Do you actually enjoy the light/heavy attack weaving mechanic within ESO's combat system?

Holycannoli · January 2023

Nope never did. Weaving is a bug they couldn't fix.

Not a fan of the severly limited skill bars too. 5 skills + ult per bar is way too few skills to choose from at a time when we have so many available.

Northwold · January 2023

No

nuttytom wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

No. When the way to deliver the highest damage in the game is to exploit a defect in how animations are handled, and when that is allowed to carry on to the point that many players consider what is actually a glitch as a feature, something has gone wrong.

Back in the day, you used to have sports games that relied on you pushing the joystick as fast as possible from side to side or two keys on the keyboard to run fast. They'd result in broken joysticks and broken keys. Animation cancelling is every bit as ridiculous as that kind of "skilled" mechanic.

zos have literally said themselves that weaving is a feature and they like it

After it became a thing they did, yes. In a manner of speaking (suggesting they called it a deliberate "feature" is rather strong -- did they just forget to animate it and include it in the combat documentation?). It went from "we're OK with people doing this" to "this is the way people play the game so yeah it's de facto the game now".

colossalvoids · January 2023

Yes

Most "outsider" feedback pieces aren't really aimed at eso's actual weaving or even animation cancelling and their impact but the perception of what it is.

A lot of people have zero idea of what weaving is, what's GCD, why animation cancelling is a reason why you can play dynamically choosing your actions and avoiding death in most cases rolling, blocking, bashing etc. And absolute most people AC while not even realising it which circles back to people having no idea what they are talking about.

This topic would exist forever same as any uninformed opinions would circulate whilst game is still alive. It's fine for a decently popular title.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · January 2023

Yes

Holycannoli wrote: »

Nope never did. Weaving is a bug they couldn't fix.

Not a fan of the severly limited skill bars too. 5 skills + ult per bar is way too few skills to choose from at a time when we have so many available.

@Holycannoli
If ZOS put LAs on the same 1 second GCD as skills, you would no longer be able to weave. It's really that simple. LAs are on their own separate cooldown, have been since Beta. ZOS cynicism aside, do you actually believe they couldn't do that if they wanted? Its an absurd take on the issue. The far more likely scenario (and 100% what is going on) is that they actually like the mechanic as is, so do a lot of us.

ZOS gave skills a 1 second global cooldown. They gave LAs and Heavy attacks their own unique timers and cooldowns. Did they expect people to be dynamically weaving both a light attack and skill every second when the game first launched, no, I dont think they did. But weaving was discovered in Beta of the game. They could have easily put both LAs and Skills on the same GCD years ago, but they chose not to because they like the mechanic of weaving that emerged. Calling it an unfixable bug is disingenuous, and completely devoid of reality.

endgamesmug · January 2023

Yes

Free damage/ulti gen and assisting sustain no downside i can see

PrimusTiberius · January 2023

Yes

naw, I'll take weaving any day over the alternative

Gruumsh1 · January 2023

No

Hard no from me. Makes combat overly-complicated.

AdamLAD · January 2023

Yes

Let's look at the other scenario. I don't want to press skills or abilities. Exact same principle. Exact same logic. In fact, it's easier to press one button than to press all the abilities. So shouldn't people be asking for abilities to be automatically cast for them ?

Zeroin20 · January 2023

No

Nope, i'm more into action combat like bdo, vindictus, dragon nest, tera and c9.

jaws343 · January 2023

Yes

I marked yes mostly because I despise auto attacks. I want to press a button and do some sort of damage. Not pres a button and have my character start attacking the target repeatedly on its own.

Plus, auto attacks usually also imply skill cooldowns.

If I wanted that, I'd go play a game that had that.

BretonMage · January 2023

Yes

LA weaving is fantastic paired with animations from certain skills. That said, it is hard to master, and I think ZOS trying to make it more forgiving is the right way to go.

I would not enjoy auto attacks as I think it would make the game less immersive.

CardinalJack · January 2023

No

I do not. I've gotten used to it, but I by no means like it.

RaptorRodeoGod · January 2023

No

I enjoy heavy weaving, I despise light weaving

Shihp00 · January 2023

Yes

If they make changes to combat, I hope they add a serious "Combo system" (requires more brain power and strategy than weaving), most people here are going to regret even calling animation-cancelling/weaving a "bug" once they get a taste of it.

