PTS Update 48 – Feedback Thread for Combat Animation Memory Reduction

ZOS_Kevin · September 15

This is the official feedback thread for Combat Animation Memory Reduction improvements. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

Did you find anything about the flow of combat to feel different than what is on Live?
Can you still perform animation cancelling effectively?
Did you notice any broken or unusual combat animations?

smallhammer · September 22

Just a simple question: Why do we have animations at all, in combat? When one of the main "skills" is to cancel it?

Morvan · September 22

smallhammer wrote: »

Just a simple question: Why do we have animations at all, in combat? When one of the main "skills" is to cancel it?

Skills can cancel LA animations, but skill animations are still performed just as fine.

smallhammer · September 22

Yes, I was thinking about LA animations.

MincMincMinc · September 22

smallhammer wrote: »

Yes, I was thinking about LA animations.

Its been fine that LA animations get canceled since they are so much less impactful as compared to active skills...........However this is only true assuming no proc effects. In reality we see enchants, poisons, proc effects, status effects, etc all able to trigger off of animation cancel-able triggers like Light attacks and medium attacks.

This is a main point I always bring up when it comes to the Off-Balance system being a terrible design. Why have a main counterplay system trigger off of invisible medium attack weaves not only animation cancel-able but also from any enemy. It just breaks down the GCD ability system.

tomofhyrule · September 22

I definitely have not noticed any problems with the animations like we had the last time this was tried earlier in the year. Everything looks and feels the same as in live now.

The unsheath speed also works well. I did at first think it looked a bit goofy being sped up that fast, but the fact that we can still unsheathe at normal speed with the unsheathe key is great. The sped version working just by light attacking does make combat feel better.

epic-buttkkr · September 23

Ok so in regards to the combat animation memory reduction,
I have tested it and Yes, It still interacts and affects my ability to light attack weave and cast my skills.
The polymorphs still retain the old animations and I used that as a side by side when comparing parses.
I was using Torc of the last ayleid king to minimize the variables that procsets introduce when parsing.

DPS on average was about 5-8k higher with a polymorph, than without, And this was with me aggressively weaving my skills.
I recorded the parses also using OBS and had a Controller overlay to see if I was missing any skills, and reviewing the footage, I was missing a considerable amount of skills and light attacks. I could feel this as well when parsing. The flow of my skills and basic attacks felt out of sync and off.

On top of this, These new animations just look bad. The visible stutter and stiffness my character has makes them feel janky and incomplete. Its pretty immersion breaking tbh.
also the offset idle poses for my character when holding weapons are bad. its a 45 degree tilt when just holding weapons and not doing anything. It looks out of place. If you heavy attack or cast a skill and let the animation follow through, you can see your character stop in the old idle position and then suddenly twitch rapidly to adjust to the new idle stance. It just looks bad.

Unarmed sprint animations just speed up the speed at which your walking animation plays, which makes my character look like he is tweaking out. plus when going into an idle stance from unarmed, you character assumes the idle pose of the bow, despite not holding a bow.

I have spent probably more time than I should have, testing these specific changes, about 5 hours, give or take and recording the whole thing. I made a video about this as well, since this update, as a whole, scares me.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9OhWCEffjOE&t

This is not to mention my concerns regarding the constant CRASHING that happens on the pts while interacting with these new changes.
Also now with week 2, there is a new bug that is affecting PS5 Controllers if you are using a gamepad. Its an issue I have seen before, its just strange to watch it come back.
Please Consider Shelfing these Animation changes

MashmalloMan · September 23

I played maybe 60 minutes, the game crashed 4 times while weaving. Completely random. For context, crashing on live and previous PTS for me is next to unheard of.. like once a year so this is very odd.

Idk what you did, but these animation changes feel rough, like an alpha, work in progress.. except, this game is 11 years old and there's nothing wrong with the original animations.

Have you ever asked yourself if a 1% performance boost (probably even less) is worth it for the -100% negativity this will receive from your playerbase? This is the 2nd time you said we won't feel or see any difference, yet it's extremely obvious it's been messed with.

@epic-buttkkr did a side by side in their video and you can see it's night and day.

Most of the weapons were passable, but 2H is beyond saving. It stutters like crazy. The others are okay, but they don't feel or look smooth, many of them stutter randomly too, as if they're missing key frame in the animation so the characters weapon jumps from position to position.

Also I can't quite explain it, but sometimes skill casts don't happen when you expect them too randomly. The same way it was a problem with U46 pts. I don't know how to replicate it, but it feels off.

YandereGirlfriend · September 23

Well, that is fairly alarming!

ESO_Nightingale · September 24

i just watched @epic-buttkkr's video.

Guys how do you push this onto even the PTS? this is absolutely unacceptable. do better.

i feel like the joke is on me because there's been nothing i considered worth testing this patch so i haven't even bothered downloading it.

this needs to be reverted immediately. and i mean it. the animations look awful and they're game-breaking.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · September 24

@ZOS_Kevin it would be a good idea for the combat team to address the changes to animations and points in the video people are mentioning. It's not a good look for these bugs to have not been addressed since the last combat animation iteration.

Video for reference:

https://youtu.be/9OhWCEffjOE

ZOS_GinaBruno · September 24

Hi all, thanks for the feedback thus far. We have confirmed there is an issue when using a PS controller on a PC that is causing decreased game performance on the PTS, and we're actively working on getting this fixed as quickly as possible. Our theory is that this may be contributing to other issues some of you have been seeing such as missing ability hits and weaving issues. For those that have noticed a performance hit, could you confirm if you were using a controller or mouse & keyboard (and if the former, what type of controller)?

As for the handful of polymorphs that don't have the additive animations enabled, we are working on fixing those as well.

Thank you!

Sadras · September 24

I haven't done any serious combat testing, but just in case this contributes: I played with a PS5 controller (the standard type), and I had a few crashes and disconnects. I just put it down to the test servers and didn't think any further about it because I haven't done a lot of PTS testing yet, but crashes were also mentioned above in the thread, so just in case it's connected...

DarkPassions · September 24

Not sure if this is related, but I’ve noticed lately that when being knocked back by a boss lately, my character just freezes and kinda… floats backwards until they reach their knockback destination and then just kinda flops onto the floor?

BasP · September 24

I think I've only been on this PTS four times now, and luckily I haven't experienced any crashes myself yet. The performance was really bad yesterday, though - I couldn't finish any parse and it did feel like I was close to crashing a couple of times (the game didn't register any of my inputs for 20+ seconds or so and all I could do was run around during those times).

I also think that some animations - especially the two handed animations - look worse, though. I didn't really pay attention to the animations and only parsed with a dual wield front bar at first, but after reading epic-buttkkr's post and watching his video I tried some parses with a greatsword too. It really looks janky.

When last year's letter mentioned that you were working on "improving the overall feel of combat with animation, FX, and potentially audio work", I hoped to see some actual improvements. Some of these new animations have the opposite effect, though - overall, it feels and looks worse.

As for whether I could still perform animation cancelling effectively - maybe it's a nocebo effect, due to having seen this post, but it does seem like my weaving is slightly worse. I've never been a top parser, but overall I'm missing a bit more light attacks than before and skills not firing seems to happen a bit more often too (though the latter is, admittedly, still a rare occurrence for me).