Why is it the general impression of people who don't play ESO is that the combat is bad?

Red_Feather

It has some really good things.

• No cooldowns.
• Interrupts are accessible and matters.
• Blocking is accessible and matters.
• You can sprint while in combat.
• Dodge rolling can be done a lot, but character gets fatigue penalty.
• Crowd Control Immunity rules keep stun locking from happening.

Here are some things I don't find attractive.

1. Moving while attacking feels floaty and there is no weight to hits.
2. Some animations and entity movement feels clunky and very old school.
3. The animation canceling doesn't feel, or look polished but is just there.
4. Having to swap weapons to recast buffs is really tiring after 100+ hours of play.

Jaimeh

Combat is my favourite thing about ESO and I think it does it superbly: it's fast, smooth, and above all, reactive. I think the reason people don't enjoy it is because they don't actually learn it well, since you can pretty much light attack your way throughout overland content, and if you never learn how to interrupt or roll dodge, and just stand there, you will likely survive most overland encounters, except for world bosses and world events (which are flagged as group-play anyway). The briiliance and uniqueness of ESO combat starts to unfold when you play harder content with mechanics, that requires more than a light attack and the occasional skill, or when you pvp, and then it becomes really challenging, and demands both a steep learning curve, a lot of practice, and in the case of dps players, I'd also argue natural talent/twitchiness. But once you learn it, it's so rewarding, and you will miss it every time you play another game. From a perspective of a dps rotation or a pvp combo, one needs to know how to weave, how to obey cooldowns, how to cast things in a certain succession, especially when there's buffs involved, and even how to cancel animations (which despite popular belief it's not the end-all be-all of combat), while you are doing mechanics or while you are fighting others, and that's where it gets tricky and starts to separate players who've invested time in actually understanding and learning combat, than players who didn't. Take a look at a fight like vCR HM where there's a bunch of things to keep track of, and the combat involves not just the boss, but many the other things in the environment, how engaged and alert you have to constantly be during that fight... I think most people who dislike combat in ESO are used to combat in other games, when there's turns, or cues for when to do things, there's no weaving, it's slower, and the encounter guides the combat in a way. For me that framework is very unappealing, but it's common to a lot of games, so people are used to it. So when they come to ESO, and usually do overland or normal content, and don't progress to harder content which requires them to delve deeply into combat to make most of the fight, the have a limited viewof combat. And even from that limited perspective, I still can't understand how people don't appreciate simply the visuals and animations of the skills, which are awesome, and feel very satisfying to cast. I hope ESO combat never changes, and always stays fast and furious

Kiralyn2000

Faulgor wrote: »

It just looks and feels terrible. Janky, floaty, not impactful.

But see, here's the thing. Not being a connoisseur of videogame combat (I don't play any of the uber-melee-focused games like Souls-likes, or God of War, or whatever), I don't even know what you mean by that.

It seems fine. I don't notice animation problems, because I'm not watching my character's animations while playing - I'm watching the terrain around me, the target, moving to avoid red circles, etc. I haven't a clue what my character animations look like, honestly.

Don't know what else to say. /shrug

CaffeinatedMayhem

Animation cancelling isn't my favorite either. But also, I think a lot of people WANT dumb combat, and ESO requires you to THINK not just press 1 button to win.

Example: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/588041/psa-for-toad-tongue-war-camp

_adhyffbjjjf12

Sluggy wrote: »

_adhyffbjjjf12 wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

Mandatory animation canceling for good DPS

Incorrect. average dps would be relatively the same for all if there was no animation cancelling, and we would not need to be mindlessly spamming every half seconds - which is not skill.

So this argument always confuses me, There are two points that detractors make. They either say it's A ) skill-less, in which case, why can't everyone do it. Or B ) requires too much skill that is impossible for most humans - to which I say, most people can play chopsticks and twinkle twinkle little star on the piano. So it can't be that hard.

It sits right in that happy middle ground where it should be. Relatively easy to learn with just enough of a challenge to keep it interesting. Right where it should be. An no - it's NOT a bug. It's an intended part of the game.

The people that have learned to light weave have only learned to spam a spell every couple hundred milliseconds in-between every single skill. that is neither skilful or compelling gameplay, its rote rather than reactive gameplay ala wow stylee. Its spamming (or really macros in a lot of cases i'm sure) that forces other people to also spam 2+ skills a second or be non competitive. Its also a hack for a thing the devs could not fix.

