Animation Canceling - My point of view and reflection on the subject

WalkingLegacy

Sigtric wrote: »

You wanna see server performance REALLY go into the dumps? Start having the server run calculations on whether or not the animation should have an attack value or not, every 0.9 seconds after checking for a cancel, for everyone in combat around you, for all cancelable attacks.

Yeah.

AC is here, it's not likely to be changed, and the devs want us to use it.

Server performance is already in the dumps.

If they actually cared about it they would turn things like champion points off, proxy bomb, etc.

If the calculations of sets + champion points + skill morph etc etc are not in question then why is cheating allowed? Lazy Devs/handcuffed is the answer.

Zyrudin

Royaji wrote: »

@Zyrudin , please, before commenting about AC and the way it works, do your research first.

@WalkingLegacy

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Zyrudin wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

There's a different angle we can look at this from, however.

Let's use, say, Snipe, for instance. The entire animation consists of charging up the shot, the moment of firing the shot, and after firing the shot. By your logic, if you cancel the animation right after the moment you fired the shot, the arrow should magically fly back to your hand.

Just... no. It makes no sense.

An animation should be able to be canceled after the point of action has been performed without reverting the effects of that action.

That's how weaving and animation cancelling works; you don't wait for your sword swing to stop completely before you attempt another swing from your combat stance; you chain them together in a flurry of attacks.

Competent AC will not even have the arrow leaving the bow and the ability will still register.

So they're canceling the "cast time" (IE animation) but the skill is still executing and doing damage?

AC does NOT cancel the cast time. If you try canceling Snipe or Wrecking blow right in the beggining the skill won't fire. Those skills have the actual cast time and it is mentioned in the tooltip.

Animation Cancealing is about canceling the animation of an INSTANT skill. Majority of skills in ESO are instant-cast. For example Force Pulse or Endless Hail. They deal damage the moment you press the button and their animation is just for looks. And the whole point of AC is to cancel this "useless" animation. Endless Hail has a very long animation with the character shooting the arrow in the air, but the damage is applied right from the beggining of this animation, so if you barswap during the animation - the skill will still be active, because it is instant and fired long before the character shot the arrow.

So AC has nothing to do with reactive gameplay. It's still impossible to react to an instant skill because animation is happening after the damage is applied. AC does not allow you to cancel the cast time or channel. And it does not allow you to bypass a 0.8 s global cooldown of all skills.

Channeled abilities can have their animation cancelled by weapon swap and still register.

Royaji

Zyrudin wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

@Zyrudin , please, before commenting about AC and the way it works, do your research first.

@WalkingLegacy

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Zyrudin wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

There's a different angle we can look at this from, however.

Let's use, say, Snipe, for instance. The entire animation consists of charging up the shot, the moment of firing the shot, and after firing the shot. By your logic, if you cancel the animation right after the moment you fired the shot, the arrow should magically fly back to your hand.

Just... no. It makes no sense.

An animation should be able to be canceled after the point of action has been performed without reverting the effects of that action.

That's how weaving and animation cancelling works; you don't wait for your sword swing to stop completely before you attempt another swing from your combat stance; you chain them together in a flurry of attacks.

Competent AC will not even have the arrow leaving the bow and the ability will still register.

So they're canceling the "cast time" (IE animation) but the skill is still executing and doing damage?

AC does NOT cancel the cast time. If you try canceling Snipe or Wrecking blow right in the beggining the skill won't fire. Those skills have the actual cast time and it is mentioned in the tooltip.

Animation Cancealing is about canceling the animation of an INSTANT skill. Majority of skills in ESO are instant-cast. For example Force Pulse or Endless Hail. They deal damage the moment you press the button and their animation is just for looks. And the whole point of AC is to cancel this "useless" animation. Endless Hail has a very long animation with the character shooting the arrow in the air, but the damage is applied right from the beggining of this animation, so if you barswap during the animation - the skill will still be active, because it is instant and fired long before the character shot the arrow.

So AC has nothing to do with reactive gameplay. It's still impossible to react to an instant skill because animation is happening after the damage is applied. AC does not allow you to cancel the cast time or channel. And it does not allow you to bypass a 0.8 s global cooldown of all skills.

Channeled abilities can have their animation cancelled by weapon swap and still register.

