Animation canceling, get rid of it.

Domander · December 2014

It's crap, and we all know it.

Animation skipping by overwriting using skills is fine with me and is part of what makes combat feel exciting.

Animation canceling using block is just an exploit of the system, and is what I think needs changed

Players are using macro's to utilize the block key to cancel animations.

I won't use a macro, therefore I am at a disadvantage to players who exploit. (yes macroing is an exploit)

(op updated)

xMovingTarget · December 2014

Learn it, its easy. Many ppl actually would find combat dull and boring without it.

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO · December 2014

The problem with animation canceling is not just that you need to learn how to (ab)use it for for best effect, but that in PvP there is no feedback whatsoever to the target(s).

So with animation canceling, you stack your attacks and leave your target in the dark, removing any chance for counter - and in some situations - not providing any clue it got hit (multiple times) already.
It's also piece and parcel of the block casting stupidity.

This is not a (L2P) feature, it's a bug.

There are skills that work properly - at least from the game mechanics and skill use and effect implementation point of view. One example is Snipe.

Now, no matter what you think about the skill itself, the implementation is something that should be considered for any skill and would remove the animation canceling / attack weaving and block casting once and for all.

Why?
It's cast breaks when you interrupt it with blocking, light or heavy attacks.
It's cast breaks when your target get's out of sight or range.
It has a cast time, which can be set to the appropriate value for each skill.

Given that at least someone at ZOS knows how to properly program a skill like snipe (and the code is already there and readily available), use it for all skills and adapt it accordingly to the length of the animations (taking into account weighted traits and skills like haste, which might speed it up, but also snares and such, which might slow it down) and scale the damage, healing or other effects accordingly to be in line with the typical cast time (based on animation length). This naturally means that all "instant" abilities would have to have a (rather short but non-zero) cast time as well.

This way you - but also your targets - get a proper feedback, which skill is currently used (against them) and when and how long it was used and a clear indication when the next skill can be used.

What you see, is what you get!
No more, no less!

Goresnort · December 2014

What you see is what you get,
should be the golden rule of combat animations.

If my shield is not in front of my face actively blocking, then I'm not blocking.
If my sword does not hit my target, I should not be doing dmg.
If I cancel an action, then that should skip the animation and abort the action.
If I cancel an action, then that should not skip the animation and still give me full effect of the action.

If your animation system does dmg with invisible or half spasm or half finished fidgeting attacks, then your animation system is screwed, looks poor, feels weightless, and needs a fix.

Animation skipping in ESO, especially light or heavy attack weaving, does not require any extra skill or player ability to execute.

Its about knowing that it is possible, and about pressing button A at point B instead of at point C.

You just need to identify B, and then look for B instead of C. It is very easy.

Pressing button A at point B, does not require more player skill, then pressing button A at point C.

Pressing button A at point B, does not add more depth to the game, then pressing button A at point C.

At this point you may argue 'but what about block cancelling and bash weaving?'
The answer to that is, within how the current system works, even while you weave a block or bash into a ability like 2H Executioner, the internal cool down for queuing a weapon ability after a weapon ability, or a class ability after a class ability, still remains.
As the game is now, your next Executioner starts casting no earlier then regardless if you weaved bash or block into the first Executioner animation or not. The added benefit is the extra dmg from the bash, while your rate of cast with Executioner remains the same regardless.
Bash cancelling, besides adding the extra hit, does not in itself speed up your attack cycle, if you look at when the next (non - light/heavy attack) ability starts cast.

While animation skipping, especially light and heavy attack weaving, in itself as a mechanic does not add more player skill or depth to the game, it does however increase your rate and number of executed actions. In other words, it makes the combat faster.

Faster combat with more actions does arguably add more skill to the game.

Essentially you could speed up the animations, and still achieve the same thing as animation skipping allows today. The benefit would be that you would also get full complete good looking animations, instead of the invisible/spasm/half-finished fidgeting hits we have today.

You could possibly also add some sort of bonus to executing light attacks, still encouraging their use. That bonus could even vary, depending on what ability is following the light attack.

