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

ApoAlaia · March 2023

No

I'm actually surprised by the result of the poll.

I thought it would be more 'universally loved' and I'd find myself in the small minority.

Not that a 50/50 split warrants a change IMO; the 'mechanic' is deeply embedded into the game, tbh I don't even know if it can be changed, but even if it could putting the - probably very significant - effort in order to 'please' 1/2 of the players and thoroughly upset the other 1/2 doesn't 'feel' great.

Still, maybe it will give the devs some food for thought and they will continue to foster viable playstyles that do not rely on LA weaving.

MaleAmazon · March 2023

Yes

Putting the lecturing aside for clarification your answer is: yes the damage is registred even if the animation is canceled.
New question: is it normal to receive or inflict damage in a video game without any clear visual and audio cues? .. Even environmental DoTs that have the players questionning what killed them have one like greenish poisoned waters, lava, electrical fields, yellowish cloud of gas, et cetera.

Is it normal? Yes, sort of. In games like starcraft 2 and Age of Empires 3, you can get a unit to respond to movement before the 'attack' or 'reload' animation has played out fully. This cancels the animation or makes it look in some respect 'weird', like in SC2 the marines fire 'away' from the unit they are targeting. However, the damage is instant.

Now, you do get a visual and audio clue in ESO that an attack hit you (game is on maintenance now so I can´t tell if it´s absolutely 100% but pretty much). It just doesn´t help you. And it doesn´t help you weave either, really, when I weave the sound cue is really only a confirmation that the input worked, like with LA-flurry the sound is:

[tish (LA with small animation) - dish dash dish dash (flurry animation)]

The actual weaving is muscle memory. I need to check combat metrics to make absolute sure it worked, but the above is how it works.

With heavy attack weave you most certainly get the animation and sound so I don´t know what the issue is there.

But I guess you would be happy if you still got hit and took damage, same as now, but the animation looked.. different? The visual cue you get, is the damage number above your head and that your health bar goes down.

The only difference in ESO is that the game is designed in such a way that many things will hit you, that you do not realistically see before the death recap. Partly because there can be so many of them. Typically, even in Battlegrounds where my enemies are 8 at the most, I can easily be hit by light attacks from several people, templar burning light, venomous smite, sorc lightning form tick and mages' fury etc, basically simultaneously.

Having all this as clearly visible effects and animations on the screen would look kind of daft, necessitate a complete change of the game, and it wouldn´t really help you anyway.

Oh, and it would do so in order to cater to people who quite frankly should probably instead spend some time writing to their politicians to get fiber-optic cable installed in their neighbourhood (just don´t say you need it for ESO).

What is even more hilarious is that people supposedly want to 'react' to these animations, while the main objection to weaving is that their ping is so bad that it takes seconds for anything to even register. So, of course, having the animation play out wouldn´t help. Unless what they actually want is to turn combat in ESO into a turn based system or play-by-email.

Now you can, of course, design a game in such a way that an animation has to play out for a while before any damage is registered. Here´s how that works in Total War: Warhammer 3:

Your fast unit runs up to the enemy fleeing unit -> starts an attack animation -> when the hit is supposed to register the enemy fleeing unit has run away from the animation and so no hit is actually registered -> your cavalry catches up to the enemy unit and starts attacking again -> when the animation is finished the enemy is too far away again -> repeat until enemy has run off the map without having taken damage (in the case of ESO I suppose this would be the wayshrine to Rawl'kha).

And that is what you would get with ESO. Trust me. If you design a combat system so that attacks can much more easily be dodged (like the heavy attacks in ESO), you will end up with players endlessly dodging all your attacks, or having an addon or macro do it for them - which is what we had some years ago with snipe and Miat´s addon. Which wasn´t too popular on the forums either...

With ESO, you have instant attacks not really meant to be reacted to, but proactively prepared for, like light attacks and instant cast abilities. And you have wind-up animations that you can react to and that leave the person open to a quick counterattack, at least hypothetically.

This is the system as it was designed. All the devs said was that they did not initially expect people to use it deliberately the way it was done. Which isn´t an 'unexpected bug', it is (assuming it was actually true) exactly the way players have since a very long time used micro, and if anything kind of stupid on their part.