I'm ready for all the [snip] "MACRO HACKS" accusations when they see a highly skilled player from Fighting Games master the combo mechanic in 3 days and starts Solo ACEing casual ball groups in cyro (WOMBO KNOWLEDGE DIFF! l0lz). Then there'll be the: "CLASS IS BUSTED or BUGGED!", "COMBO WON'T GO OFF!" excuses after fat-fingering their keyboards

[edited for minor bait]

peacenote · January 2023

Yes

I voted yes for all the reasons people said yes. Everyone said it much better than I would have.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No because it is not comfortable, physically, to me.

I do have this problem sometimes which is why I main a healer since it isn't as critical to do. But I still try.

MidniteOwl1913 · January 2023

No

When I first started playing my daughter set up the game for me and talked about the basics. She mentioned light weaving as a tool to get more damage by canceling the animations. I told her that sounded like a bug and shouldn't they have fixed it by now. Made the skills and the animations sync without having jump thru hoops to make them match up. She gave me this look and said no, it was part of the game now.

Now of course I get it. It is part of the game. But if you step back and think about it it is odd to have a cludge to get around the lack of syncing animations become a core part of the game. It doesn't actually add anything. It's just an awkward accommodation.

Roukoru · January 2023

No

they were supposed to remove (grid) bugs, but not promote them as a Feature(s)!

fizzylu · January 2023

No

No, but only because I've played New World. Before it never really bothered me, but after playing New World.... well, it becomes very apparent how poorly ESO combat was designed. ESO's light+heavy attacking becoming the weaving that we know now is seriously just a form of micromanagement in combat caused by an oversight in the combat design and I find that fact too hard to ignore now.

Bobby_V_Rockit · January 2023

No

I shall remain forever shackled to normal mode everything’s

M0ntie · January 2023

Yes

Hard yes. Remove the skill from the game and I'm out.

Lumenn · January 2023

No

Hmm, the results are actually closer than I ever expected to see on these forums. Curious.

I voted no simply because it's a braindead activity that smothers creativity. Yes, it does take some skill to time it right, and enough practice to lock in muscle memory. But that's like saying keeping a heel-beat in boot camp is "skillful". It just ain't there jack. You log in, figure out your boring finger waltz, practice your boring finger waltz, and then have to use your boring finger waltz every time you go out. While pvp has its own rotation, it allows you to be a bit more, reactive, to the situation instead of mindlessly pushing buttons while you're running your grocery list in your head.

It's like the difference between free form dance or being stuck on a chorus line. And until recently (oak builds) unless you conform to the boring finger waltz chorus line you were barred from content. Not everyone is able, or willing, to do so. Even EQ 20 years ago had (imo) more excitement, dynamic combat, cool downs and all.

Pepegrillos · January 2023

The mechanic aspect of combat (animation cancelling + light weaving) simply holds the game back. ESO is constantly singled out as the MMO with the worst combat out of all the big ones (WoW, FF14, BDO, GW2, etc). Ashes of Creation did a recent showcase of their tank role and one of the main criticisms leveraged by people in that community is that the combat looked like ESO's.

Ksariyu · January 2023

No

TLDR: Weaving is fine, but more gameplay diversity is always cool too.

I would have liked an "other" here. It's not that I dislike weaving; I think it's a cool mechanic that should be preserved for specific builds or classes. Like someone mentioned earlier, I could see Nightblades being "the weaving class" due to their design with Grim Focus and the overall aesthetic of quick, speedy attacks you usually see with assassin types.

My issue with weaving is that it's simplified character builds so now every build plays one of two ways: You either weave, and build your entire character around DoTs and one spammable, or you use HAs, using the same few sets while removing half the game from relevance (Sustain) and also providing a drastically slower playstyle. It's like the ideal way to play the game is to always avoid half your basic kit - LA weavers are optimal when they never HA, and vice versa. Where's the middle ground? Why is the gap between these two styles so drastic (LA: ~2 aps, HA: ~0.5 aps)?

Part of this is on the devs: They pushed the game hard toward LA weaving because that's what all the raiders wanted, then when that started failing they needed to get other people into endgame so they made sets/buffs exclusively for Heavy Attacks. They also hurt themselves by making Heavy Attacks one of the clunkiest, slowest, most unintuitive mechanics in an action game.
Part of it is on the community: Any slightly nuanced discussion about alternative playstyles is usually met with some level of "You just don't understand the game, git gud" even if said discussion aims towards increasing the skill cap, and always devolves into the same tired LA vs. HA measuring contest.

