Combat Animation Memory Reduction

lostineternity · October 28

@ZOS_Kevin

Do you plan to respond to feedback at all or at least communicate with players in some way?
It's outrageous because I know for sure that a lot of people highlighted this issue during the PTS cycle and non of the issues was addressed none of feedback was taking in to consideration.

SolarRune · October 28

I think the known issues log should be updated from issues around 2h being changed to issues around all new animations.

flizomica · October 28

And ZOS seriously wonders why PTS participation has plummeted - to the point where they sent out a survey about it - when issues like this are extensively documented on PTS and still shipped to live in broken/buggy states.

mocap · October 28

This will reduce carbon footprint. Don't you want a healthy planet?

Rkindaleft · October 28

mocap wrote: »

This will reduce carbon footprint. Don't you want a healthy planet?

If this is the alternative the carbon footprint can stay 👍

CoolBlast3 · October 28

@ZOS_Kevin
Obligatory issue compilation comment, hope this helps fixing issues

Bows
- Upon finishing a light attack and entering rest idle, the animation suddenly snaps to a final idle pose

Staffs
- Staff points in odd directions when unsheathed and crouching
- Accelerate skill (and morphs) is jittery
- Staff is grabbed at an odd, too high angle when unsheathing

Dual Wield
- End of swing animation suddenly speeds up compared to rest of animation, most noticeable on Heavy Attacks
- Blade Cloak skill (and morphs) animation is delayed, -extremely- noticeable with Mirrormoor Skill Style, where it takes several seconds after casting for the entire animation to start
- Dark Deal skill (and morphs) cause weapons to bounce around on character hips while casting
- If Traveling Knife is cast while moving, animation won't play fully

Two Handers
- Initiating crouch with weapon unsheathed has odd visual errors
- Accelerate skill (and morphs) is jittery
- On end of swing animation, if character model is Female, weapon will levitate away from player model hands

Global
- Barswapping while blocking causes -a lot- of frames to be skipped, weapons practically teleporting into hand.
- Using Maelstrom Baron polymorph restores ALL old animations, including the "bonus round" ones.

B-B-B-BONUS ROUND:
This update somehow broke the gendering of dance animations. Dances now play the male dance regardless of character model, unless you use specific polymorphs.
I tried with various polys that default to male models, and they all played male dances (whilst on a female character- which is expected behaviour). However, bone colossus polymorph plays the female dances while on a female character. Using Maelstrom Baron polymorph restores ALL old animations

CoolBlast3 · October 28

Secondary find:

This update somehow broke the gendering of dance animations. Dances now play the male dance regardless of character model, unless you use specific polymorphs.
I tried with various polys that default to male models, and they all played male dances (whilst on a female character- which is expected behaviour). However, bone colossus polymorph plays the female dances while on a female character.

ADDED INTO INITIAL COMMENT

Yudo · October 28

Let's add Elemental weapon to the list as a non-weapon skill, that one specifically seems to be extra busted.

Gabriel_H · October 28

Yudo wrote: »

They have introduced like a delay of half a second.

Can you be a bit more specific because there has always (or at least for a long time) been a 400ms delay on "instant" skills firing.

Example from the 11.1.5 patch notes:

StihlReign · October 28

AOE ground circles are missing. Abilities are firing (and landing) with no visible animation. Abilities are firing and triggering procs while showing no discernable animation except the proc animation.

Yudo · October 28

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Yudo wrote: »

They have introduced like a delay of half a second.

Can you be a bit more specific because there has always (or at least for a long time) been a 400ms delay on "instant" skills firing.

Example from the 11.1.5 patch notes:

For all fairness, I have tested light attack weaving like this with staves on sorc class skills, destro and resto lines, and popular guild skills and this issue seems to be isolated to Elemental weapon from Psijics. There was no such delay before, this is different, the animation is delayed. The issue is more accurately: On consecutive weaves, casting light attack and elemental weapon does nothing until half a second later both the animation and the attack fires.

You'll have to try consecutive weaves as in my example to reproduce it. First one fires correctly, second and any follow up weave has this half second delays until the flow is interrupted. You can see this in the gif I posted as well if you look closely.

Ecgberht_confused · October 28

Animation often disappears for abilities and light attacks (lightningstaff). Overall combat feels unresponsive and clunky

MashmalloMan · October 28

Yudo wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Yudo wrote: »

They have introduced like a delay of half a second.

Can you be a bit more specific because there has always (or at least for a long time) been a 400ms delay on "instant" skills firing.

Example from the 11.1.5 patch notes:

For all fairness, I have tested sorc class skills, staves and popular guild skills and this issue seems to be isolated to Elemental weapon from Psijics. There was no such delay before, this is different, the animation is delayed which it did not before. You'll have to try consecutive weaves as in my example to reproduce it. First one fires correctly, second and any follow up weave has this half second delays until the flow is interrupted. You can see this in the gif I posted as well if you look closely.