Personally I think block-casting is a much worse offender, but that´s the way it works and you kind of have to embrace it sometimes if you want to play competitively.

Einar_Hrafnarsson · March 2023

No

I do not like it (anymore) Cause as a templar main, if i have to do damage, i need to Weave way more now after the butchering of Jabs wich causes my Hand to hurt after a while.

Luth7 · March 2023

No

Rkindaleft wrote: »

However, the people who say "weaving is braindead" have either:

1) No idea what they're talking about
2) Aren't a player that participates in any content that's even remotely challenging

Weaving is basically the only skill progression one can have in this game. Progression is systematically horizontal if LA or HA weren't a thing. Lay out your bar, press skills in order of left to right as they appear on your bar, that takes maybe 10 minutes to learn how to do it. When you add weaving, not only does your damage increase significantly, but it shows that you as a player have fundamentally learned how to master the combat in this game.

How is a light/heavy attack basically different from an ability in your example?
Instead of exectuting a boring ability rotation, as you described above, you execute an ability rotation with an attack after each ability; an attack that, when it comes to player execution, is no different to an ability.
It just goes faster because it has its own cooldown timer and favours people with low latency as can they fit it easily into the one second ability cooldown window.

a: ability1 -> ability2 -> ability3...

vs

b: light attack -> ability1 -> light attack -> ability2...

vs

c: ability1 -> ability2 -> ability1 -> ability3...

Not sure how those are supposed to be fundamentally different and one requires more skill than the others. What people probably like about "weaving", is the feeling of tricking the naughty global cooldown a bit and the power phantasy that comes from packing more damage into a smaller time window (probably the same thing gankers feel in PvP too). This bias doesn't make one a good judge to evaluate the situation holistically though.

No offense, but those are the comments that make me think people mystify "weaving" way too much.

Rkindaleft wrote: »

The people who complain about AC are being disingenuous as well. Most of them participate in animation cancelling without them ever realizing that they do. As an example, imagine you're fighting a world boss. You press one of your skills to do damage or you press a heal, at the same time it is doing a heavy attack that could kill you. You instinctively block, stopping the animation of the attack/heal but still doing damage to the boss. (Technically they might not be on the same GCD) You animation cancelled your attack. Imagine you couldn't do that. You are forced to go through with the animation of the skill you use and then get hit with a heavy because you were stuck in the animation of whatever skill you cast. Would dying in that way upset you?

Yes, the people complain about abilities not shown on screen because their animation was cancelled. Something that is just wrong in action combat. The above mentioned issue would exist, if animation cancelling was not possible but the light/heavy attack system was still in place. It seems to me as if most people who are against animation cancelling are also against the light/heavy attack system and therefore are not disingenuous.
Ofc maybe there are some who didn't think this from the end. Though it looks like your point was constructed to show something that isn't really relevant.

Varana · March 2023

Yes

Saint-Ange wrote: »

Putting the lecturing aside for clarification your answer is: yes the damage is registred even if the animation is canceled.
New question: is it normal to receive or inflict damage in a video game without any clear visual and audio cues? .. Even environmental DoTs that have the players questionning what killed them have one like greenish poisoned waters, lava, electrical fields, yellowish cloud of gas, et cetera.

But I like lecturing.

Sure it is normal. In many games, you can be shot from the back, or by a sniper from half-way across the map, or by anyone from a place where you're not looking, without a chance to see it. You might hear a gunshot or whatever, but that is usually not sufficient to tell from where the shot comes, or that it's you who is getting shot at, and probably too late to react anyway.

Saint-Ange wrote: »

I'll let at the appreciation of the reader the exageration to present even instant damage that should be registred only once the skill fully visually lands like a long snoozing and boring chanelling ..

After reading this sentence half a dozen times, I still have no idea what it's supposed to mean.
If you wanted to say that my comparison of fully animated attacks to channeled skills is an exaggeration, then you're simply wrong. Starting to cast a skill and then having to wait a certain amount of time until the skill is finished and you can now start doing something else, is the very definition of a cast time.