Yes, you can cancel the animation. But you can't make a channel fire all the damage at once or use a different skill at the same time as a channel.

cjthibs

Royaji wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

ChildOfLight wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

There's a different angle we can look at this from, however.

Let's use, say, Snipe, for instance. The entire animation consists of charging up the shot, the moment of firing the shot, and after firing the shot. By your logic, if you cancel the animation right after the moment you fired the shot, the arrow should magically fly back to your hand.

Just... no. It makes no sense.

An animation should be able to be canceled after the point of action has been performed without reverting the effects of that action.

That's how weaving and animation cancelling works; you don't wait for your sword swing to stop completely before you attempt another swing from your combat stance; you chain them together in a flurry of attacks.

Quoted for reference.

Plus, every game with competitive features out there, has animation cancel. So, no.

No, they don't. But that shouldn't be a deciding factor in the matter one way or another.

Having the option to animation cancel is prefered by some people for a more fast-paced game experience, I get that. But the other option is to have a more strategic game where you have to commit to an action, which is just as valid. Many games have elements of both anyway (think fighting games).

But these games usually have a more coherent design for these things, centered around start up, active and recovery frames. ESO's animation cancelling just "happened" without any deliberate intent by the designers to allow certain attack strings, or combos. That just wasn't the focus of the combat system (in the beginning it focused on heavy attacks, blocking, exploiting stuns, and resource management, i.e. a more strategic approach).

Talking about combos and fighting games in particular, animation cancels usually only happen when you actually land a hit, which you can then extend into a combo. Defensive animation cancels are much rarer and apparently not that well-liked (thinking about focus attacks in SF4 specifically, although I liked them). So you can only cancel an animation during the active or recovery frame if you hit your opponent. Canceling startup frames is much rarer in my experience.
Translating this into ESO would mean, when your attack is blocked, you can't animation cancel it. And you can only cancel the rest of the animation after you actually applied damage during an active frame (which is the issue of the OP).

Frankly I'm not that sure how ESO handles active frames, meaning when the damage of an ability is applied. It's different for different skills, but they don't seem to correspond that well with the actual animation. I mean, looking at Dawnbreaker, you'd expect the damage to happen when the sword is slammed down, but it's actually way before that.

I think people would have less of a problem with animation canceling if it at least seemed like a deliberately designed and coherent game mechanic, and not just a sloppy side effect.

To answer your question about active frames and ESO, there are none. If tooltip says that the ability has instant cast time, the damage is applied the moment you hit the button. The whole animation of those abilities is just for visuals.

That is exactly the problem. Those visuals are not irrelevant. That is what tells the other player what is happening. Without it, combat is reduced to two players who have no idea what's going on and just wildly fire abilities in hopes their damage is greater than the other guy. There's no strategy there, just firing off pre-conceived combos.

If the animations actually showed, and cooldowns were respected, we would have to actually respond to attacks. Making combat a back-and-forth, instead of mindless combo repetition.

Sigtric

Eremith wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

You wanna see server performance REALLY go into the dumps? Start having the server run calculations on whether or not the animation should have an attack value or not, every 0.9 seconds after checking for a cancel, for everyone in combat around you, for all cancelable attacks.

Yeah.

AC is here, it's not likely to be changed, and the devs want us to use it.

If the devs really will get such issues, then the devs are incompetent.
All such calculations designed to run on the client in all MMO games, the server will not suffer at all.

Yes, give all combat related calculations to the client. That's brilliant.

Royaji

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

ChildOfLight wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

There's a different angle we can look at this from, however.

Let's use, say, Snipe, for instance. The entire animation consists of charging up the shot, the moment of firing the shot, and after firing the shot. By your logic, if you cancel the animation right after the moment you fired the shot, the arrow should magically fly back to your hand.

Just... no. It makes no sense.

An animation should be able to be canceled after the point of action has been performed without reverting the effects of that action.

That's how weaving and animation cancelling works; you don't wait for your sword swing to stop completely before you attempt another swing from your combat stance; you chain them together in a flurry of attacks.

Quoted for reference.

Plus, every game with competitive features out there, has animation cancel. So, no.

No, they don't. But that shouldn't be a deciding factor in the matter one way or another.

Having the option to animation cancel is prefered by some people for a more fast-paced game experience, I get that. But the other option is to have a more strategic game where you have to commit to an action, which is just as valid. Many games have elements of both anyway (think fighting games).

