I used to like the combat system until I played Black Desert Online. A few problems of the ESO combat system:
- The game is using a game engine designed 10 years ago. While not as bad as tab targeting games (e.g. FFXIV), it still feels aged, and a company with such high profit from this game refusing to update game engine, graphics, animations etc, says a lot. Remember when a few patches ago they changed the ticks and duration of Jabs to better match the animation, thus making it more clunky, instead of changing the animation?
- Only 5 weapons (SnB, DW, 2H, Bow, Staff) to choose from. Don't fool yourselves, all other "flavors" (e.g. axe vs sword or flame staff vs ice staff) are simply copy/paste assets and don't count as separate weapons.
- Mages have only one viable weapon choice (staff), which is extremely boring and banal. In BDO I am a mage using a floating cube that manipulates time-space, and a summoned spear of lightning (what the Templar was supposed to be).
- All non-tank warriors must have a bow, meaning you only get to choose one weapon, further decreasing weapon diversity.
- You may be used to it, but it's extremely weird and clunky when our weapons disappear to summon other weapons for class skills and then reappear. E.g. as a nightblade you are holding a fire staff, then the staff disappears, you summom two spectral daggers, then the staff appears again. Wut? (That's why I don't play a NB). All classes should have the crystal shards animation (iirc) where you put your staff on your back (upside down..?) to cast the spell, it's still weird but it feels more fluid and logical.
- Only one "weapon" for healers. Tbf I play a stam healer using a greatsword, but I can't be competitive in anything above dlc dungeons. FFXIV has at least three different weapons.
- No class identity, everyone has access to almost everything and builds look identical (save for 2-3 must-have class abilities, that give a faint idea of class identity).
- Too few classes while at it. I actually love how they go for quality over quantity (each class is more like three classes in one, e.g. look at the Warden, cryomancer, druid, and beastcaller all in one). While this is a great concept, it is poorly executed and given the lack of class identity, classes don't feel meaningful or even relevant.
- Too many skills to choose from yet too few slots, leading to player fatigue and boredom as you end up spamming the same 2 skills. In BDO or FFXIV I can use all my skills.
- Weaving is a non-sensical mechanic that makes dps very clunky. Not to mention finger pain reported by many players.
- - Auto-attacks deal far too much damage, when your auto-attacks are your main source of damage then what is even the point of using skills.
- Healers are obsolete. The mmorpg trinity worked for pen and paper rpgs but is dead for mmos, where people typically solo. ESO is catching up on the current trend, which is tanky dps with self-heals, hence the disgusting ring and other self-heal mechanics were introduced, making healers obsolete in everything but HM trials.
- More importantly, One Tamriel prevents us from ever feeling strong, since everything scales with us. Even at max level/spec, enemies in turorial zones cannot die in one hit without self-buffs. Mudcrabs still need two hits to die!
- Not only do we not feel stronger over time, but we actually get weaker as we level up, since our stats drop. This is a bad mechanic.
- Pvp fights are too short, you can die in less than a second from 1-2 enemy skills.
- After years of experience at designing this game, devs still refuse to separate skills between pve and pvp. FFXIV has separate pvp skills, while in BDO the damage coefficients are reduced for pvp. Balancing the exact same skills for pvp and pve is impossible, which is why no mmo is doing this.
- Combat is so fast-paced that given bad ping, which is another major issue, you can get by 3-4 skills in less than a second and die before you even see this happen.
- Too many one-shots in pve, thinking this makes dungeons or bosses "fun" and "challenging". No, it's just unfair. Also too much CC, though this is a problem in most mmos.
- To end on a positive note, I love the skill names in ESO, they are lore friendly and meaningful, compared to other cringey skills in other games, like "bio" or "ruin" in FFXIV, like wut.
I used to like the combat system until I played Black Desert Online. A few problems of the ESO combat system:
- The game is using a game engine designed 10 years ago. While not as bad as tab targeting games (e.g. FFXIV), it still feels aged, and a company with such high profit from this game refusing to update game engine, graphics, animations etc, says a lot. Remember when a few patches ago they changed the ticks and duration of Jabs to better match the animation, thus making it more clunky, instead of changing the animation?