Saint-Ange wrote: »

This game has the potential to be the most played mmorpg today but making a feature of what as always been considered a bug exploited by cheaters in the gaming culture is what is keeping at bay millions of players, millions. The video game press is writing about this nearly every month despite the game was released in 2014 and every week if not every day we can read the comments of people deploring the state of ESO combat.

Speaking of exaggeration...

o_Primate_o · March 2023

Yes

Yes LA bc it beats spamming A until it fires then spamming B until it fires etc etc etc. HA bc how else to restore resources other that standing and doing nothing?

o_Primate_o · March 2023

Yes

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I have run with a lot of really good groups over the years. I have never met a player capable of pushing hard content to the extreme that complained about LA weaving. Not saying they dont exist, but they are the vast minority among those who want the challenge of things like trifectas and vet hard modes.

If you don't care about hardest content, then there is nothing to be concerned about, because you simply dont need to LA weave to be effective in ESO. That said, I have no sympathy (not saying this is you) for people that want the hardest content brought down to the level so everyone can do it. Some things should be out of reach for average players. That is why we have different difficulty levels.

Inclusion would ruin the game for soooo many ppl.

ArchMikem · March 2023

No

Varana wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Animation Canceling itself was not intended by the developers, therefore its a bug. Justify it all you want, fact is there was no intention for it to exist.

That is simply wrong, and it doesn't get truer by repeating it.

Same logic applies to the other side. So long as no one provides evidence to back up the claim. But I've been here 7 years, I have the history to know what's true, or basically what's true by definition.

I'm not arguing for its removal, I'm reminding everyone what it really is. It's nature is being rewritten because of years of acceptance and adoption and emphasis. Animations, originally, we're NOT intended to be canceled. The way the combat system was built, created a bug making it possible. By DEFINITION, it's an exploit. However with it not breaking the game and being widely used by players, ZOS decided to just let it ride and made it an "official" mechanic of the gameplay.

I weave like everyone else, I accept Anim Canceling. But you all are rewriting truths, and I don't like that.

kringled_1 · March 2023

ArchMikem wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Animation Canceling itself was not intended by the developers, therefore its a bug. Justify it all you want, fact is there was no intention for it to exist.

That is simply wrong, and it doesn't get truer by repeating it.

Same logic applies to the other side. So long as no one provides evidence to back up the claim. But I've been here 7 years, I have the history to know what's true, or basically what's true by definition.

I'm not arguing for its removal, I'm reminding everyone what it really is. It's nature is being rewritten because of years of acceptance and adoption and emphasis. Animations, originally, we're NOT intended to be canceled. The way the combat system was built, created a bug making it possible. By DEFINITION, it's an exploit. However with it not breaking the game and being widely used by players, ZOS decided to just let it ride and made it an "official" mechanic of the gameplay.

I weave like everyone else, I accept Anim Canceling. But you all are rewriting truths, and I don't like that.

Animations don't cancel themselves. It's perfectly possible to create a combat system with few or no cancels. Animation cancels arise (in any game) because the developers have decided that player request of action b should take priority over the remaining animation of previous action a. It's disingenuous to say that they weren't intended when they wouldn't exist at all if the devs hadn't made those choices. What is probably more accurate is that zos did not originally think of weaving as a preferred combat sequence; and that people would be trying to squeeze that light in between skill casts on the GCD for every single skill.

axi · March 2023

Yes

ArchMikem wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Animation Canceling itself was not intended by the developers, therefore its a bug. Justify it all you want, fact is there was no intention for it to exist.

That is simply wrong, and it doesn't get truer by repeating it.

Same logic applies to the other side. So long as no one provides evidence to back up the claim. But I've been here 7 years, I have the history to know what's true, or basically what's true by definition.

I'm not arguing for its removal, I'm reminding everyone what it really is. It's nature is being rewritten because of years of acceptance and adoption and emphasis. Animations, originally, we're NOT intended to be canceled. The way the combat system was built, created a bug making it possible. By DEFINITION, it's an exploit. However with it not breaking the game and being widely used by players, ZOS decided to just let it ride and made it an "official" mechanic of the gameplay.