Unrelated to this patch, but there's a known bug I reported 4 years ago that never got fixed where if you spam your skill keys like 3-4 times a second, eventually they'll stop casting for around 1-2 gcd.

So just for clarification, are you spamming the key or pressing the skill key once every second, because this bug still exists to this day, regardless of the animation changes and sounds like what you're describing.

Video below.. Focus on my skill bar, I'm spamming the entire time for 3-4 presses, you can see my character stops casting usually every 3-6 casts, and does nothing while I continue to spam the skill key (see highlight on my skill bar). Moving or standing still doesn't effect this, cast time skills are safe, and it happens on mouse/keyboard as well as controller.

Sheesh, Nov 2021, that long for a game breaking bug. Quite ridiculous. Imagine all the players that aren't on tempo with the 1s GCD and prefer to spam their presses, they're going to feel this random freezing and not know why.

https://youtu.be/8XAm9iQ6lmc

Gabriel_H · October 28

StihlReign wrote: »

Charge animations are broken on hilly terrain. Getting stuck in the animation with both 2H and SnB.

That's always been the case

Gabriel_H · October 28

Yudo wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Yudo wrote: »

They have introduced like a delay of half a second.

Can you be a bit more specific because there has always (or at least for a long time) been a 400ms delay on "instant" skills firing.

Example from the 11.1.5 patch notes:

For all fairness, I have tested light attack weaving like this with staves on sorc class skills, destro and resto lines, and popular guild skills and this issue seems to be isolated to Elemental weapon from Psijics. There was no such delay before, this is different, the animation is delayed. The issue is more accurately: On consecutive weaves, casting light attack and elemental weapon does nothing until half a second later both the animation and the attack fires.

You'll have to try consecutive weaves as in my example to reproduce it. First one fires correctly, second and any follow up weave has this half second delays until the flow is interrupted. You can see this in the gif I posted as well if you look closely.

My point is: is there an actual delay or just the perception of one. As an example, previously while bar swapping if you cast a skill the skill wouldn't appear to fire, and would only do so when the swap animation finished - but the skill did actually fire it was simply a delay in the cast & effects animation. Now, the skill effects show immediately, but sometimes the cast amimation has a slight delay.

Yudo · October 28

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Yudo wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Yudo wrote: »

They have introduced like a delay of half a second.

Can you be a bit more specific because there has always (or at least for a long time) been a 400ms delay on "instant" skills firing.

Example from the 11.1.5 patch notes:

For all fairness, I have tested sorc class skills, staves and popular guild skills and this issue seems to be isolated to Elemental weapon from Psijics. There was no such delay before, this is different, the animation is delayed which it did not before. You'll have to try consecutive weaves as in my example to reproduce it. First one fires correctly, second and any follow up weave has this half second delays until the flow is interrupted. You can see this in the gif I posted as well if you look closely.

Unrelated to this patch, but there's a known bug I reported 4 years ago that never got fixed where if you spam your skill keys like 3-4 times a second, eventually they'll stop casting for around 500-1000ms.

So just for clarification, are you spamming the key or pressing the skill key once every second, because this bug still exists to this day, regardless of the animation changes and sounds like what you're describing.

Here's the video.. Focus on my skill bar, I'm spamming the entire time, you can see my character stops casting, and my skill bar skills are still highlighted. This happens on controller or keyboard.

https://youtu.be/8XAm9iQ6lmc

Lol... Nov 2021. Love that this game breaking bug still exists.

Not spamming just weaving per second, here is an example:
LA -> Ele wep (normal)
LA -> Ele wep (delayed)
LA -> Ele wep (delayed)
LA -> Ele wep (delayed)
LA -> crystal fragment proc (delayed)
LA -> Ele wep (normal)
LA -> Ele wep (delayed)
LA -> Ele wep (delayed)
LA -> Ele wep (delayed)

Before this patch, the delays were not there. You gotta try it.

StihlReign · October 28

Gabriel_H wrote: »

StihlReign wrote: »

Charge animations are broken on hilly terrain. Getting stuck in the animation with both 2H and SnB.

That's always been the case

No, it hasn't.

Gabriel_H · October 28

StihlReign wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

StihlReign wrote: »

Charge animations are broken on hilly terrain. Getting stuck in the animation with both 2H and SnB.

That's always been the case

No, it hasn't.

Targets at the top of a hill where targetable but as were not in direct LoS causing a false charge.

Morvan · October 29

The_Saint wrote: »

Morvan wrote: »

It's bad dude, my character can't stop tilting while receiving damage.

https://youtu.be/5gUZmYKcnZc?si=Xozuwvsfh7_ISba8

This looks so goofy, boggles my mind how this change got pass PTS, but at least it's giving me a good laugh.

Zyaneth_Bal · October 29

How come the game is back to alpha in all departments a decade after release💀

Yudo · October 29

Holding staves has a strange animation which clips through head at times after blocking or bar swaps.