The code to remove animation skipping while retaining the fluidity of the combat system already exist to some degree in the game. Just look at abilities like Dawnbreaker. Dawnbreaker can be cancelled at any time, but if you do it early in the animation, you also abort the action. This also without having to introduce any form of global cooldown, since it is tied to the individual internal animation timer/cycle of specific abilities.

Another kick in the teeth for players, due to ESO allowing animations to be skipped very early in the animation cycle, while retaining full effect from the attack, is how this ties into latency and attack weaving.
As a rather poor general rule of thumb, you can say that your ability to weave attacks sits at, very roughly/simplified and inaccurately said, about 2x your latency.

For a 65ms connection player, her attack weave cycle sits at 130 ms.
For a 120ms connection player, her attack weave cycle sits at 240 ms.
For a 160ms connection player, her attack weave cycle sits at 320 ms.

If you do not somewhat curb latency advantages either through a global cool down system, or through individual animation cycles/timers for individual abilities, then that will hit the balance in your game.

Since a flat global cool down leads to very static combat, it would be preferable that individual animation cycles cap out your attack rate, in regards to somewhat alleviating and addressing the latency issue.

In regards to Block Casting.

Block casting adds nothing to the game but laziness and comfort. It is a crutch, nothing more and nothing less.

Since you can just blindly hold your block button and keep casting/attacking, and don't have to time your blocks or pay attention to what type of attack is incoming , it removes player skill, thought and depth from the game.

In summary

Give us fast combat
Give us many actions to execute rapidly in combat
Give skill, depth and challenge in combat
Give us visceral and aesthetically pleasing combat
Please don't slap a general generic global cooldown on abilities.

Do all of the above, and discard the fidgeting spasm arm flailing goop slush that is animation skipping today.

I simply don't buy the argument that we need bad and half finished animations in this game in order to have fun and fast paced challenging combat.
I never will.

At minimum todays attack rate and number of buttons pushed + what you see is what you get + better animations + less latency dependency = win.

redspecter23 · December 2014

I like animation cancelling to an extent. It adds an extra element to combat to keep it from being a series of button presses at 1 second intervals. The ability to macro up huge combination chains that can execute in a matter of seconds is what I have an issue with. The ability to cancel any attack with a basic block is fairly important as your blocking ability would be severely compromised without that. Waiting 1 - 2 seconds to execute your next block would have game shattering implications.

Goresnort · December 2014

redspecter23 wrote: »

I like animation cancelling to an extent. It adds an extra element to combat to keep it from being a series of button presses at 1 second intervals. The ability to macro up huge combination chains that can execute in a matter of seconds is what I have an issue with. The ability to cancel any attack with a basic block is fairly important as your blocking ability would be severely compromised without that. Waiting 1 - 2 seconds to execute your next block would have game shattering implications.

Animation skipping = Aborting the ability animation and still landing the ability attack/spell

Ability cancellation = Aborting the animation and aborting the ability effect.

Having block retain its 'on the fly' functionality is not tied to animation skipping.

You can remove animation skipping but still keep ability cancellation, thus allowing you to block whenever needed.

What extra element animation skipping adds to combat I don't know.

Currently you could say that it makes us use light and heavy attacks more.

Other then that it does not do more then having you push button A at point B in the animation instead of point C.

DeLindsay · December 2014

Domander wrote: »

It's crap, and we all know it.

It's not and ZoS has said it's also not an exploit, just unintended. If you can't master something this simple then maybe ESO isn't the game for you.

redspecter23 · December 2014

Goresnort wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

I like animation cancelling to an extent. It adds an extra element to combat to keep it from being a series of button presses at 1 second intervals. The ability to macro up huge combination chains that can execute in a matter of seconds is what I have an issue with. The ability to cancel any attack with a basic block is fairly important as your blocking ability would be severely compromised without that. Waiting 1 - 2 seconds to execute your next block would have game shattering implications.

Animation skipping = Aborting the ability animation and still landing the ability attack/spell

Ability cancellation = Aborting the animation and aborting the ability effect.

