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

KundaliniHero

Depends on the medium you're referring to, as a console player it's definitely a skill unto itself which takes extensive practice to master, it's absolutley needed for top tier pve dps and effective burst damage in PVP. I dont play PC but from what I imagine you guys have an addon to remind you to get up and urinate every so often and can program macros and other such things to essentially go auto pilot. But I imagine your main complaint, which is the reason 80% of people come crawling to the forums with stories of whine and cheese: pvp. I would say if it really bothers you, play something else.

cjthibs

Sigtric wrote: »

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.

I'd be fully in favor of a system where dodging/blocking could still interrupt, cancelling the skill entirely. (And damage.)

And your last point I agree with wholeheartedly. If this will always be, which it appears it will, then it needs to either be made intuitive, or explained in-game.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I didnt read all the mess that this post will likely become, but dont confuse skills with a longer cast time, (endless hail) with channeled skills (Cyrstal Frags). If you cancel a channeled skill with a block like crystal frags, it doesnt fire. Some skills with long animations like hail can be cut short with a block or a swap and still go off.

End of the day, AC has a whole is a good thing. It is necessary for fluid combat and adds a layer of skill to the game. There are certainly a few combos (almost exclusively PVP related) that probably need looked at. I do agree that people should generally be able to have an idea of what is hitting them from a visual perspective.

HeroOfNone

I think there is another thing most don't realize is there is the standard animation canceling and then there certain animation cancels that are going faster and flowing better than others. In the latter, combos are easier to do, but not available through any tooltip or indicators.

For example, the transition with take sim, light attack, poison injection, swap, teleport strike, and killers blade can be done quickly and with relatively same amount of burst time.

But, the dark side of this is some of these combos can actually beat the Global Cooldown and allow several attacks in under a second. One notable one is from stealth heavy attack and around two to three dizzying swings within 1.7 seconds. It's important to note these are exploits, and should be reported to be fixed.

Preferably ZOS should work to fix the transition between abilities so animation canceling is less hitch and that charge abilities match the cast time used. In addition, if animation canceling is a requirement for any challenges, as it is now for dps checks in dungeons, they should give better in game tutorials and indicators. Finally they need to work on a better tracking system for capturing broken abilities that allow players to bypass the GCD.

Royaji

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I didnt read all the mess that this post will likely become, but dont confuse skills with a longer cast time, (endless hail) with channeled skills (Cyrstal Frags). If you cancel a channeled skill with a block like crystal frags, it doesnt fire. Some skills with long animations like hail can be cut short with a block or a swap and still go off.

End of the day, AC has a whole is a good thing. It is necessary for fluid combat and adds a layer of skill to the game. There are certainly a few combos (almost exclusively PVP related) that probably need looked at. I do agree that people should generally be able to have an idea of what is hitting them from a visual perspective.

Maybe reading this mess wasn't such a bad idea. You could've avoided a stupid mistake in your post. Endless Hail is an instant skill and Frags are a cast time skill, not a channel. An example of channeled skill will be Soul Assault or Jesus Beam. And let me quote myself:

Royaji wrote: »

Animation Canceling 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.

Sigtric

@HeroOfNone the biggest problem with AC is people's lack of understanding what is actually AC within the working as intended confines of skills and the GCD, and what is a bug/exploiting a bug. I also would like the bugs and exploits fixed, and a working tutorial in the game for animation cancelling.

Hopefully we get it someday.


AC is and should be considered in DPS checks in group content because many of those fights, with out it, players would have to be perfectly geared and/or have very specific rotations to pull out enough DPS to pass the check. Taking the added DPS gained from AC allows for more room in skill bar options. IMO the less forcing of cookie cutter the better.

old_mufasa

I don't think the op understands the animation canceling issue.

There is no one saying you shouldn't be able to interrupt your own skills to block... the issue is breaking your animation and still doing damage with it. That is core of the problem. If you cancel your attack your attack should not land. You shouldn't be able to cancel the animation and still do damage..