Shihp00 · January 2023

Yes

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

When I first started playing my daughter set up the game for me and talked about the basics. She mentioned light weaving as a tool to get more damage by canceling the animations. I told her that sounded like a bug and shouldn't they have fixed it by now. Made the skills and the animations sync without having jump thru hoops to make them match up. She gave me this look and said no, it was part of the game now.

Now of course I get it. It is part of the game. But if you step back and think about it it is odd to have a cludge to get around the lack of syncing animations become a core part of the game. It doesn't actually add anything. It's just an awkward accommodation.

your daughtar gave u the 'git gud' look

Varana · January 2023

Yes

The most frustrating thing about threads like these are all the misconceptions, rumour mills, and arguments in bad faith around that topic and why it exists.

Zodiarkslayer · January 2023

Yes

It is the one thing that signifies player skill in ESO.
Everything else is COPY/PASTE-able from guides around the net.

I hope it never goes away!

CP5 · January 2023

Yes

Varana wrote: »

The most frustrating thing about threads like these are all the misconceptions, rumour mills, and arguments in bad faith around that topic and why it exists.

Sort of like how many people likely responded based on the thread title and not the question in the original post.

Holycannoli · January 2023

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

@Holycannoli
If ZOS put LAs on the same 1 second GCD as skills, you would no longer be able to weave. It's really that simple. LAs are on their own separate cooldown, have been since Beta. ZOS cynicism aside, do you actually believe they couldn't do that if they wanted? Its an absurd take on the issue. The far more likely scenario (and 100% what is going on) is that they actually like the mechanic as is, so do a lot of us.

ZOS gave skills a 1 second global cooldown. They gave LAs and Heavy attacks their own unique timers and cooldowns. Did they expect people to be dynamically weaving both a light attack and skill every second when the game first launched, no, I dont think they did. But weaving was discovered in Beta of the game. They could have easily put both LAs and Skills on the same GCD years ago, but they chose not to because they like the mechanic of weaving that emerged. Calling it an unfixable bug is disingenuous, and completely devoid of reality.

They like it now. Back then it was a bug to be able to cancel animations without cancelling the damage.

See we call it "weaving" now but it used to be called "animation cancelling" and it was considered a glitch not a feature. There were plenty of calls to fix the glitch and a lot of videos and explanations on how to take advantage of the glitch.

Does this sound like ZOS intended it to be a feature? This was posted 8 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/2iy0po/how_does_one_animation_cancel/

I would rather it was removed entirely back then but the problem is what good would light attacks be now without animation cancelling? You'd add a light attack every few seconds to generate ultimate and that's it. That's just as clunky and awkward as animation cancelling, I mean weaving.

My bigger concern was always the extreme lack of skill slots, because of consoles. I have a keyboard and mouse and can handle a UI that gives me dozens of skill slots yet I'm stuck with 5 + ultimate because of consoles. The most popular MMORPG ever lets you add skill bars to your interface whenever you want. That's what I want here. I think I had like 30 skill slots on the screen when I played it 15 years ago.

Northwold · January 2023

No

Ignoring the predictable posts about people who don't like it just don't know how to do it (the kind of argument that just deserves an immediate eye roll), it would be better if "weaving" / "animation cancelling" were replaced with a combat mechanic that was *actually designed to be there*.

At the moment, it's the exploitation of a game design accident. Obviously so: it isn't animated and characters doing it look like they've glitched through time.

So why not replace it with a purpose-built mechanic. Sure, I find weaving very silly and a danger to my mouse, but if people like the mechanic itself, whatever. But *design it in*, *animate it properly*, incorporate some kind of visual indicator of when you've hit the weaving threshold or whatever. And then acknowledge it as a combat mechanic and explain how it works to new players in the game's help.

At the moment, it just comes across as one of many things in ESO that doesn't feel quite right and that players can only find out exists by trawling the internet or finding out from players who've been around since the dawn of time. It's plain weird.

My own personal preference would be for an actually skilled mechanic to replace it. There is no particular skill in moving your finger up and down very fast. If you enjoy that, play Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing: you'll be amazed at the advanced gameplay -- your finger has to go *sideways*, too -- and there's a DPS counter built in. When I think of "skill" it's more things like the more inventive attacks you see in some dungeons, which it would be nice to see players have, or being able to combine several different skills to be able to pull off combos in certain situations. Things that require actual thinking, strategising, positioning rather than mindless clicking. But I can appreciate that weaving has its fans.

Diminish · January 2023

Yes

So rather than actually playing the game you want the game to play for you? If this game ever implements auto attacking I personally would stop playing. Does combat have its issues? Sure, but it is also one of the main things that has drawn me to play ESO for as long as I have.