Having block retain its 'on the fly' functionality is not tied to animation skipping.

You can remove animation skipping but still keep ability cancellation, thus allowing you to block whenever needed.

What extra element animation skipping adds to combat I don't know.

Currently you could say that it makes us use light and heavy attacks more.

Other then that it does not do more then having you push button A at point B in the animation instead of point C.

I suppose we agree to disagree. I think animation cancelling/skipping including weaving light and heavy attacks adds an extra element that I find makes combat more exciting. I remember more than 25 years ago another game company accidentally included animation cancelling into one of their games. Instead of "fixing" it, they embraced it and revolutionized the fighting game genre. I'm not sure we'd ever have heard the term combo in reference to fighting games if animation cancelling hadn't been included in the original Street Fighter 2 by mistake.

True, this isn't quite the same thing, but I personally would find combat a lot more boring if animation cancelling were completely removed.

Gyudan · December 2014

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Domander · December 2014

DeLindsay wrote: »

Domander wrote: »

It's crap, and we all know it.

It's not and ZoS has said it's also not an exploit, just unintended. If you can't master something this simple then maybe ESO isn't the game for you.

Defensive aren't you?

Who in this thread said they couldn't master it?

It is crappy, and it is unintended.

Domander · December 2014

redspecter23 wrote: »

Goresnort wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

I like animation cancelling to an extent. It adds an extra element to combat to keep it from being a series of button presses at 1 second intervals. The ability to macro up huge combination chains that can execute in a matter of seconds is what I have an issue with. The ability to cancel any attack with a basic block is fairly important as your blocking ability would be severely compromised without that. Waiting 1 - 2 seconds to execute your next block would have game shattering implications.

Animation skipping = Aborting the ability animation and still landing the ability attack/spell

Ability cancellation = Aborting the animation and aborting the ability effect.

Having block retain its 'on the fly' functionality is not tied to animation skipping.

You can remove animation skipping but still keep ability cancellation, thus allowing you to block whenever needed.

What extra element animation skipping adds to combat I don't know.

Currently you could say that it makes us use light and heavy attacks more.

Other then that it does not do more then having you push button A at point B in the animation instead of point C.

I suppose we agree to disagree. I think animation cancelling/skipping including weaving light and heavy attacks adds an extra element that I find makes combat more exciting. I remember more than 25 years ago another game company accidentally included animation cancelling into one of their games. Instead of "fixing" it, they embraced it and revolutionized the fighting game genre. I'm not sure we'd ever have heard the term combo in reference to fighting games if animation cancelling hadn't been included in the original Street Fighter 2 by mistake.

True, this isn't quite the same thing, but I personally would find combat a lot more boring if animation cancelling were completely removed.

I'm fine with attack weaving. I don't like that players are using macro's to utilize the block key to cancel animations.

I won't use a macro, therefore I am at a disadvantage to players who exploit. (yes macroing is an exploit)

I agree with others that animation = damage.

Animation skipping by overwriting using skills is part of what makes combat feel exciting.

Animation canceling using block is just an exploit of the system, and is what I think needs changed.

Kyotee0071 · December 2014

Beating a dead horse. My post from April.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/85594/major-combat-flaw-animation-canceling-damage-stacking-devs-please-look-here/p1

I've given up and just learning it's part of their combat system. Though I personally think the game would be much better off without it for the simple fact that it's hard to counter abilities with no animations being done.

The devs admitted somewhere in my thread that it was not intended, and they were looking into it. That was months and months ago. Nothing since.

I've adapted and accepted that it's just the way it is. I'm still finding the game fun as is.

TheSpoek · December 2014

Im just beginning and see that the game is changed very much with oblivion. Still pushing wrong keys as jumping etc. But dissapointed of no "Caps-lock" function with running and no good insight with training capabillities. Hmmm much to learn and I read much troubles like these... Comments later with more experience. But a bad feeling it is not more fun.

eliisra · December 2014

There's fundamental problem with both attack weaving and animation cancelling.
It's for sure not a QQ exploit lol, but it's unintended. Meaning the game isn't balanced around it, not even remotely.