I doubt many people think spamming 2-3 spells a SECOND is fun, what is really going on is people who have learned it like it because it gives them an advantage over non spammers.

Imagine server performance if skill requests sent to the server was literally halved.. So yeah, get rid of animation cancelling, get a massive server boost, take away the advantage a spammer/macro user has over non spammers and have a more competitive relaxed game style where skill and reactive gameplay is allowed to flourish.

Castagere

The limited abilities you can use make it boring to a lot of people. But they needed to do this because of the console players. Imagine if ESO was a PC-only game. I bet we would have more skills to use.

_adhyffbjjjf12

Castagere wrote: »

The limited abilities you can use make it boring to a lot of people. But they needed to do this because of the console players. Imagine if ESO was a PC-only game. I bet we would have more skills to use.

10 skills plus pots and proc management is actually a fair amount, have too many and it becomes 'how many different coloured skills can I dump on a target' I.e damage with purple graphic, a dot, damage with a white graphic, a heal, cc, time a burst, swap weapons etc etc etc. Having too many skills makes choices less meaningful and would homogenise.

Having to carefully select skills or experiment with groups of skills helps keep things interesting.

Paulytnz

Personally I do prefer the GW2 Combat system than here. It's not about finding the best 1 or 2 skills and spamming them until out of whatever resource pool you use.

You have a few more skills and everyone has a dedicated Healing skill slot. I just prefer the cooldowns because it means you have to choose when to use the skill, the most important time. Here it's just spam/spam/spam and so much skill use since there is also no "auto attack" here.

Give me my Auto attack and flamethrower back, is all I ask lol. And yes, I said flamethrower, my main Engi went nowhere without it.

Oh and the synergy system was better there too. Place down a firewall for example and depending on what you or your allies did with that would result in different effects. Example - you could fire an arrow or bullet through it for fire damage. You could stomp on it for an AOE Dam effect. You could also charge or dash through it for other effects. A lot more options there.....

Iccotak

Suddwrath wrote: »

Because it is, especially for PvE.
1) You have a limited number of skills that can be used/put on the skill bar.
2) Classes feel very similar since they use many of the same weapon/guild/world skills (which takes away much of the flavor of the class)
3) Regardless of class, the rotation is generally: Apply DOTs -> Click Spammable Skill -> Reapply DOTS -> etc. (applying self buffs as needed)
4) The vast majority of content can be done without even having a healer in the group which devalues the role.
5) Due to the incredibly poor server performance combat often feels clunky and sluggish, not to mention the number of skills that are so bugged they often just don’t even work.
6) What was originally a bug is now deemed an essential feature to achieve high DPS (weaving/animation cancelling).
7) Tanking is mind numbing. There is not an AoE taunt, no threat/aggro gauge to maintain, DPS is incredibly low, and the rotation is very simple.

I played end game ESO PvE for years and thought the combat was great, but as soon as I started playing other MMOs I realized just how stale, boring, and clunky the combat actually is.

There is some thing about trying out other games that really opens your eyes.

This is why I think it is often valid for people to compare two different games.

Hurbster

This is a great discussion, thank you.

_adhyffbjjjf12

Paulytnz wrote: »

Personally I do prefer the GW2 Combat system than here. It's not about finding the best 1 or 2 skills and spamming them until out of whatever resource pool you use.

You have a few more skills and everyone has a dedicated Healing skill slot. I just prefer the cooldowns because it means you have to choose when to use the skill, the most important time. Here it's just spam/spam/spam and so much skill use since there is also no "auto attack" here.

Give me my Auto attack and flamethrower back, is all I ask lol. And yes, I said flamethrower, my main Engi went nowhere without it.

Oh and the synergy system was better there too. Place down a firewall for example and depending on what you or your allies did with that would result in different effects. Example - you could fire an arrow or bullet through it for fire damage. You could stomp on it for an AOE Dam effect. You could also charge or dash through it for other effects. A lot more options there.....

I preferred GW2 combat as well in terms of the skills and responsiveness, but unfortunately they turned the sorcerer equivalent into a manic melee yoda class, and I prefer the more classic interpretation that eso has on offer, so ESO won a couple years ago for me

daim

Be what it is but damn I miss wow vanilla rogue stunlock

Slimebrow

Oh yeah combat is absolute trash in this game, combat is the first thing about any MMO that sticks out. If the combat sucks then why would anyone bother investing?

Would have been nice if they also improved the animations over time and made it feel less floaty and fixed some of the bugs with base game too.