Faulgor

Royaji wrote: »

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.

It demonstrably was.
I assume you have played the tutorial at one point. It teaches you about light and heavy attacks, about blocking incoming heavy attacks, exploiting the resulting stun with a heavy attack to cause a knockdown, and interrupting casting targets with a bash. I'm not sure if it also teaches you how to dodge roll and CC break, but those fall into the same line. All very strategic and reactive gameplay.
The tutorial teaches absolutely nothing about animation canceling.

Sigtric

old_mufasa wrote: »

I don't think the op understands the animation canceling issue.

There is no one saying you shouldn't be able to interrupt your own skills to block... the issue is breaking your animation and still doing damage with it. That is core of the problem. If you cancel your attack your attack should not land. You shouldn't be able to cancel the animation and still do damage..

I have a feeling this is going straight back to 2014 when ZOS looked at it before and then made the statement it's here to stay and to embrace it, guessing because it was not worth the damage it would do to change things and likely the cost involved doing so.

In order for it to cancel the damage as well you have to add additional burden to the calculations that determine whether your attack hit and for how much, it would always have to be prefaced by a cancel check.

In addition, it would have to fundamentally change the way most skills in ESO work. Most skills in ESO do damage immediately on button press and the animation is added so you actually see something. If the damage is done on button press but the animation is cancelled half way through and still has half to go, how do you take that damage back?

Do you make it so damage isn't done until the end of the animation? Hello slow old clunky hotkey MMO crappy combat.

Royaji

Faulgor wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

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.

It demonstrably was.
I assume you have played the tutorial at one point. It teaches you about light and heavy attacks, about blocking incoming heavy attacks, exploiting the resulting stun with a heavy attack to cause a knockdown, and interrupting casting targets with a bash. I'm not sure if it also teaches you how to dodge roll and CC break, but those fall into the same line. All very strategic and reactive gameplay.
The tutorial teaches absolutely nothing about animation canceling.

Do those things work in PvP? Against an AI all those things are applicable, but are they equally effective against a player? The most important mechanic you mention - block to stun your opponent and exploit the stun to get a knockdown is not present in PvP. So no, PvP combat was not designed that way.

Once again, most skills in ESO are instant. They are registered BEFORE the animation. Always. Even if they are not cancelled the damage will be registered the moment the button is pressed. There is no way to play reactivly against them - AC or no AC. Reactive play in ESO means reacting to things happening to your character. Heal if your health is low, break CCs, dodgeroll from roots and ground targeted attacks, attack then your resources and health allow it. This is the strategic part and AC does not prevent it from happening.

Brittany_Joy

Animation canceling seems to be a common issue in MMOs with realtime combat because the skill's animation is too long to keep up with competitive gameplay. Now there is a genre of games that know this and its fighting games, they specifically make skills to have a combo when pressed in a certain order thus making each animation fluidly and quickly go from one to the other. Perhaps it is not the animation canceling that is the problem but the developer. They need to recreate a system that was made to solve an issue like this.

Each gameplay mechanic adds a whole new set of problems that need to be addressed. Adding real-time combat instead of tab-target combat creates an animation speed issue. Where the speed of animation matters greatly and thus a system needs to be put in place to fulfill that need for fluid transition between skills.

Acrolas

Faulgor wrote: »

The tutorial teaches absolutely nothing about animation canceling.

Because there's nothing to teach. It's the in-game equivalent of a genetic mutation. It was never an intended mechanic, but it's a mechanic they don't know how to remove. It's a great case study about how everybody on a team should know what the other people on the team are doing, and at least a little bit about how they're doing it.

It makes transitional training a lot easier if you lose a team member, instead of losing knowledge permanently when people leave.