- Only 5 weapons (SnB, DW, 2H, Bow, Staff) to choose from. Don't fool yourselves, all other "flavors" (e.g. axe vs sword or flame staff vs ice staff) are simply copy/paste assets and don't count as separate weapons.
- Mages have only one viable weapon choice (staff), which is extremely boring and banal. In BDO I am a mage using a floating cube that manipulates time-space, and a summoned spear of lightning (what the Templar was supposed to be).
- All non-tank warriors must have a bow, meaning you only get to choose one weapon, further decreasing weapon diversity.
- You may be used to it, but it's extremely weird and clunky when our weapons disappear to summon other weapons for class skills and then reappear. E.g. as a nightblade you are holding a fire staff, then the staff disappears, you summom two spectral daggers, then the staff appears again. Wut? (That's why I don't play a NB). All classes should have the crystal shards animation (iirc) where you put your staff on your back (upside down..?) to cast the spell, it's still weird but it feels more fluid and logical.
- Only one "weapon" for healers. Tbf I play a stam healer using a greatsword, but I can't be competitive in anything above dlc dungeons. FFXIV has at least three different weapons.
- No class identity, everyone has access to almost everything and builds look identical (save for 2-3 must-have class abilities, that give a faint idea of class identity).
- Too few classes while at it. I actually love how they go for quality over quantity (each class is more like three classes in one, e.g. look at the Warden, cryomancer, druid, and beastcaller all in one). While this is a great concept, it is poorly executed and given the lack of class identity, classes don't feel meaningful or even relevant.
- Too many skills to choose from yet too few slots, leading to player fatigue and boredom as you end up spamming the same 2 skills. In BDO or FFXIV I can use all my skills.
- Weaving is a non-sensical mechanic that makes dps very clunky. Not to mention finger pain reported by many players.
- - Auto-attacks deal far too much damage, when your auto-attacks are your main source of damage then what is even the point of using skills.
- Healers are obsolete. The mmorpg trinity worked for pen and paper rpgs but is dead for mmos, where people typically solo. ESO is catching up on the current trend, which is tanky dps with self-heals, hence the disgusting ring and other self-heal mechanics were introduced, making healers obsolete in everything but HM trials.
- More importantly, One Tamriel prevents us from ever feeling strong, since everything scales with us. Even at max level/spec, enemies in turorial zones cannot die in one hit without self-buffs. Mudcrabs still need two hits to die!
- Not only do we not feel stronger over time, but we actually get weaker as we level up, since our stats drop. This is a bad mechanic.
- Pvp fights are too short, you can die in less than a second from 1-2 enemy skills.
- After years of experience at designing this game, devs still refuse to separate skills between pve and pvp. FFXIV has separate pvp skills, while in BDO the damage coefficients are reduced for pvp. Balancing the exact same skills for pvp and pve is impossible, which is why no mmo is doing this.
- Combat is so fast-paced that given bad ping, which is another major issue, you can get by 3-4 skills in less than a second and die before you even see this happen.
- Too many one-shots in pve, thinking this makes dungeons or bosses "fun" and "challenging". No, it's just unfair. Also too much CC, though this is a problem in most mmos.
- To end on a positive note, I love the skill names in ESO, they are lore friendly and meaningful, compared to other cringey skills in other games, like "bio" or "ruin" in FFXIV, like wut.
Except those two ability names are actually steeped in Final Fantasy lore and have been used in the series for almost 30 years lol.
A lot of the abilities in ESO have no lore meaning at all. Wrobel himself even admitted to basically willy nilly making the skills up, and I’m paraphrasing here, just to “be cool.” Not to mention that the class lore books do not even accurately describe the abilities or class design we have in eso.
Edit: The game would be much better if light attack weaving and damage potential was nerfed drastically. The average player dps was 5-10k, I believe. Knowing that, good players could settle on a max potently of 9-14k. It would solve the difficulty complaints, too.