If you look at games like GW2 combat is smooth and it works you can to an extent feel the weight of the weapon your holding. It sticks out in terms of first impressions. WoW and FF14 also have good combat even though its different it still feels good, they feel good to look at too. When you compare it to ESO it feels like your characters is wearing cardboard and swinging and throwing cardboard around, weightless, floaty and a buggy mess.

If they don't care about these quality of life issues then why should players care about the game? There is no reason to.

mague

Because of influencers and streamers.

Bad or good combat... both oppinions have been out there.

Brenticus12

I don't think people realise how many games out there utilise animation cancels/weaving and how many of those games are high profile, successful games that garner the highest shares in the video game market.

ESO is a fast paced game. Animation cancelling and weaving is a part of almost every fast paced game I can think of. MOBAs, fighting games, ARPGs, shooting games even a lot of singleplayer games. Hell even TES Singleplayer games have animation cancels. Ever watched a pro play Skyrim Requiem with a 2 hand barbarian build? Animation cancelling 2h swings to pump out DPS quickly before anything hits you is common. You just don't ever have to really engage with that gameplay in regular Skyrim because the gameplay, due to health sponging and general low damage output from both the player and the enemies is bland without mods.

People who don't enjoy fast paced gameplay would be put off by it.

That's an issue with them, not with the game's mechanics.

lolo_01b16_ESO

Go to Cyrodiil on a Saturday evening and I'm sure you'll figure out what's wrong with eso combat.

I recently met a new player who was formaly mostly playing shooters and MOBAs and was very excited and motivated about playing eso. I answered a lot of his questions about the game, helped him get the gear he wanted and dueled with him on multiple of my characters, so he could practise how to fight against different classes.
After a short time he left the game and as far as I'm aware the main reasons for this were that sometimes skills just don't work, sometimes you can't hit targets that are visibly in range on your screen, sometimes you get hit by stuff even if you are far enough away on your screen and sometimes you just drop dead from full hp and the recap shows you that you have been taking damage for multiple seconds.

Jackey

I've always enjoyed ESO combat. I like when a game punish you for passivity. It's fun fast paced reactive combat.
It does feel "floaty" at times, but I don't expect an MMORPG to feel like singleplayer games such as Bloodborne or God of War.

I think most complaints are from players coming from other MMOs that are not used to this system and points out everything they think is bad about it instead of giving it a proper chance to grow on them.

colossalvoids

My first impression was that is just different to what I used to especially elder scrolls wise but it also felt satisfying and kind of diablo-ish. I appreciated that that's first elder scrolls game I played with actual combat system since Morrowind. The more I learned the more I liked it but I can understand that it might be not what general mmo or single player fan would like generally.

It's also one of the reasons we have such a server load I assume, but if the core would change I'd just move on having it like a questing game for a few days each patch (and probably on PTS to mitigate purchasing anything) to do the content and not my main game as it is now, combat is what keeps me in for the most part nowadays.

slimwaffle

Over the years I have tried to introduce a few people to the game with none ever sticking it out.
The things people would comment to me. They find weaving dumb. The target system is terrible and doesn't let them lock on or ignore targets. And the performance means often spells don't work.

And I kind of have to agree a bit. The performance issues make the combat very clunky. If you don't live near a server this game does not have fluid combat at all.

For the people saying who think more buttons equal better combat. No. Just no. There are a ton of 1 button builds. More buttons does not equal skill or better combat. When buttons don't fire abilities anyway the whole argument is irrelevant. Because its not fun if it doesn't work.

Parasaurolophus

I absolutely do not understand what kind of animation cancellation you are talking about. Animation canceling has been gone for a long time. Yes, many skills used to be cast faster if their animation was skipped. But this has not been done for a long time. Weaving remained, but this is not canceling the animation.

Naftal

I have it the other way around. I'd like to play other MMOs but they all have very bad combat systems compared to ESO. Many also have very bad movement systems that don't let you move freely like ESO does.

orgin_stadia

It would probably help, alot, if the base game (no addons) actually were able to teach you how to combat properly. Like a realtime DPS counter and something that showed you in real time when you are weaving properly. With actually useful visual or audio feedback. Now we basically just have a 5 minute dummy "Uhh I guess I did something right?!?"-run to rely on.

The skill timers helped a bit, but there's more they could do.

Amottica

As someone who started playing ESO relatively recently, I think a lot of it has to do with players adjusting to a more fluid faster pace of combat vs the one action, wait, action, wait design of the other major titles. The choices in gear and having to select which skills will be available probably play a role.

