Do you think ZOS should eliminate animation cancelling?

ThePonzzz

It's been around so long, it's become an integral part of most everyone's game play. PvP aside, it's used during boss fights, especially with bashing. It should have been addressed summer of 2014. I think tackling it now would be a mistake.

blabafat

No let it stay

Keep it

It adds a layer of skill to the game

It's something that needs to be perfected - that's good. Not everything should be skill - less.

ZoS has already removed the skill requirement in many different areas. (AoE caps, no dynamic ultimate, unbashable heavy attacks, etc.)

Robotmafia

No let it stay

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Yes they should but to many players use it and have it some how drilled into there heads that if ZOS gets rid of it their DPS will be utter [to hawt].

lol no.. then itll be just as bad as all the nubs who refuse to learn the mechanic...

david271749

Yes get rid of it

Get rid of it. A lot of tweaks would have to be made with npc health because of dps, but pvp would feel more strategic. Instead of having a few macros set up for two or three situations, people would have to react to each attack being used against them. There would also be less need for combat related addons. You could actually see what attack is coming instead of relying on a ui spitting numbers at you.

Lyrander

riverdragon72 wrote: »

I think they eliminated animations on Azuras entirely.

Lol!

Not saying they should get rid of it. But they should do something.
And I want people to think about other sides of this too.
What about the Player that never have a ping below 300. Which already is a disadvantage but with AC even more.
Also everyone talks about the Player or themself that will leave when they get rid of it.
But what about the Player that already left because of this? And those that will leave if nothing is done in that matter.

I cancel animation like every so other Player in this game. But im not happy how some Parts of it work. And i can see a lot of Player that are unhappy with it.

This is not some minor issue and has to be handled with care. But handle it!

Not doing anything about it for so long when so many people were complaining...is not right.

Sharkyto1b16_ESO

No let it stay

Whenever ZOS will decide all this peoples who vote for deleting animation canceling after it will find other thing why other players are better than they)) lets put also cooldown on spells and ultimates.. and lets implement hardcap of dps xD
Cryers is anywhere.. )) look what they done with vwgt and vicp.. who have interest now go there? its just boring casual dungeon.. and im very sad that this waiting us with each dlc..

Lightninvash

No let it stay

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.

if they removed animation canceling it would mess with my speed grind rotation where I buff swap weps to cancel animation and start in on my attacks haha but other than that it wouldn't be much of an issue personally I don't use it much anyways haha

deleted008293

Yes get rid of it

Whats going on with this game? More and more core elements are being cut off. First Players textures went missing. Next assets and textures are loading slower. Then Lag. Then this. Whats next?

YES. What is next? remove animations entirely? Or make things optional or make things such way PVE is no longer affected by PVP changes.

Anyway there are 2 masses. I just prefer the game as it was back in 2014. Slow and nice.

Minno

Yes get rid of it

Game was currently balanced without AC in mind. Animation was clearly designated a sort of cooldown that allowed timing of skills to be a priority according to dmg.

AC eliminates this aspect of DPS. It makes "channels" obsolete in the sense that, instant spells will always prioritize over longer cast spells. Also animations show players what skill is coming allowing for the right reaction.

Based from a balance and UI standpoint, they should remove it in favor of proper animations (or until they can get those extra spells to be visible to an opponent.)

And yes, I learned how to AC. It's not hard, it just invalidates mechanic based MMO progression.

beerninja

Yes get rid of it

A lot of people who voted no are confusing animation cancelling for spell cancelling. They are not the same. For example if you jesus beam and hit block, that is spell cancelling. Jesus beam is a channel ability that does "per tick" damage and when you cancel it the damage stops. If you ward and hit block, that is animation cancelling. Ward is not a channeled ability so you get 100% of the ability before the animation has concluded.

The way it should work is if you ward and hit block in the middle of the animation, you should block and receive no ward. The ward should not become active until the final frame of the animation.

Eric Wrobel is still employed at Zenimax though so nothing will change as long as he is there. As many others has said, this thread is pointless.

Hope499

Yes get rid of it

There is a REASON things have a CAST TIME....

Like...wtf? Not sure why they are keeping it...but i guess i dont really care when it comes down to it.

phreatophile

Yes get rid of it

Because it looks ridiculous and it's just plain sloppy on Zenimax's part.