They've tinkered with the flow of canceling, but it's really nothing to debate or teach. Some people do it. You can do it to be more competitive, but it's not an advertised core mechanic. Meaning, despite the group elitists, ZOS believes you can be acceptably competitive in its content without using it.

Faulgor

Royaji wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

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.

It demonstrably was.
I assume you have played the tutorial at one point. It teaches you about light and heavy attacks, about blocking incoming heavy attacks, exploiting the resulting stun with a heavy attack to cause a knockdown, and interrupting casting targets with a bash. I'm not sure if it also teaches you how to dodge roll and CC break, but those fall into the same line. All very strategic and reactive gameplay.
The tutorial teaches absolutely nothing about animation canceling.

Do those things work in PvP? Against an AI all those things are applicable, but are they equally effective against a player? The most important mechanic you mention - block to stun your opponent and exploit the stun to get a knockdown is not present in PvP. So no, PvP combat was not designed that way.

Once again, most skills in ESO are instant. They are registered BEFORE the animation. Always. Even if they are not cancelled the damage will be registered the moment the button is pressed. There is no way to play reactivly against them - AC or no AC. Reactive play in ESO means reacting to things happening to your character. Heal if your health is low, break CCs, dodgeroll from roots and ground targeted attacks, attack then your resources and health allow it. This is the strategic part and AC does not prevent it from happening.

Of course those things work in PvP. They are just not used because they are that easily countered. Which is one of the reasons why people gravitated towards using their skills for their main source of damage instead, which set the whole changes by ZOS in motion to cater to that playstyle.
But the initial design at release (I've heard the game was much more like a classic tab-target MMO during alpha, so I can't speak for that) was much more reactive and strategic. ZOS also always stressed that they want no division between PvE and PvP gameplay, so I'm not sure why you'd move the goalpost to PvP exclusively.

Royaji

Faulgor wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

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.

It demonstrably was.
I assume you have played the tutorial at one point. It teaches you about light and heavy attacks, about blocking incoming heavy attacks, exploiting the resulting stun with a heavy attack to cause a knockdown, and interrupting casting targets with a bash. I'm not sure if it also teaches you how to dodge roll and CC break, but those fall into the same line. All very strategic and reactive gameplay.
The tutorial teaches absolutely nothing about animation canceling.

Do those things work in PvP? Against an AI all those things are applicable, but are they equally effective against a player? The most important mechanic you mention - block to stun your opponent and exploit the stun to get a knockdown is not present in PvP. So no, PvP combat was not designed that way.

Once again, most skills in ESO are instant. They are registered BEFORE the animation. Always. Even if they are not cancelled the damage will be registered the moment the button is pressed. There is no way to play reactivly against them - AC or no AC. Reactive play in ESO means reacting to things happening to your character. Heal if your health is low, break CCs, dodgeroll from roots and ground targeted attacks, attack then your resources and health allow it. This is the strategic part and AC does not prevent it from happening.

Of course those things work in PvP. They are just not used because they are that easily countered. Which is one of the reasons why people gravitated towards using their skills for their main source of damage instead, which set the whole changes by ZOS in motion to cater to that playstyle.
But the initial design at release (I've heard the game was much more like a classic tab-target MMO during alpha, so I can't speak for that) was much more reactive and strategic. ZOS also always stressed that they want no division between PvE and PvP gameplay, so I'm not sure why you'd move the goalpost to PvP exclusively.

ZOS might say what they want, but let's be honest - PvP and PvE are different. They might not want to balance them diffrerently but the difference in final goal and the ways to achieve it is huge (sustained DPS vs. the hardest hitting burst).

Animation cancelling is mostly an issue for PvP, because mobs can't complain about players cancelling animation on them...

Not like I spend all my playtime in Cyro but I PvPed quite a bit and never have I experinced a stun from my own attack being blocked or stunned an opponent by blocking his attack. Do we get a flashy notification around the player if they heavy attack us? No. I'm pretty sure this mechanic is not present in PvP.