In the end, it comes down to people do not like change and ESO combat is a significant change from WoW and FF MMORPGs. I think the change is for the better.

mekops_ESO

A lot of peoples impressions and experience with the game came prior to certain updates that turned ESO into an entirely new game. So between beta and 2016ish. It was only by poking directly at the forums a couple times that I learned of the full scope of the changes, from players. I played beta, and discontinued play due to certain combat mechanics (at the time, i certainly would not have been ok with anything resembling auto-aim or tab targeting, and would have found anything remotely "homing" extremely unacceptable. ESO got better while my expectations for future MMOs was slashed. I was used to MMOs that were far more competitive and a little more technically ambitious, I guess).

It took updates, a lowering of expectations, and me magically deciding to lurk forums of a game I dont play in order to realize the scope of the changes(from players), to decide to try again. I am still getting smacked in the face by projectiles clipping through buildings to reach me despite my clearly having broken line of sight for quite some duration, and it is no less annoying. I have simply learned to accept it, and spend the vast majority of my game-time playing a game I thoroughly enjoy. As opposed to spending time on the hunt for a MMO with a combat system that checks all my checkboxes. Thats right. I gave up on the tall blonde and just married Jenny from down the street and I am probably better off for it XD

DagenHawk

TelvanniWizard wrote: »

Perhaps they are talking about weaving and animation cancelling, a bug that stayed for so long that it became a "feature".

That is my biggest gripe with the development team, every time a bug requires the slightest bit of effort to address it suddenly become:"A beloved feature that everyone wants to keep." other MMO's has action combat that just works...why is it so hard for ZoS to fix simple bugs?

Also yada yada Standing in saddles
Yada yada bow dragging on the ground
and yada yada no cloth physic because game will crash.

DMuehlhausen

Not having a clear target, or a target locking system is just odd fro people so when they see it, or are told about it at first they thing it won't work.

When the game launched I hated it. The fact to that you can't target anything and there isn't an AoE taunt just felt bad, but then you start to understand the mechanics how it all works. On a pull of say 6 enemies you only have to hold the aggro on 2 or 3 as the others die fast to AoE from the DD and the bosses are easy with single target taunts.

Healing was also strange as you can't control who you're healing. It was annoying at first cause a lot of healers from other games use it to kind of keep aholes in line, but not healing people that are being rude or not doing something right. But now you can't control that at all.

Kiralyn2000

Based on the many varied responses in this thread, it looks like people all have wildly different expectations of what a combat system should be, based on what other games they play.

Whether they expect a target lock system or not.
Whether they accept animation canceling or not.
Whether they think there's no "impact" (whatever that means) or not.
etc.


Personally, I grew up playing turn-based games, older games (been gaming since 1979), Diablo-likes, JRPGs, etc. The first MMO I played seriously was WoW (which has a typical MMO 'stand there and wave your weapon in their general direction while tapping cooldowns' combat system). The main "action melee games" I've played are TES and other less-complex ones (Darksiders, Kingdoms of Amalur, Nier, etc). I don't play *Souls-likes, Assassin's Creed, fighting games like Street Fighter, or any other super-combo-S-Rank uber-melee games.

So, yeah. Don't really notice anything wrong. It seems fine. /shrug
(of course, I also don't really do any weaving or canceling, I don't do high level content.)

Brenticus12 wrote: »

Animation cancelling and weaving is a part of almost every fast paced game I can think of. MOBAs, fighting games, ARPGs, shooting games even a lot of singleplayer games. Hell even TES Singleplayer games have animation cancels.

Gotta say, I've never noticed it in any of the games I've played. But yeah, I tend to avoid frantic/fast-paced/'twitch' games.

Ever watched a pro play Skyrim Requiem with a 2 hand barbarian build?

No. I don't watch other people play games.

mekops_ESO

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Ever watched a pro play Skyrim Requiem with a 2 hand barbarian build?

No. I don't watch other people play games.

So I am not crazy.
And the entire concept of twitch is a big "have fun with that".
TY

mandricus

In short: most of the people that complain about ESO combat weren't even able to properly understand how it works. They give up before reaching the point where you finally get it, and start to have fun (it requires a lot of time and practice). They then give up, and bash the combat system, which is, in my opinion, one of the best (if not the best) I've ever seen in an MMO. When it works as it is supposed to work, it is almost a piece of art.

Larry78

its all about animation canceling which is bad for 85% of players.