You can't seriously contend that having your character wave their arms around like they're having a seizure in order to get good DPS is what was intended. It's another chunk in a whole load of fail that we've come to accept and adapt to. It should embarrass the developers that instead of fixing an obvious exploit of broken mechanics that they have instead tuned all the high-end content to accommodate their fail. It should also really annoy whoever crafted the animations since a lot of them are never seen.

It makes the barrier to entry for new players very high. It's not like anything in-game explains to people that the road to success is to pile attacks together so that half of the animations don't even play.

So much care went into so many parts of this game but the underlying mechanics of class balance and basic combat have never been properly tuned. Revolving flavor of the month class anybody? It's Nightblades today, remember when it was Vamp DKs... or Sorcs?

I don't buy the argument that it adds a layer of skill or that it'll kill everybody's DPS as being particularly relevant. We all adapted to the inflated numbers that came with the Champion System, we'll all adapt again if they fix this.

technohic

Yes get rid of it

As much as I say yes to get rid of it, I do think a lot of people misunderstand what it does. It doesn't make a cast or channel instant, it just trims the fat of the animation. Log a templar and cast an instant like blazing shield. It's an instant but there is a delay. Do it again but block right after the key press. Now it's instant as it should.

Animation really acts more like a GCD which many scoff at as an MMO standard but there are abilities that do have a hard GCD in this game that just are not advertised.

NinjaApacHe

Yes get rid of it

Get rid of it as soon as you can!

Turelus

Other (Please explain)

I don't think it necessarily has to go, HOWEVER they should not be designing nor balancing content around it.

The games needs to be designed around the players who don't do it (because some people physically can't, or have issues due to age/health etc.)

Those who do use it also need to understand that if content becomes too easy because they're doing it then that's not on the fault of ZOS.

GrimMauKin

Yes get rid of it

I'm a firm Yes for losing it as I think it detracts from the game. At the very least is needs to be consistent and you can't animation cancel all skills (Snipe for example).

mdylan2013

Yes get rid of it

aninations are there for a reason, if they're going to allow it in the game they should just remove cast times so those that choose to play as the game was intended are not at a disadvantage.


Those that want animation cancelling just want to have an unfair advantage over other people that can't do it.

fosokles

Yes get rid of it

I think animation canceling should stay but not work how it does now, since you are often in a situation that while in the middle of something you need to cast a different ability asap. I personally think it's only fair that if you are not committed for an animations duration, the damage or heal output should not happen. So basically i'd say cancel any animation you want, but by doing so you'll cancel its effect as well.

This might slow down combat, but on the other hand it will bring much more visual clarity to game and i think it will benefit the game overall.

nemisan

Yes get rid of it

I had a dream, AC caused the scarey lag in cyro, ZoS got rid of it and hundreds of thousands of people started playing ESO again

nemisan

Yes get rid of it

...and I dont give two f£$ks what Eric says about it, so jam the vid ..AC has not place in any game

Eshelmen

Yes get rid of it

i understand combos and bursting as much dps as possible..... but this stuff truly lags the game.

infraction2008b16_ESO

Other (Please explain)

Bluepitbull13 wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZtwhYkKSs&ab_channel=BlastedAssassin

ZoS I'm not saying sack this guy but...

...move him to the crown store team or somewhere insignificant to game balance and give the lead combat designer role to someone who actually cares about it and doesn't make such backward decisions. The only reason he says they encourage animation cancelling in this eso live clip is due to the fact they refuse to put effort in to either nerfing it or to come up with decent alternative ideas. Any other MMO devs would have squelched this sort of thing out of their game on day 1 for being an exploit not encourage it's use.

Back to the thread though, I'm with the yes crowd however I feel they should add greater incentives to full attack weaving as the game should be more than spamming one button but it shouldn't be the case as it now in where it's almost encouraged to macro. Maybe damage/crit buffs for fully uncancelled light/heavy attacks or maybe some combo system that incorporates that. Don't remove animation cancelling completely but make it inferior to full weaves and ability casts.

Not only that PvP is full of lag due to so many abilities going off at once bottlenecking the server and animation cancelling just adds to that, in fact it's probably the main cause of the lag due to being an unintentional effect and the servers weren't optimized to handle so many events at once from so many players.

Wollust

No let it stay

They aren't gonna remove it, deal with it.