But these games usually have a more coherent design for these things, centered around start up, active and recovery frames. ESO's animation cancelling just "happened" without any deliberate intent by the designers to allow certain attack strings, or combos. That just wasn't the focus of the combat system (in the beginning it focused on heavy attacks, blocking, exploiting stuns, and resource management, i.e. a more strategic approach).

Talking about combos and fighting games in particular, animation cancels usually only happen when you actually land a hit, which you can then extend into a combo. Defensive animation cancels are much rarer and apparently not that well-liked (thinking about focus attacks in SF4 specifically, although I liked them). So you can only cancel an animation during the active or recovery frame if you hit your opponent. Canceling startup frames is much rarer in my experience.
Translating this into ESO would mean, when your attack is blocked, you can't animation cancel it. And you can only cancel the rest of the animation after you actually applied damage during an active frame (which is the issue of the OP).

Frankly I'm not that sure how ESO handles active frames, meaning when the damage of an ability is applied. It's different for different skills, but they don't seem to correspond that well with the actual animation. I mean, looking at Dawnbreaker, you'd expect the damage to happen when the sword is slammed down, but it's actually way before that.

I think people would have less of a problem with animation canceling if it at least seemed like a deliberately designed and coherent game mechanic, and not just a sloppy side effect.

To answer your question about active frames and ESO, there are none. If tooltip says that the ability has instant cast time, the damage is applied the moment you hit the button. The whole animation of those abilities is just for visuals.

That is exactly the problem. Those visuals are not irrelevant. That is what tells the other player what is happening. Without it, combat is reduced to two players who have no idea what's going on and just wildly fire abilities in hopes their damage is greater than the other guy. There's no strategy there, just firing off pre-conceived combos.

If the animations actually showed, and cooldowns were respected, we would have to actually respond to attacks. Making combat a back-and-forth, instead of mindless combo repetition.

But sadly this concept is impossible to achieve in a No-target action MMO gampelay. Cast times and cooldowns just do not work for them - the combat becomes way too clunky.

ESO was never meant to be a strategic game. ZOS developed combat the way it is and changing it now will be pretty much equivalent to remaking the game from scratch.

I do understand that some people may not like this concept but some of us do. There are dozens of games with strategic combat on the market. ESO is not one of them.

cjthibs

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

cjthibs

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

ChildOfLight wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

There's a different angle we can look at this from, however.

Let's use, say, Snipe, for instance. The entire animation consists of charging up the shot, the moment of firing the shot, and after firing the shot. By your logic, if you cancel the animation right after the moment you fired the shot, the arrow should magically fly back to your hand.

Just... no. It makes no sense.

An animation should be able to be canceled after the point of action has been performed without reverting the effects of that action.

That's how weaving and animation cancelling works; you don't wait for your sword swing to stop completely before you attempt another swing from your combat stance; you chain them together in a flurry of attacks.

Quoted for reference.

Plus, every game with competitive features out there, has animation cancel. So, no.

No, they don't. But that shouldn't be a deciding factor in the matter one way or another.

Having the option to animation cancel is prefered by some people for a more fast-paced game experience, I get that. But the other option is to have a more strategic game where you have to commit to an action, which is just as valid. Many games have elements of both anyway (think fighting games).

But these games usually have a more coherent design for these things, centered around start up, active and recovery frames. ESO's animation cancelling just "happened" without any deliberate intent by the designers to allow certain attack strings, or combos. That just wasn't the focus of the combat system (in the beginning it focused on heavy attacks, blocking, exploiting stuns, and resource management, i.e. a more strategic approach).

Talking about combos and fighting games in particular, animation cancels usually only happen when you actually land a hit, which you can then extend into a combo. Defensive animation cancels are much rarer and apparently not that well-liked (thinking about focus attacks in SF4 specifically, although I liked them). So you can only cancel an animation during the active or recovery frame if you hit your opponent. Canceling startup frames is much rarer in my experience.
Translating this into ESO would mean, when your attack is blocked, you can't animation cancel it. And you can only cancel the rest of the animation after you actually applied damage during an active frame (which is the issue of the OP).

Frankly I'm not that sure how ESO handles active frames, meaning when the damage of an ability is applied. It's different for different skills, but they don't seem to correspond that well with the actual animation. I mean, looking at Dawnbreaker, you'd expect the damage to happen when the sword is slammed down, but it's actually way before that.

