my favorite part is the "no impact on LA Weaving or ANimation cancelling", let me tell you there is a huge difference. LAs especially on 2h are almost faster than on DW, the weaving is insanely fast now. Also the faster Weapon swap allows to cast skills way sooner than before

colossalvoids wrote: »

We are implementing some backend changes to reduce the size of combat animation files to lower their impact on the game’s memory. Specifically, you should experience the following:
The animation visuals after these changes should be virtually indistinguishable from the existing animations within the game.
There will be no impact to light attack weaving or animation cancelling – they should work as they did before.

Thanks for not listening for the feedback from the pts and going through with it

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

We are implementing some backend changes to reduce the size of combat animation files to lower their impact on the game’s memory. Specifically, you should experience the following:
The animation visuals after these changes should be virtually indistinguishable from the existing animations within the game.
There will be no impact to light attack weaving or animation cancelling – they should work as they did before.

Thanks for not listening for the feedback from the pts and going through with it

More like the last.

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

L_Nici wrote: »

my favorite part is the "no impact on LA Weaving or ANimation cancelling", let me tell you there is a huge difference.

There is no difference to the underlying mechanic of animation cancelling. It's simply the visual that has changed.

L_Nici wrote: »

Also the faster Weapon swap allows to cast skills way sooner than before

It doesn't. The skills cast at the same pace but before you wouldn't see the skill cast animation until the swap animation had finished. The faster swap now gives quicker certainty the skill was cast but it's simply perception.

So... They finally fixed the clunkiness of the animation's visuals?

On the contrary, it's now even more apparent and junky. There's a PTS feedback thread for it so easy to find how it performs and looks from there, if you're on console or have no access to the game.

What stands out to me is that, despite the official statement, the animation has changed. And it’s clearly not for the better.

Take the animation for the Traveling Knife skill (Scribing skill) with the Multi-Target script:

At range, the animation plays normally, but when you’re close to enemies, it gets cut off completely. So you never really know if the skill went off, because if you judge it by the animation alone, it looks like you’re swinging at nothing 90% of the time.

And when the animation is cut short like that, there’s this awful delay between the moment your character hits an enemy and the moment the actual impact animation shows up. (And no, it’s not latency or anything like that.)

I used this skill as my spammable on my sorc, and now it’s just trash. And I don’t think it’s the only skill affected by this animation issue.

I'm saying this without any hostility, but whoever thought this was a good idea clearly didn't test it in real gameplay conditions, or they just don't care about their players and the feedback they get. Or maybe it's just incompetence, I really don't know.

If you really want to reduce server load, stop pumping out tons of furniture and mounts with useless effects. That would actually be progress.

Attacks happen before the animations happen, not only is this bad experience, but in pvp you get hit and cannot read animations to know what to avoid and when to block. This is bonkers!!

Here's my feedback on each of the changes I've noticed:

Increased weapon switch speed:
I don't like it. It's too fast compared to even the shortest animations in the game. If you're going to speed up the swap animation to make it feel better, it should be a much smaller change.

One Handed and Shield:
- The increased speed of the swing looks unrealistic, breaks immersion, and doesn't match other skills in ESO. It's bad.
- The end of the animation has some really ugly choppiness. It's not good and needs to be updated.
- The position of the weapon hand after a missed strike is really awkward.
- Non-missed strikes end with the weapon in a very elevated position. I looks silly and bad.
+ I can feel some added snappiness

Two Handed
- MASSIVE downgrade from the previous version. Fixing this should be your priority.
- The increased speed of the swing looks REALLY bad, like it's missing frames. The start and end are very choppy.
- The legs change position way too fast. It looks realistic.
- The way the character snaps when doing a swing from left to right feels downright instant. It breaks immersion.
- The position of the weapon after a missed hit is inconsistent between left and right
- The follow-up animation after finishing a successful hit looks very choppy.
- The character "trembles" a bit before starting a heavy attack, it looks bad
- Heavy attacks have way too much acceleration.


Dual Wield
- Overall, a downgrade from the previous version
- The transition between ANY movement state and the idle looks really forced and artificial. The blending is aggressive and ugly. I think you should try to retain the previous idle.
- The increased speed of the swing looks bad, although not as bad as the other ones
- The position of the weapons after a successful hit looks too close, like the swing ends too early.
+ The position of the weapons after a missed hit looks fine
+ Heavy attacks look unchanged

Bow:
+ Virtually unchanged. If there's a difference, I can't see it.

Flame and Ice staff:
+ Virtually unchanged as well.
+ I can feel some extra snappiness when weaving. It's good.

Lightning staff:
+Virtually unchanged.