Lithium Flower

Yes get rid of it

There's plenty of problems with a mechanic that uses what is technically an exploit (albeit a condoned one) to dramatically increase DPS.

1. PvP - it's blatantly unfair for a player to be hit by a 'hidden' ability that is not effectively telegraphed to them. A player needs to be able to see an ability and have 'some' space to respond to it. That is something so very very basic. If my opponent cannot see or react to half the abilities I'm using against him, how is that remotely fair?

2. PvE - it creates a geographic glass ceiling for many players when it comes to competing on the leaderboards. Despite having two servers, there are many many players who are not physically based in NA or EU. If you have a ping higher than 150ms the window of time in which you can react or respond is diminished and the higher the ping gets, the more difficult it is react to environmental clues but that's not even the worst: beyond a certain ping, while you are still able to play, you can no longer set up an animation cancel - and that's not due to lack of skill or experience or any personal factor. You simply can't block, bash or swap weapons faster than the speed of light and that is the limiting factor here.

For sure, combat responsiveness is something nobody wants to lose but being able to abort an ability in order to react quickly to a change in environment isn't the same thing as bundling several abilities into one animation.

I would definitely support replacing animation cancelling with action cancelling and balancing around that. Yes, we will have a harder time in vICP and MoL doing 30%-50% less DPS and HPS but the dungeons/trials can be rebalanced.

Acharnor

Yes get rid of it

It is absolutely a skill of masterful timing to achieve this - just not one I want to work on. It is skillful as well to use the right skills at the right time, blocking, roll-dodging, interrupting based on what your adversary is doing. For me it looks ridiculous.

Elloa

Other (Please explain)

I don't like animation cancellation, I don't like how this "hidden" technique can create a even bigger gap between "skilled players" and "occasional" players.
BUT, I believe that remove it will make the combat more stiff, less dynamic, less immersive.

So as much as I don't like it, I guess we just have to deal with it.

Zerok

No let it stay

I don't want them to remove it, but if they do they should also reduce the total health of monsters by some percentage to compensate for the loss of DPS.

Chelos

No let it stay

Lithium Flower wrote: »

There's plenty of problems with a mechanic that uses what is technically an exploit (albeit a condoned one) to dramatically increase DPS.

It is not an exploit no matter how much you and quite some people would like it to be one.
A thing is an exploit only if ZOS states it is.
Exacly like a buch of DK and NB don't want to agree that jumping into enemy keeps is an exploit, which it is per ZOS definition. Period.

They are doing something, btw, not getting rid of it but make it look smooth.
It's just another skill you don't even need to master and it's not much more difficult than hitting two different buttons in a set sequence.

Asmael

Facts:
- Animation cancelling is about 10% of your total damage dealt in PvE with a synergizing weapon, such as a destro staff for mag builds, or 2H / DW for stamina builds (multiple Bloodspawn + Voranor runs, and it was pretty consistent), not counting bash
- Abilities have a GCD of approximately 0.9 seconds. You cannot possibly bypass this limit (no, macros can't bend ingame mechanics)
- LA > ability > bash, or more simply LA > ability means more audio cues, and makes it very easy to know when someone is using animation cancelling on you.
- All instant cast abilities can be recognized, even if bash cancelled
- All channeled abilities can be recognized
- Abilities with a cast time, if canceled by a medium weave, can cause the ability to bug out and not play the ending animation, even if the ability actually fires (e.g. cancelling Dark Flare will still deal Dark Flare's damage, but the projectile will be invisible)
- Added lag from animation cancelling is insignificant (like, just have someone use healing springs on 60 guys, and it lags out as much as 180 guys animation cancelling an ability with LA / Bash at once AND actually hitting a target)
- The game is already balanced with AC in mind (hence all the sets that require light / heavy attacks, the animation fix and ZoS statement)
- SnB users heavily rely on AC to have

The bolded one is the only real gripe I have with it. I am a really heavy user of AC, but even so I consider it to be pretty badly done, and as such, it should not be possibly to weave a medium / heavy attack during an ability's cast time. It should, however, be possible to cancel a light attack using an ability with a cast time. Do note that cancelling Dark Flare can be a cause of health desync for the target (bug replicated 100% of the time on NPCs)

EDIT: Missings wordz. Oh noez.

timidobserver

No let it stay

After their recent failed attempt on the pts I am going to say NO.