I think people would have less of a problem with animation canceling if it at least seemed like a deliberately designed and coherent game mechanic, and not just a sloppy side effect.

To answer your question about active frames and ESO, there are none. If tooltip says that the ability has instant cast time, the damage is applied the moment you hit the button. The whole animation of those abilities is just for visuals.

That is exactly the problem. Those visuals are not irrelevant. That is what tells the other player what is happening. Without it, combat is reduced to two players who have no idea what's going on and just wildly fire abilities in hopes their damage is greater than the other guy. There's no strategy there, just firing off pre-conceived combos.

If the animations actually showed, and cooldowns were respected, we would have to actually respond to attacks. Making combat a back-and-forth, instead of mindless combo repetition.

But sadly this concept is impossible to achieve in a No-target action MMO gampelay. Cast times and cooldowns just do not work for them - the combat becomes way too clunky.

ESO was never meant to be a strategic game. ZOS developed combat the way it is and changing it now will be pretty much equivalent to remaking the game from scratch.

I do understand that some people may not like this concept but some of us do. There are dozens of games with strategic combat on the market. ESO is not one of them.

I dunno about that. The PvP definitely -felt- more strategic before everyone knew how to animation-cancel.
It felt a lot more fair and fun to me. (And apparently my guildies who PvP less and less as time goes on, where we used to do it every single night.)

bulbousb16_ESO

Animation cancelling is a cancer on this game.

Sigtric

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

cjthibs

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

Sigtric

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

cjthibs

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

Royaji

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

But does it really matter which exact ability was used? If I have a stun on me - I will CC break, if I am rooted - I will roll dodge, If my health is low - I will heal and cast some mitigation skills. Isn't that the reactive and strategic gameplay you were talking about? Yes, on a slightly larger scale. It's not so much about reacting to specific abilities, but about reacting to the whole offense and countering after you mitigated the damage.

AzuraKin

Betahkiin wrote: »

Hello everyone, I would like to present my point of view in relation to the AC trying to explain why without falling into aggressions and ending with a personal reflection.

The game needs the AC?

Yes.

Why?

Because it is well known that many skills have prolonged animations and not being able to cancel them would be impossible to avoid certain mechanics of the game, such as block or interrupt at the right time.

Being trapped in an animation when it is necessary to block an attack or interrupt an enemy action would be catastrophic for the flow of the game and would make these skills lose their true usefulness: being used at the right time in a precise situation and which depends on little reaction time.

In this regard I totally agree with those who support that it is a fundamental part of the game and should not be eliminated.

The problem is that it was poorly implemented and does not work as it should, not only fulfills its basic function but its application is filtered to the central core of the game mechanics which should not be modified and this is the problem.

To achieve an adequate balance the game needs diversity, but clearly defined in theory and practice. This means that each and every one of the actions must have a specification of how they work, such as scope, effect, duration, launch type (instantaneous or channeled and channeled how long it takes), what kind of bonuses can receive, etc.

These values ​​can not be subjective, If this happens they lose their essence and the game becomes an uncontrollable chaos creating an unwanted imbalance.

The skill of a player must fall into knowing as when and where to use a skill or set of skills and not how to alter them in their function of origin.

The solution to this problem would be to maintain the basic function of the AC without interfering with the correct use of the skills.

What I mean by this?

That if a player is throwing a skill with an extended animation and needs to cancel it to block or interrupt that he can effectively do it and CANCEL that ability while running to give PRIORITY to his new skill executed. But not only cancel the animation as it currently happens but completely cancel the initial ability because it has a basic form of execution and its interruption should completely eliminate its effect since it was intentionally CANCELED.

To be understood:

The battery of a cell phone X according to the manufacturer's SPECIFICATIONS takes 1 hour to perform its load at 100%.

User A: leaves charging the cell X for 1 hour and obtains 100% of the charge.

User B: leave loading the cell X and at 20 minutes CANCEL the process and get 100% of the load.

Is clear

It is impossible, it should not happen since the specifications are clear and both users use the same type of cell phone and charger. User B has more skill than A? I do not think so.

In the game the same happens, we were given clear specifications of how each skill works, then realized that certain users could CHANGE those specifications in their favor (ABUSE FOR ERROR PROGRAMMING) and had no better idea than to argue that it was Totally worth doing, ergo, do not know how to fix it or find it much easier and economical not to do it.