I weave like everyone else, I accept Anim Canceling. But you all are rewriting truths, and I don't like that.

You talk about providing evidence to back up claims but I don't see You providing evidence that quote "Animations, originally, we're NOT intended to be canceled".

Also there is plenty of evidence that animations were meant to be canceled. Devs were literally showing in their promotional materials how You can dynamically cancel Your actions with block, dodge or bash. It was one of the core game designs. Nicholas Konkle was talking a lot about it even long before release. One of the first comments that ZoS embraces the usage of light attack weaving was made by @ZOS_JessicaFolsom in one of the early eso live streams. I am suprised You havn't seen it in 7 years it have been posted on forums multiple times already. Fun fact in some of the pre release streams You can find developers doing light attack weaving but of course not in the manner that it's used today. They were also using abilities instantly after light attack but not in a rapid succession. Players just used that into their adventage but it was always there, it wasn't a bug.

Hamfast · March 2023

Yes

I am also a fan of the "Other" option...

I have no problem with weaving, I just can't seem to get my fingers to get the timing for LA weaving, but more power to you if you can, skill deserves benefits. I have almost got HA weaving to work...

But the choice I saw in the OP's poll was "Weaving VS Auto Attack" and Auto Attack (to my way of thinking) is brainless... click a button and walk away.

The idea that we can play as we like (even if the way we play is not that effective) is great, but the operative term here is "Play".

Twig_Garlicshine · March 2023

No

No.

Can I do it. Yes.
Is it a meaningful mechanic? Nope.
At best it is an auto attack that now requires manual input.
This is known as clunky combat.
LA weaving/animation cancelling is not a skill.
Unless you think two finger typing is a L33T skill.
All you are doing is tapping your index finger and one other key in beat to a metronome.
Mindless, meaningless, manual clunkiness.

Meridiano · March 2023

Yes

I would say NO maybe a year ago but now my WA is about 0.100 and I like it. Also I like to improve it until my ping bottleneck, this will mean I do my best. I really enjoy making myself better.

Roztlin45 · March 2023

No

Weaving is for baskets.

mocap · March 2023

Not very familiar with history of DPS in ESO, but I typed in youtube "eso dps 2014" and was very surprised, no not by numbers like "1000 dps build" (apparently in those days it was impressive damage lol), but approach to dealing damage: they didn't use LA weaving at all. They just... spam skills and thats it )

Apparently LA weaving was some kind of side effect, maybe even a bug that they didn't change.

Shagreth · March 2023

No

No, it's a stupid mechanic that feels like an engine bug. I wish we had something different to show our skill, but alas.

axi · March 2023

Yes

mocap wrote: »

Not very familiar with history of DPS in ESO, but I typed in youtube "eso dps 2014" and was very surprised, no not by numbers like "1000 dps build" (apparently in those days it was impressive damage lol), but approach to dealing damage: they didn't use LA weaving at all. They just... spam skills and thats it )

Apparently LA weaving was some kind of side effect, maybe even a bug that they didn't change.

Back then medium attack weaving was a meta and You could start charging heavy attack animation "under" the animation of the ability. Also it took few months until information have spread and people started to commonly weave weapon attacks inbetween abilities.

Varana · March 2023

Yes

Also, I don't remember when, but at some point they changed the numbers on display, multiplying everything by 10. So in the early days, 1000 dps would be 10.000 in modern numbers. Still a huge difference to the current max but closer to some players today

zaria · March 2023

Northwold wrote: »

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".

However at this time so many sets require LA weaving to work its not something they would change.
If you don't like it you have HA builds.

Onomos · March 2023

No

I will do it (sometimes), but I'm not a fan. My general play style is just too chaotic.

kadar · April 2023

Yes

ArchMikem wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Animation Canceling itself was not intended by the developers, therefore its a bug. Justify it all you want, fact is there was no intention for it to exist.

That is simply wrong, and it doesn't get truer by repeating it.

Same logic applies to the other side. So long as no one provides evidence to back up the claim. But I've been here 7 years, I have the history to know what's true, or basically what's true by definition.