Skills, builds and classes aren't equally effective at it. People are forced to go for skills that corresponds smoothly to cancelling and weaving, for high dps. That is a problem. Reason 99% of the dps population is bored to death of spamming Crushing Chock in PvE for example, because of how well it weaves compared to anything else.

Not all skills can be cancelled effectively either. Basically instant and short cast skills responds so well to it, but not so much GT, longer cast or channelled. Again, since it's unintended no steps to balance skills around it have or will be taken.

ZoS needs to take some sort of responsibility when it comes to these mechanics. Either own up, declare it a fundamental part of combat and balance stuff around it. Or just get rid of.

Pmarsico9 · December 2014

The problem is that there's latency. And in a game with fast paced combat, this is unavoidable. Just like Block Casting.

You think they thought people would do that? It's tied to the same issue:

If you place GCDs on abilities or have one ability cancel another, you're ultimately going to reduce responsiveness in a game where the limited selection of active abilities is both the means of balance and means to prevent people from being overwhelmed in responding to the situation in front of them.

So you ultimately will then have to induce major changes to AI as it stands now for NPCs to accomodate if you were to change something like adding a 1 second GCD to Force Pulse, Poison Arrow, Heavy and Light Attacks, and Blocking, it's not a small undertaking. In fact it's massive.

I think they have to go a different route: Provide passives in the weapons that encourages MEANINGFUL COMPLETED ANIMATIONS.

Aka: Your Successful weapon and class ability attacks empower your next heavy attack by 5%, stacking up to 15%, but the additional damage fires off on a fully completed heavy attack animation or something.

Kyotee0071 · December 2014

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

I think they have to go a different route: Provide passives in the weapons that encourages MEANINGFUL COMPLETED ANIMATIONS.

Aka: Your Successful weapon and class ability attacks empower your next heavy attack by 5%, stacking up to 15%, but the additional damage fires off on a fully completed heavy attack animation or something.

Interesting thought.

Aoife32001 · December 2014

Domander wrote: »

It's crap, and we all know it.

Animation skipping by overwriting using skills is fine with me and is part of what makes combat feel exciting.

Animation canceling using block is just an exploit of the system, and is what I think needs changed

Players are using macro's to utilize the block key to cancel animations.

I won't use a macro, therefore I am at a disadvantage to players who exploit. (yes macroing is an exploit)

(op updated)

Actually, I think animation skipping by overwriting using skills is also crap and should go. I know it won't, but I can always wish...

Domander · December 2014

Aoife32001 wrote: »

Domander wrote: »

It's crap, and we all know it.

Animation skipping by overwriting using skills is fine with me and is part of what makes combat feel exciting.

Animation canceling using block is just an exploit of the system, and is what I think needs changed

Players are using macro's to utilize the block key to cancel animations.

I won't use a macro, therefore I am at a disadvantage to players who exploit. (yes macroing is an exploit)

(op updated)

Actually, I think animation skipping by overwriting using skills is also crap and should go. I know it won't, but I can always wish...

If it was done away with, I wouldn't miss it, though I'd want to make sure combat didn't feel slow. It would be frustrating to throw in a light attack only to have to wait for it to finish the animation. I think that's the entire point of animations overwriting each other.

Cody · January 2015

DeLindsay wrote: »

Domander wrote: »

It's crap, and we all know it.

It's not and ZoS has said it's also not an exploit, just unintended. If you can't master something this simple then maybe ESO isn't the game for you.

/grabs popcorn

Domander · January 2015

Cody wrote: »

DeLindsay wrote: »

Domander wrote: »

It's crap, and we all know it.

It's not and ZoS has said it's also not an exploit, just unintended. If you can't master something this simple then maybe ESO isn't the game for you.

/grabs popcorn

Yeah, it's an interesting reply. /raise eyebrow

Gorthax · January 2015

animation cancelling+block casting need to go. Sorry. I know how to use it, I hate how it looks. Most people dont even use heavy attacks UNLESS they need to restore something. Just my two cents.