So I want to make it clear that you do not have to be against the AC, you have to be in that its use affects the bases of the game going beyond its basic function is to CANCEL animations and not ACCELERATE skills.

The animations are part of a skill, they were conceived to represent the EXECUTION of the same and their cancellation should lead to the cancellation of the skill itself and not to its acceleration.

Available Options:

A Modify the programming so that the AC only CANCEL (and do it completely).

B Make all skills instant.

C Leave everything as it is maintaining an unfair game condition that suits the company, satisfies a certain niche of players who like this type of exploitation of the game mechanics and harms a large majority that for being called casual have to accept that something that was poorly conceived is officially presented to the community as a challenge to the skill that enriches the game and makes it more interesting.

Unfortunately I think that we are already in the fixed course of option C and after being officially accepted I do not think it can be modified.

For those users who use it to their advantage I want to tell them that I have nothing against them, they simply make use of something that is beneficial and was officially allowed.

For those who do not accept this game mechanics and do not use it because they do not want / can do it I want to tell them that unfortunately it is something with which one has to learn to live together if one wants to continue playing.

For the company to simply tell them that it is a pity that they have chosen to endorse this type of practices in an official way, although I do not share the decision I understand why they did it but it is still something that bothers them and takes away credibility from a large part of this community that expected a more realistic response to something that is obvious to them that should not happen.

Greetings.

think you got it wrong, make all skills that apply 50% or more of damage on hit, 1s cast time (no animation cancelling), all skills that deal 50% or more of damage over time, instant.

Sigtric

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

We are here talking about animation cancelling, what you describe there, is NOT animation canceling. You can only use one ability every .9 seconds. Anything faster than that is either 1 ability. 1 light attack and 2 procs, or is actual cheating if it is 4 abilities.

If you are talking about when the crit charge animation gets stuck and then all the button smashing the player does during the portion of being stuck then all simultaneously fires, that is also NOT animation cancelling. That's a bug. If a player knows how to cause this to reliably happen, that's an exploit.

You can always see the initial wind up for wrecking blow if you pay attention, even if it is bar swap or bash cancelled.

How do you counter wrecking blow if you see it?

Royaji

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

cjthibs

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

Sigtric

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

There's a .9 second GCD on all skills, and still as we've told you, what you're describing is NOT animation cancelling.

Dawnblade

Faulgor wrote: »

ChildOfLight wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

There's a different angle we can look at this from, however.

Let's use, say, Snipe, for instance. The entire animation consists of charging up the shot, the moment of firing the shot, and after firing the shot. By your logic, if you cancel the animation right after the moment you fired the shot, the arrow should magically fly back to your hand.

Just... no. It makes no sense.

An animation should be able to be canceled after the point of action has been performed without reverting the effects of that action.

That's how weaving and animation cancelling works; you don't wait for your sword swing to stop completely before you attempt another swing from your combat stance; you chain them together in a flurry of attacks.

Quoted for reference.

Plus, every game with competitive features out there, has animation cancel. So, no.

No, they don't. But that shouldn't be a deciding factor in the matter one way or another.

Having the option to animation cancel is prefered by some people for a more fast-paced game experience, I get that. But the other option is to have a more strategic game where you have to commit to an action, which is just as valid. Many games have elements of both anyway (think fighting games).

But these games usually have a more coherent design for these things, centered around start up, active and recovery frames. ESO's animation cancelling just "happened" without any deliberate intent by the designers to allow certain attack strings, or combos. That just wasn't the focus of the combat system (in the beginning it focused on heavy attacks, blocking, exploiting stuns, and resource management, i.e. a more strategic approach).

Talking about combos and fighting games in particular, animation cancels usually only happen when you actually land a hit, which you can then extend into a combo. Defensive animation cancels are much rarer and apparently not that well-liked (thinking about focus attacks in SF4 specifically, although I liked them). So you can only cancel an animation during the active or recovery frame if you hit your opponent. Canceling startup frames is much rarer in my experience.
Translating this into ESO would mean, when your attack is blocked, you can't animation cancel it. And you can only cancel the rest of the animation after you actually applied damage during an active frame (which is the issue of the OP).

Frankly I'm not that sure how ESO handles active frames, meaning when the damage of an ability is applied. It's different for different skills, but they don't seem to correspond that well with the actual animation. I mean, looking at Dawnbreaker, you'd expect the damage to happen when the sword is slammed down, but it's actually way before that.