Now, first of all, this is not bashing anyone as I personally have never had a problem with the combat in ESO. My main is a Warden with 2H and bow and to me, the combat is fluid and responsive. I appreciate how playing a different class gives a different experience but honestly, I've had fun using everything from Nightblades to Templars to Dragon Knights. Now I happen to prefer the 2h/Bow playstyle but I have not found a playstyle I have not had fun with. Now PvP is another matter, but that is a technical problem that is purely up to ZoS to sort out. I have a reasonable PC and good internet.
With that caveat out of the way (sorry it's so long but I felt I needed to put some context in) one thing I have noticed o MMO forums, reddit, etc is that people are saying the combat is bad. I was watching a Taliesin and Evitel video about Evitel's experience with FF14 and one of the things she says is 'well ESOs combat is...(makes a vague stabbing motion with her hand)' and this seems to be a general consensus and I was wondering why (the second thing mentioned is generally the AH system but that is a discussion that has been played out to death here).
On MMO forums I read I hear things like:
"The combat is the only reason I don’t play ESO".
"Here’s me hoping that New World’s launch will make ZOS improve stuff on ESO, like animations, capes and the AH".
"If ESO could improve its combat system to not be absolutely trash it would kill most other MMOs with the rest of the content it offers".
"They fix the combat and add an AH to get rid of that awful trade guild (aka pay us to be here) system and I’ll consider playing the game again".
Those are literally from one topic on Massively about the Deadlands release date and I see these comments all the time.
Maybe it's because I played quite a bit of DCUO after I quit WoW (after Cataclysm - hated the rework) but animation cancelling has just become natural for me.
One other complaint I see is from people hating weapon swapping. Is it awkward using a controller? I just assigned a side mouse button to it.
I was wondering if anyone could give some ideas, maybe a newish player as I have been playing since 2014 and I genuinely do not have problems with the combat.
What other MMOs have better combat? I tried GW2 today and it felt very awkward with auto attack. Not fun killing things at all.
AC: Odyssey is still the game with best combat for me, though it's SP only:
https://youtu.be/e32EcvPr4sw?t=67 (1:07)
What other MMOs have better combat? I tried GW2 today and it felt very awkward with auto attack. Not fun killing things at all.
AC: Odyssey is still the game with best combat for me, though it's SP only:
https://youtu.be/e32EcvPr4sw?t=67 (1:07)
Hahah imagine this animation in ESO, it would be amazing
The reality is that the world's MMO did a big developing jump and improved a lot, but TESO refuses changes
Some reasons the combat is considered bad:
1 - It mostly feels very floaty, clunky and lacks impact.
2 - Is supposedly based on aiming, but really the aiming is largely a joke, you look vaguely in the direction of your target and you will hit.
3 - The light attack weaving is just tedious for many people.
4 - The animation cancelling is absolutely low skill garbage, because firstly you generally have a massive window that you can cancel in, rather than a small window at the end of the animation. Secondly because you have that massive window you can often cancel nearly immediately, which means no meaningful skill animation for your opponent to react to, which is laughable. Literally the worst implementation of animation cancelling I've ever seen.
5 - The lack of variety, every class uses the same mechanics (stam, magicka, etc), has access to every weapon, every armour type, most skills are available to every class (world, guild, weapon, armour, alliance war, etc), which gets dull.
6 - The vast majority of the PvE content is so trivial it means the combat is trivial and sends people to sleep. I mean if I can solo a veteran dungeon as someone who only plays this game sporadically, am quite lazy about weaving in PvE, etc, that in itself tells you how laughable the content is and don't even start me on alleged "world bosses" most of which can be done in your sleep.
7 - Somewhat related to the above is healer and tank are basically surplus to requirements for much of the content, so the combat is busted in many peoples eyes. Also not helped by how high heals scale off basically the same stats you need for damage, why bother with healer most of the time, when you can take one heal skill on a DPS and survive fine with that. There is a reason games have a heal stat.
and so on...
Parasaurolophus wrote: »What other MMOs have better combat? I tried GW2 today and it felt very awkward with auto attack. Not fun killing things at all.
