while auto attacking, giving them 350 DPS.
A person with bad lag still sees the fight client side and pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, when the server gets the info guess what? He gets 350 DPS.

In GW2 "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it has a normalized animation of 2 seconds there is no auto attack.
A pro player pushes the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds giving them 250 DPS.
A noob player spams the "Skill A" button but it only goes after the last animation completed, giving them 250 DPS.
A bot/macro player has a script to push the "Skill A" button every 2 seconds, again 250 DPS.

In ESO "Skill A" deals 500 damage, it can be ACed and weaved it has an animation of 1.5 seconds and a global cool down of .9 seconds. Light attacks deal 100 damage and can be weaved in, bashes can be used to cancel animation for 50 damage
A Pro player can weave a light attack in between every "Skill A" button press and ends it with a bash canceling the animation down to 1 second, giving them 650 DPS
A noob player hits the "Skill A" button every time the animation ends with no weaving and no AC giving them 333 DPS
A person learning AC may weave a light attack in every other "Skill A" button press, but miff a block cancel or two and put their DPS somewhere between 333 and 650.
A perfect macro system will get the AC down to .9 seconds every "Skill A" use, while weaving the light attacks and bashes giving the bot 715 DPS

I brought this up because I feel this is the biggest problem with weaving and AC. My numbers are made up (obviously) but I was just trying to show that weaving/AC has quite an impact on simply how we view/balance skills because it's not, and never can be normalized. This is a problem fairly unique to ESO because most games normalize skills.

I'm not talking about how much epic damage you get out of AC. I'm talking about on the basic level of "When a character is just using a single skill how much damage does that character do." AC can make that number vary, where most games that number would be consistent across skill lines. This basic idea is seen in game whenever you group with a person that has no idea what AC is and you look at their terrible DPS parse like then promptly kick them. We have situations where people are doing content designed for a group, solo. PvP where people are 1v20 and other insane feats that are simply not seen in other MMORPGs.

Because the difference in ESO between a vet player and a noob is so astronomical not only because of build quality, but also unexplained gameplay mechanics, the biggest of which is AC.

This is why I don't like it. But I understand why it's here to stay, and of course I use it.

I don't know how much clearer I can explain this.

Thank you so much!

A friend of mine just came back from a three month frustration break, because he could not understand, why the difference between noobs and pros would be so great that a dungeon could one time be a walk in the park, while the other time the group could not down a boss even after many hours of trying.

I think your post illustrates the problem with AC quite well: It makes balancing even more impossible then it already is by nature in MMOs, leading to more kicks for noobs and nervous breakdowns for patient veterans trying to run a dungeon with whatever the finder gives them. In other games you would only have to explain mechanics and tactic, tell people to and when use skill a-z, and DONT STAND IN STUPID.

Here in ESO, even if the noob-group does everything of the above right, it is quite possible that they still will not down the boss, because they dont AC and so dont have the DPS for the fight.

@Emencie @Lookstowindwards

I still think you are wildly overstating the issue in PVE. Almost nobody is doing any type of bash canceling there in a DPS rotation. Its light weaving and bar swap cancelling 99% of the time. As I stated before, this is going to amount to about 3K DPS tops. This has nothing to do with your friend that cant pull adequate DPS in dungeons. He has a build and or rotation problem. The other advantage to weaving is that it can help with sustain in longer trial fights. On a staff, it procs elemental drain and you can adjust the length of your weave (at the expense of slowing down your globals) to allow time to regen. That's it. If your buddy is pully 15K, becoming an expert in weaving (or using macros) is not going to turn him into a 40k DPS. He has a fundamental problem somewhere else.

As to the PVP side of things, well you post illustrates exactly why it shouldnt go anywhere. A skilled player should have an advantage over someone that is just button mashing. In ESO, they do.

I would say in every MMO they do.
Even in a timer heavy, global cooldown game like WoW they do. It's just a different skill set.

In ESO skill often comes down to who can push their proper rotation with perfect timing while maintaining speed and uptime.This takes a lot of practice and accuracy and relies heavily on twitch skill and your ability to make split second choices. But I would not say it takes more skill than a game like WoW, where skill often comes down to out thinking your opponent, saving cooldowns, and chaining together CC combos when they are vulnerable while saving your own defensive skills so you never become vulnerable. It often plays more like a game of chess, where a single encounter can take a long time to be settled.

But in both, a person running in and mashing buttons all willynilly is going to get completely smashed by someone with skill.

Destruent

No let it stay

Tinus_92 wrote: »

Imagine completing vmol or any other trial without animation cancelling or weaving.

When we first completet vmol or any other trial first, we had like 10...20k DPS less per DD. Thats far more than we get by using AC...

edit: apart from DPS, it would be extremely clunky to play and therefore harder to survive, but in a worse way imo...

Oreyn_Bearclaw

No let it stay

Tinus_92 wrote: »

Imagine completing vmol or any other trial without animation cancelling or weaving.

I think most good groups would not notice the damage so much, but they sure would notice the sustain. Weaving helps sustain more than people realize I think.

Destruent

No let it stay

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Tinus_92 wrote: »

Imagine completing vmol or any other trial without animation cancelling or weaving.

I think most good groups would not notice the damage so much, but they sure would notice the sustain. Weaving helps sustain more than people realize I think.

Won't make such a big difference with next patch anyway ^^

Treaborne

RAGUNAnoOne wrote: »

Seeing way to many threads about this so I want to see the thoughts of the community on this debate in poll form. Note: the notes said they were going to improve animations so you can see effects when canceled but as of now they will not eliminate it.

They should just give us an option to turn off animations period.

Treaborne

jeevin wrote: »

JackDaniell wrote: »

Taking away animation cancelling would ruin the responsiveness and flow of combat, the problem isn't that cancelling is hard to learn or cheating, it's that most people just haven't been taught how to do it. If you don't want to learn to cancel spam this like jabs and wrecking blow.

Taking away the damage done by a cancelled animation or applying a damage penalty for cancelling an animation would not ruin responsiveness of combat. The responsiveness remains the same, the time to kill would be longer and the game would require more actual "skill" with reactions to combat as it appears on the screen.

This would not work well with people on low end systems or that have very high ping connections.

nemisan

Yes get rid of it

It is a very bad thing for PVP. Those who use it, will defend it to the end of days.

bowmanz607

No let it stay

nemisan wrote: »

It is a very bad thing for PVP. Those who use it, will defend it to the end of days.

Typical forum post. "If you don't agree with me your bias and therefore your answer does not matter only mine"