I think people would have less of a problem with animation canceling if it at least seemed like a deliberately designed and coherent game mechanic, and not just a sloppy side effect.

I agree with your comments, mostly the last line I highlighted in bold.

IMO AC is neither good nor bad, and using AC neither shows skill or lack thereof - it is simply how the game works.

Though since it wasn't designed as part of the game from the start, but rather was unintended, it feels clunky and 'cheap'.

And clearly based on their actions and communications, they cannot or will not remove or rework it, most likely because it would require major development (costs / resources) with high risks (break game / alienate players with change).

So we are stuck with a clunky AC 'feature' that only exists because the original developers screwed up, but it is what it is so players can either play the game as it is with AC, or not and perform at a lower level of output.

cjthibs

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

There's a .9 second GCD on all skills, and still as we've told you, what you're describing is NOT animation cancelling.

Yes. I understand this.
There are no cooldowns for skills to properly show animations...this is what allows for animation cancelling. It's also what allows for loading up attacks.

Enforce actual cooldowns for relevant animations, this all goes away.

Sigtric

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

There's a .9 second GCD on all skills, and still as we've told you, what you're describing is NOT animation cancelling.

Yes. I understand this.
There are no cooldowns for skills to properly show animations...this is what allows for animation cancelling. It's also what allows for loading up attacks.

Enforce actual cooldowns for relevant animations, this all goes away.

If you force animations to complete you are also forcing your ability to block/dodge and barswap when needed, to go away, because now you're waiting for animations to finish before you can do such.

cjthibs

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

There's a .9 second GCD on all skills, and still as we've told you, what you're describing is NOT animation cancelling.

Yes. I understand this.
There are no cooldowns for skills to properly show animations...this is what allows for animation cancelling. It's also what allows for loading up attacks.

Enforce actual cooldowns for relevant animations, this all goes away.

If you force animations to complete you are also forcing your ability to block/dodge and barswap when needed, to go away, because now you're waiting for animations to finish before you can do such.

Which would make us all think a bit more about how you play...it would be a big change, for sure.

You couldn't rush into a fight with an already planned combo in mind.

The game was clearly not designed to be played the way it currently is, and let's face it...Cyrodiil looks like a bunch of epileptics charging around, and people dying for no reason.

idk

Wrecking_Blow_Spam wrote: »

There's that one guy who calls anyone who animation cancels a "cheater/exploiter".

Wonder if he'll show up...

Lol. So true and that same person only replies to posts that do not contain the logic behind it being an accepted part of the game and not a cheat by definition.

Egonieser

Ever seen the Samurai swordplay? Real life AC in all it's beauty.

bulbousb16_ESO

More disappointed by animation cancelling than I am excited for Morrowind.

Cryptical

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

There's a .9 second GCD on all skills, and still as we've told you, what you're describing is NOT animation cancelling.

Yes. I understand this.
There are no cooldowns for skills to properly show animations...this is what allows for animation cancelling. It's also what allows for loading up attacks.

Enforce actual cooldowns for relevant animations, this all goes away.

If you force animations to complete you are also forcing your ability to block/dodge and barswap when needed, to go away, because now you're waiting for animations to finish before you can do such.

Not necessarily.

Enforce the cooldown before another skill can be fired off, make blocking and bar swap exempt from the cooldown.

So you start a 1 second skill 'A', cut it off at the .4 second mark by hitting block/bar swap, and even though you hit the button for skill 'B' it will not begin until the cooldown has completed.

Turning a global cooldown that can be avoided by animation canceling into a skill cooldown that cannot be avoided would preserve your ability to block / bar swap / roll dodge etc while encouraging you to engage the opponent rather than have your fingers on an autopilot rotation.

Royaji

Cryptical wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

There's a .9 second GCD on all skills, and still as we've told you, what you're describing is NOT animation cancelling.

Yes. I understand this.
There are no cooldowns for skills to properly show animations...this is what allows for animation cancelling. It's also what allows for loading up attacks.

Enforce actual cooldowns for relevant animations, this all goes away.

If you force animations to complete you are also forcing your ability to block/dodge and barswap when needed, to go away, because now you're waiting for animations to finish before you can do such.

Not necessarily.