AC: Odyssey is still the game with best combat for me, though it's SP only:
https://youtu.be/e32EcvPr4sw?t=67 (1:07)
Hahah imagine this animation in ESO, it would be amazing
The reality is that the world's MMO did a big developing jump and improved a lot, but TESO refuses changes
Now imagine 12 players who are circling like this near each boss in the trial.
Most people I've seen complaining about the ESO combat system are veteran MMO players who are used to tab-targeting, having 5 bars full of skills that do all kinds of flashy damage, playing the game like a piano simulator. With the weapon swapping, slotting only a handful of skills and the fast-pace of combat, you have to do a lot more thinking in this game and there's definitely a learning curve.
Before ESO, I used to play Lord of the Rings Online a lot, a game with ye olde WoW era combat. Going through 15-20 skills, applying a ton of buffs and debuffs, waiting for the long-ass cooldowns... ESO combat flows naturally, even with animation cancelling that is such a taboo lol. Sure, it's not for everyone, but calling it objectively bad...mkay buddy.
Some reasons the combat is considered bad:
1 - It mostly feels very floaty, clunky and lacks impact.
2 - Is supposedly based on aiming, but really the aiming is largely a joke, you look vaguely in the direction of your target and you will hit.
3 - The light attack weaving is just tedious for many people.
4 - The animation cancelling is absolutely low skill garbage, because firstly you generally have a massive window that you can cancel in, rather than a small window at the end of the animation. Secondly because you have that massive window you can often cancel nearly immediately, which means no meaningful skill animation for your opponent to react to, which is laughable. Literally the worst implementation of animation cancelling I've ever seen.
5 - The lack of variety, every class uses the same mechanics (stam, magicka, etc), has access to every weapon, every armour type, most skills are available to every class (world, guild, weapon, armour, alliance war, etc), which gets dull.
6 - The vast majority of the PvE content is so trivial it means the combat is trivial and sends people to sleep. I mean if I can solo a veteran dungeon as someone who only plays this game sporadically, am quite lazy about weaving in PvE, etc, that in itself tells you how laughable the content is and don't even start me on alleged "world bosses" most of which can be done in your sleep.
7 - Somewhat related to the above is healer and tank are basically surplus to requirements for much of the content, so the combat is busted in many peoples eyes. Also not helped by how high heals scale off basically the same stats you need for damage, why bother with healer most of the time, when you can take one heal skill on a DPS and survive fine with that. There is a reason games have a heal stat.
and so on...
Can't agree more.
I like the game, I've done close to everything we get as content in hardest difficulty.
But I will never agree with the combat "balance & Style" choice and trash server we get.
Erm... ESO is strategic in what way, compared to what exactly? Compared to Skyrim, because ESO has skills in addition to mouse attacks, or what? The one thing we can say about ESO is that it's "faster", and that really is due to spamming light attacks between skills. The skills themselves, even when animation-cancelled with a barswap or a block aren't actually faster than other games that have genuinely instant-cast skills they can use off the gcd during other abilities that have no such animations in the first place (which makes sense, doesn't it - the spazzy moves of ESO show that weaving/AC was an accidental afterthought, not a deliberate combat system development).[snip]
Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »@Saieden
This to me highlights the crux of the issue. Players conflate their opinion of combat mechanics with whether or not they are actually good or not.
I think you can distil that issue even further:If you don't like technical inputs that reward practice and mechanical skill, then you won't appreciate animation cancelling and the lack of auto-attack.
The "you" in your observation is the casual, immersion-type person. Most of the latter don't really care less about immersion. Most of the former don't necessarily think that performance and twitch skills should be as important. Its not surprising to see the sides of this discussion pretty much reflecting this.
The combat system is designed EXCLUSIVELY for the latter type of player, and by the way it continues to abstract away from immersion for the sake of power-gaming, performance and balance, it is exclusive against the former.
And those elements people are against are not cohesive with the original vision of the game, as evidenced by its early history. And none of the awkward changes they've made since - as sound as they are mechanically - have anything to do with immersion or the spirit of Elder Scrolls stuff.