Violynne

Faulgor wrote: »

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'm no expert at AC currently (slowly learning), but this statement pretty much draws on something I've personally noticed: damage is assigned before the actual attack is rendered.

I can't say one way or another if AC is a "benefit" or an "exploit", but I will say this: I'd rather all animation be canceled.

Doing this immediately sets the playing field level, because every skill is now identical. Maybe it's just me, but I seem to notice some skills take more time in their animation sequences than others (crystal shards, looking at you).

Even with I get my "instant" bonus, I can still see damage being applied even though the animation itself is truncated (arm lifting rather than cycling the spell).

I'm sure some animation is necessary for the sake of immersion (it would look rather dorky not to raise a hand to at least cast a spell, for example), but if they were the same across the board, I think this game's dynamics would instantly change.

The reality is some people will most likely never master canceling, giving them an unfair advantage when up against PvP or vet dungeons. This mantra of "L2P" doesn't apply here because AC isn't actually part of the game. It's an effect from a cause from a design flaw.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for the original players to discover this mechanic, while leaving others in the dark about it until the "secret" finally broke.

I'm on the XB1, and canceling doesn't come easy thanks to the inherent delay of the button press. No way does the "X" button trigger faster than a gaming mouse click. So we're sort of boned in this regard, the only positive being we're all console players with the same handicap.

So, where's the vote registration for this discussion? Put me down for +1 in "remove animation".

Paincake

Balancing around PVP has ruined many a good MMO.

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DHale

It's no surprise that the best players are the best animation cancellers? Regardless, whether it is pve or pvp.

dramsb14_ESO

The actual effect/result of any ability/spell should only occur at the END of the animation, in which case if you cancel the animation you don't get the desired effect/result. If you chose to block instead of finishing an ability/spell, you can still do so, but the ability/spell shouldn't magically still go off as a result. This is nothing new, as canceling an animation/cast in other MMOs (such as WoW) will negate the desired effect.

Mordenkainen

From a technical point of view, it's kind of silly. I mean, animations are there to be animated and played. Otherwise we can all just glide across the floor in a T-Stance while playing the game.

From a gameplay point of view, it made me quit trying to pvp. My ping is usually around 250 (Which is propably good considering I'm sitting in EU and play on the NA server, lol) and I just outgrew the idea of pondering if some guy who murdered me in Cyrodiil with 5 attacks in under a second is an exploit or AC in combination with my ping.

I can live without PvP.

What does bother me however is that it appears to be becoming a necessity in PvE to pull desired numbers in dungeons and trials. A friend of mine is playing a magicka NB, somewhat successful, which makes him kind of a pink unicorn to begin with I'd say, but he has to measure his dps in bar swaps per second instead of actual numbers, lol.

I'm trying myself and 50% of the time It's working, the other 50% of the time die to my crappy ping. And no while it isn't hard to press buttons in a row, at the end of the day it's getting tedious.

I wouldn't say abolishing it is a solution, but the netcode could really be a bit more refined for this.

Inig0

I don't understand. You say that the game has officially endorsed it and accept it as a game mechanic yet you still are proposing them changing it. You say you understand why they said what they have said and why they won't change it yet you still want them to change it. You call it exploiting yet you explain why it's necessary for game mechanics. You suggest a fix that really isn't a fix but a complete overhaul to combat and for what? So you can see the animations? If that was the case a lot of the content would need to be adjusted for this change to the rate that we can push out skills. Healing for instance would be heavily affected. The game is designed for fast paced combat. The pve content is designed for fast paced responses. If you cant keep up then you are not a skillful player and should play some other game with global cool-downs.

ALSO

If you would rather Wrobel take the time to adhere to your little QQ about ACing instead of balancing the classes then you have no idea about the imbalances of the game at all. Animation canceling is far from what is imbalanced in this game. Are you that blind, casual, and/ or naive to really think this is where ZOS should spend their resources?