I'm not arguing for its removal, I'm reminding everyone what it really is. It's nature is being rewritten because of years of acceptance and adoption and emphasis. Animations, originally, we're NOT intended to be canceled. The way the combat system was built, created a bug making it possible. By DEFINITION, it's an exploit. However with it not breaking the game and being widely used by players, ZOS decided to just let it ride and made it an "official" mechanic of the gameplay.

I weave like everyone else, I accept Anim Canceling. But you all are rewriting truths, and I don't like that.

This is semantics. Like 2 others pointed out in response already, ESOs action priority combat system was always intended. Weaving is simply action priority used repeatedly. It is the proper and very intended effect of giving active skills priority over LAs, which again, was always the plan. It cannot be an exploit because an exploit requires a mechanic to be broken. Without a broken mechanic there is nothing to exploit.

Jammy420 · April 2023

Yes

Yes.

It adds a layer of complexity to the combat system that is worth practicing for. And all games should require some form of practice for players to reach their peak. Otherwise it would be slow and incredibly boring.

Vindold · April 2023

No

No.

Afaik it's a bug + it looks bad, not to mention poor animations\vfx, that's a reason why many ppl stay away from ESO.
Sure it adds 'complexity' to combat, but at what cost.

Browiseth · April 2023

Yes

most people who don't like weaving only dislike it because they're unable to do it, and because they have such limited experience with the mechanic (and because of their aformentioned biases) they tend to create misconceptions about it

as for my opinion, weaving existing is a big part of why eso is fun. not being locked into an animation for any real length of time (yes i know about gcd but it's short enough that it keeps combat fast paced) is really enjoyable and quite unique among mmos as i understand, at least to the extent it exists in eso

tl;dr, weaving is great. the only people who don't like weaving dislike it because they don't do it, so their opinions should be taken with the grainiest of salt for how uninformed it probably is

StarOfElyon · April 2023

I used to but it doesn't even work for me anymore in battle grounds. It's been really laggy in there and skills feel delayed so that I can't weave anymore.

Loves_guars · April 2023

No

First off, lag, I live in the south hemisphere, so weaving is extremely annoying and feels laggy all the time. Second, it is clear that it was never the intention to make it a feature, it was a bug or whatever you wanna call it that they did not fixed.
There is no official tutorial for any new or casual or any player that doesn't google guides.

Overall it just feels so crappy and unintended.

MostlyJustCats · April 2023

Yes

If they ever implement an auto-attack and combat becomes even MORE stale and non-participatory then this game is finished, for me.

It's not hard once you get the hang of it. It's not particularly taxing, and it's not that dependent on ping. Hit your LA, then somewhere in that 1 second after, hit a skill once. No facerolling the keyboard, no cramping of the hand (saving severe disability) - if you can type 10 words per minute you can weave. Two keypresses per second is a lot slower than you probably think, especially if one of them is on a mouse. It's about the bare minimum level of active engagement you can expect from a "combat" system.

I really don't understand the animosity towards the mechanic. The vast majority of the game is absolutely tissue paper thin in terms of difficulty - the quests might as well be a visual novel; overland mobs barely fight back; normal dungeons and trials aren't much worse. You don't have to weave at all for 95% of the game's content, so what's the problem?

The difficulty in veteran+ content isn't the weaving, it's the reaction time to mechanics. If you are not capable of weaving to a reasonable degree for whatever reason, you're not gonna have the dexterity required for that content anyway. An auto-attack isn't gonna save you.

And really, you're not missing anything. The content is almost exactly the same. There's no reason to turn vet content into a sightseeing tour like everything else - you can already see pretty much everything the game has to offer without ever pressing more than one button a second.

Jestir · April 2023

No

i've gotten to the point where i don't miss LAs anymore just need to speed up the rotation itself but i still 100% feel it absolutely ruins the look and feel of the combat

JMadFour · April 2023

No

I wish ESO had New World's action combat system, just with the same amount of skill slots that ESO currently has.

But it is, what it is. the Parse Dummy Gawds rule ESO, and what they say goes.

Kusto · April 2023

I put a book on my left mouse button in long boss fights and chill. I use Oakensoul heavy attack build. I out dps everyone who's not doing the same lol. Combat system great.