Getting hit while blocking with staves, makes you let go one hand like a scared noob tank

Bar swap while blocking in character screen makes you eat your fists

lostineternity · October 29

We can't compare new animations with older ones now, but I found a video where the person compared animations on pts server with live server month ago.

https://youtu.be/9OhWCEffjOE

Yudo · October 29

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Yudo wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Yudo wrote: »

They have introduced like a delay of half a second.

Can you be a bit more specific because there has always (or at least for a long time) been a 400ms delay on "instant" skills firing.

Example from the 11.1.5 patch notes:

For all fairness, I have tested light attack weaving like this with staves on sorc class skills, destro and resto lines, and popular guild skills and this issue seems to be isolated to Elemental weapon from Psijics. There was no such delay before, this is different, the animation is delayed. The issue is more accurately: On consecutive weaves, casting light attack and elemental weapon does nothing until half a second later both the animation and the attack fires.

You'll have to try consecutive weaves as in my example to reproduce it. First one fires correctly, second and any follow up weave has this half second delays until the flow is interrupted. You can see this in the gif I posted as well if you look closely.

My point is: is there an actual delay or just the perception of one. As an example, previously while bar swapping if you cast a skill the skill wouldn't appear to fire, and would only do so when the swap animation finished - but the skill did actually fire it was simply a delay in the cast & effects animation. Now, the skill effects show immediately, but sometimes the cast amimation has a slight delay.

Yes I am ware of internal animation timers and "normal" delays, or animation cancel delays.
One thing you are right about is in terms of actual skill hits, this is "perceived" as the skill does correctly hit every second.

I try to illustrate here why the animation delay is still an issue because it creates a large gap and puts the entire animation window out of sync. Throws you off real time:

The problematic part marked in orange, first increase delay in animation gap, followed by a shift of the cast-to-animation window by half a second. This is not normal and very hard to play. Missing weave often. Because you no longer get the visual confirmation that you have cast the skill from the consecutive weave. So far this only happens with elemental weapon for me with a lighting staff (I don't know if that matters). But is my fav skill and for me personally is a break of my build

I did not mark this but this also brings down the animation-to-hit gap a mere 0.1s. Meaning by the time my character animates, 0.1s after the skill is hitting.

Sotha_Sil · October 29

lostineternity wrote: »

We can't compare new animations with older ones now, but I found a video where the person compared animations on pts server with live server month ago.

https://youtu.be/9OhWCEffjOE

I've had freezes since the update as shown in this video for a few seconds (but no crash) that I never encountered before.

StihlReign · October 29

Charge animations are broken on hilly terrain. Getting stuck in the animation with both 2H and SnB.

Jaimeh · October 29

lostineternity wrote: »

We can't compare new animations with older ones now, but I found a video where the person compared animations on pts server with live server month ago.

https://youtu.be/9OhWCEffjOE

Why would they mess with the animations? Couldn't they find something other than a very intergral part of the gameplay experience to save on memory? Please @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom revert these changes, they should never have made their way to live given all the concerns on the PTS.

Vaqual · October 29

However valuable this may be performance wise, it is just too much of a sacrifice for the RPG aspect in the current form. All the outfits and skill styles don't matter if the character is just jittering and convulsing on screen. The fact that it actually introduced more problems than it solved from a game play perspective just screams roll back at this point.

mandricus · October 29

Yes they screams roll back but we all know that is never going to happen. They did not roll it back from PTS where these issues were already highlighted, they willingly decided to push it live anyway, so there has to be a really strong motivation to do that (something that we are not allowed to know).

lostineternity · October 29

Vaqual wrote: »

However valuable this may be performance wise, it is just too much of a sacrifice for the RPG aspect in the current form. All the outfits and skill styles don't matter if the character is just jittering and convulsing on screen. The fact that it actually introduced more problems than it solved from a game play perspective just screams roll back at this point.

It's not valuable at all.
I've been working on server-client architecture for ages, and I can assure you that animations are handled on the client side.
Every animation that is triggered by your own actions is only client-side; animations that are responses to enemy attacks or something like that are triggered from the BE side but only with an "id", animation files are stored and performed on the client.

It's actually easy to check. Everyone has at least once encountered a situation when they lost connection to the server, but the client doesn’t disconnect instantly, and you can run/attack/cast things with all proper animations for a minute or so, but the world is static and wouldn’t react (no connection). It’s proof that animations are being handled on the client.

If ZOS tried to improve server-side performance by destroying animations, that means their architecture is an ancient, unoptimized mess.

Personally, I think this is an attempt to cover poor optimization on past-gen consoles and very old PCs, or, for example, to improve client-side performance on devices like the Steam Deck.

React · October 29

This is insane, honestly. The fact that U48 is probably THE smallest update in the history of this game and has broken so much is extremely discouraging. Abilities not dealing damage, passives failing to work, issues with blocking, animations completely trashed across the board, multiple PVE encounters bugged mechanically.

Was the entire QA department let go? I cannot fathom how a patch like this could even be pushed live when many of these issues were brought up on the PTS.