Inig0

Also you put this in the wrong section of the forums.

PandaIsAPotato

The game's been out three years, animation canceling isn't going away. Learn it or don't, but quit making threads about it.

Daimmyo

Don't get me wrong on this - I really don't care about animation cancelling... at all. I am using it up to a certain level.

But can't avoid feeling It's a bit illogical and mind bugging part of the game.

You swing for a long hard strike with a sword at your foe, somewhere along the way while the hand is still about to push the god damn sword at the enemy head, you actually cancel the hit, damage gets applied, and instead you are in block position.

Instead of doing Tornado, I'm just seeing spikes coming out of me, damage applied, I'm in block, x3, x4 - no animation.

Why is there animation at all as it seems to me that we can hit the foe without performing attack move?

Oh yeah - I know - it's just a stupid video game - anything is possible.

Cryptical

PandaIsAPotato wrote: »

The game's been out three years, animation canceling isn't going away. Learn it or don't, but quit making threads about it.

And this is the most ill-conceived argument for ending the conversation that could be possible.

Just because it's been 3 years doesn't mean it's going to remain forever.

To illustrate my point... Hmm, I was going to swap words in your exact post so it talked about something that was around for 89+ years but ended in America in 1865, but I won't quite go that far.

Past conditions do not prohibit changes for the future, get it?

dramsb14_ESO

Daimmyo wrote: »

Don't get me wrong on this - I really don't care about animation cancelling... at all. I am using it up to a certain level.

But can't avoid feeling It's a bit illogical and mind bugging part of the game.

You swing for a long hard strike with a sword at your foe, somewhere along the way while the hand is still about to push the god damn sword at the enemy head, you actually cancel the hit, damage gets applied, and instead you are in block position.

Instead of doing Tornado, I'm just seeing spikes coming out of me, damage applied, I'm in block, x3, x4 - no animation.

Why is there animation at all as it seems to me that we can hit the foe without performing attack move?

Oh yeah - I know - it's just a stupid video game - anything is possible.

Exactly. Just because the Devs don't consider AC as cheating, doesn't mean it makes sense or is good game design.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

DHale wrote: »

Why have a commentary about something already in game and isn't going anywhere? I say we talk about something more pressing... there is ice in Antarctica.

WAIT....you're telling me there is ice in Antarctica? Mother of god......WHERE DID IT COME FROM!? WHY IS IT THERE?! DAMN YOU, LET THE RABBITS WEAR GLASSES!

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LtCrunch

If ZOS doesn't think it's worth the resources it would require to fix properly and are going to leave in it then they absolutely need to start treating it like any other combat mechanics. They need to advertise it as a combat mechanic; add the relevant information to tooltips, implement tutorials to detail the basic and advanced concepts behind AC. Right now it's just sloppy and frankly ZOS should be embarrassed that a near staple element of endgame combat is completely omitted and players are left to figure it out for themselves or find the relevant information through forums, videos and guides.

Personally I think they need to go through and revamp every animation in one way or the other so that damage applied syncs with when a blade makes contact or a spell leaves your hand/the end of your staff. Then allow players to cancel the recovery or "pointless" frames of an animation. If it's cancelled before that point of the animation it should completely prevent any damage from firing. This is how you make animation cancelling work competently as a developer. I don't expect ZOS to put resources into doing it right, but the very least they can do is start teaching players that it's part of the core combat mechanics. Because it absolutely is at this point.

Ermiq

Sigtric wrote: »

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.

You should try to read your own post one more time. It's not about all combat calculations. It's about calculations of skill is throwed or not.
Let me explane how it works in MMO games. Client on your machine calculates whether or not the animation should be displayed or not, skill AC or not, also it calculates which skill is it, how much damage with all buffs/debuffs and so on. Then your client sending value true or false to the server with damage value if 'true'.
So, I shall repeat: the server won't suffer of this new calculations at all.