I will say that I commented on the PTS thread as well and I said it didn’t look too bad, but I was specifically comparing to the last time they tried in U46, where half of the animations actively had the weapon clip out of the character’s hands. I also only tested a few swings at nothing to make sure that the weapon stayed in his hands. And also that the animation for Mages Wrath was still the same (the last version changed it to the pointing one instead of the reach upward)

As for the unsheath animation, using the unsheathe key did keep the normal speed while unsheathing with a click is sped up… or at least it was on version 1 of PTS. The fact that you could still use the normal speed one made it easier to handle.

But the main thing they should do, which would help this all be swallowed, is to say why this was necessary. I can assume that since this is for memory reduction and they’ve said in the past that old hardware limitations was preventing the addition of new animations, that this may be a sign that something with new animations is coming in the future and they need the space (and I hope to Hircine that it’s a new Class and not just more mementos)

lostineternity wrote: »

My character moves and attacks like having a stroke.
This is so bad, I can't believe zos you did this.
ESO animations were outdated even 5 years ago and now it's like the level of Oblivion from 2006.

Are you proactively trying to make game worse???

An khajiit sitting on an bench in Oblivion,

Note the tail.
No idea about the face? Who is Oblivion bad, they might added another face as he was the only survivor after all other was killed.

This looks so cringe. I can't believe you really brought that to live. On the last big patch of the year. I can't believe it.

...

I can't believe it. Do you not have eyes? This is so unnatural. Most mobile games and mobas have better looking animations.

its horrendous, and its not like we had a place to test these change RIGHT
Like a place where we could provide feedback before release RIGHT

One bug I found though:

The sneak strafe animation for ice staves is bugged. Other staves work fine, it's only ice staves that instead use the unarmed forward sneak

Marto wrote: »

Here's my feedback on each of the changes I've noticed:

Flame and Ice staff:
+ Virtually unchanged as well.
+ I can feel some extra snappiness when weaving. It's good.

Lightning staff:
+Virtually unchanged.

Not true, anyone parsing for 10s will be able to tell the difference immediately. Just go to a dummy for a moment and light attack weave. You character does not move during the attack, then decides to have a spasms when its already over. It is complete out of sync and clunky now. If you think staff is unchanged, god I cannot imagine the rest.

Despite U35 and U46 they thought, well hey at least they like the combat of ESO lets change that as well.


Here I cast light attack and ele weapon


Here the light attack animation fires, around 0.4s after.


Any consecutive weave behaves like this, only the first one is normal.
They have introduced like a delay of half a second. There is latency as you can see, because they reduced the frames of the animation without thinking about this part.

It IS more clunky. And don't get me started with block and faster bar swap animation cancels because my character is making moves as if he is Dr. Strange.

Yudo wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Here's my feedback on each of the changes I've noticed:

Flame and Ice staff:
+ Virtually unchanged as well.
+ I can feel some extra snappiness when weaving. It's good.

Lightning staff:
+Virtually unchanged.

Not true, anyone parsing for 10s will be able to tell the difference immediately. Just go to a dummy for a moment and light attack weave. You character does not move during the attack, then decides to have a spasms when its already over. It is complete out of sync and clunky now. If you think staff is unchanged, god I cannot imagine the rest.

Despite U35 and U46 they thought, well hey at least they like the combat of ESO lets change that as well.


Here I cast light attack and ele weapon


Here the light attack animation fires, around 0.4s after.


Any consecutive weave behaves like this, only the first one is normal.
They have introduced like a delay of half a second. There is latency as you can see, because they reduced the frames of the animation without thinking about this part.

It IS more clunky. And don't get me started with block and faster bar swap animation cancels because my character is making moves as if he is Dr. Strange.

There is a lot of problems, people think it's only affecting 2H, but there are so many broken animations, your character has a spasm when casting Wall of Elements for example...

I don't think I've ever been this bothered with a patch, not even U35 had this effect on me, it's like the Jabs/Flurry downgrade but this time for every single combat animation, I'll really miss how Dual Wield used to look like.

Yudo wrote: »

Any consecutive weave behaves like this, only the first one is normal.
They have introduced like a delay of half a second. There is latency as you can see, because they reduced the frames of the animation without thinking about this part.

It IS more clunky. And don't get me started with block and faster bar swap animation cancels because my character is making moves as if he is Dr. Strange.

I agree, it is more clunky and I also feel the delay, which throws me off and makes weaving and the rotation feel unstable/unresponsive after a while. And that was just fighting one of the new delve field marshal mobs, I can't imagine how unplayable it will be in trials. @ZOS_Kevin this needs urgent attention.