Enforce the cooldown before another skill can be fired off, make blocking and bar swap exempt from the cooldown.

So you start a 1 second skill 'A', cut it off at the .4 second mark by hitting block/bar swap, and even though you hit the button for skill 'B' it will not begin until the cooldown has completed.

Turning a global cooldown that can be avoided by animation canceling into a skill cooldown that cannot be avoided would preserve your ability to block / bar swap / roll dodge etc while encouraging you to engage the opponent rather than have your fingers on an autopilot rotation.

But this is exactly how it works on live server. All skills have a global cooldown of 0.9 seconds. So even if you AC you can't cast skills more often than every 0.9 seconds...You have to wait at least 0.9 seconds to cast skill B after skill A. This mechanic has nothing to do with AC.

typo

Sigtric

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Just one more random thought.

It seems we have two camps here.
Those who want combat to be based on twitch-skill. (Pro-Animation Canceling.)

-AND-

Those who want combat to be more strategic. (Anti-Animation Canceling.)

I fall into the strategic camp.
We have all of these cool abilities, with different buffs/debuffs, conditions to apply, etc., but what the PvP in this game is really about is straight-up damage/heal output. And in my opinion, this is due to animation cancelling. If you can't tell what your opponent is doing, how can you counter it? There is no point, so just outheal and outdamage. That's a big part of why we have cookie-cutter builds and FoTM builds.

I will concede that animation cancelling does take skill. Happily. But is it really the kind of skill we want to encourage, or the kind of skill that ZoS should be encouraging?

What would you do different to counter
1 light attack anim canceled by one ability attack
versus
1 light attack fully animated and then one ability attack?

The question isn't what would I do...the question is would I even know which ability was used?

The more relevant scenario is when an ability's animation is canceled and no relevant animation is even shown. There is no real counter, because you have no idea which ability was even used.

you will see the ability skill fire either way, because it's the light attack being canceled.

What would you do differently?

Which is irrelevant to what I was talking about...you're trying to change my argument into something that you -can- defend.

Have you ever had someone load up 4 skills to have them all fire nearly simultaneously on a crit charge? You tell me how relevant your light attack example is to that.

Or when you get WB'ed and don't see the animation at all. How relevant is your light attack example?

But those things have nothing to do with AC. Please read my posts from earlier. WB can't be canceled because it has a cast time. You will be able to see it for at least one second because otherwise it will not register. And skill stacking is just a plain exploit which is not related to AC, I will be glad if they fix it.

Those all have the same root cause. No cooldowns. Couple that with the slightest bit of lag, as others brought up, and you will see no animation at all.

There's a .9 second GCD on all skills, and still as we've told you, what you're describing is NOT animation cancelling.

Yes. I understand this.
There are no cooldowns for skills to properly show animations...this is what allows for animation cancelling. It's also what allows for loading up attacks.

Enforce actual cooldowns for relevant animations, this all goes away.

If you force animations to complete you are also forcing your ability to block/dodge and barswap when needed, to go away, because now you're waiting for animations to finish before you can do such.

Which would make us all think a bit more about how you play...it would be a big change, for sure.

You couldn't rush into a fight with an already planned combo in mind.

The game was clearly not designed to be played the way it currently is, and let's face it...Cyrodiil looks like a bunch of epileptics charging around, and people dying for no reason.

Cryodiil is it's own beast in itself. PVE would also be affected, and you'd see a lot more occurrences of not being able to dodge or block damage, resulting in more wipes, because people wouldn't be able to dodge or block when they need to.

Combat is very clunky with out it, you can see it right now if you force yourself to wait for each animation to finish before you perform the next skill.

I'd much rather be able to dodge/barswap/block when I need it.

Animation cancelling was actually designed into the game, so that the mentioned block/dodge/swap could happen fluidly and when needed. What was not intended or maybe better phrased: anticipated- is the speed and effectiveness of it in players hands.

The bottom line though, is that this is not a hotkey style traditional mmo combat system, this is an action, dynamic combat system, and to change the way it works at its core would wreck that. The devs have stated it is to be embraced, and the only people who are hurt by it are those who don't understand it, or are unwilling to do it.

For those who don't understand it, a tutorial should be added to the game.

Cpt_Teemo

Wrecking_Blow_Spam wrote: »

There's that one guy who calls anyone who animation cancels a "cheater/exploiter".

Wonder if he'll show up...

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