Combat Animation Memory Reduction

Gabriel_H · November 1

Kelenan7368 wrote: »

Crazy, take something that works great and break it! I have never seen a Developer break their own game to cater to old hardware before.

If they were catering to old hardware, they wouldn't have a fireworks display every time you press a button.

JaxontheUnfortunate · November 1

Recently I as in an older overland zone, more that half of my skills were either not firing or not registering attacks, ping was all over the place bouncing between 80 and 999+. To the point where it’s unplayable mess and each update seems to make things worse.

katanagirl1 · November 2

Grafahel wrote: »

I haven't noticed any difference in light or heavy attack animations, only that sometimes skills don't seem to work. They fire but never hit the enemy, seen it mostly with Force Pulse and Endless Fury. Doesn't happen often though.
But if we're aiming for memory reduction I vote for slashing the cringy lightshows, visual effects and unnecessary explosions from mounts.

Yes, I wonder if this is what is causing the problem.

Radiate77 · November 2

If this makes it to Console launch, that’s going to be the final straw for me, and I’d imagine a lot of other customers.

I’d rather play dying New World for another year while waiting for Chrono Odyssey or Archeage Chronicles than watch my character have a seizure every time I try to do anything combat related.

LukosCreyden · November 2

Radiate77 wrote: »

If this makes it to Console launch, that’s going to be the final straw for me, and I’d imagine a lot of other customers.

I’d rather play dying New World for another year while waiting for Chrono Odyssey or Archeage Chronicles than watch my character have a seizure every time I try to do anything combat related.

Exactly this. I play this game to have fun. I want it to feel fun to play (my attacks actually functioning) and to look good (no spasming animations). If they cannot fix this, I fear I will once again have to sit out and wait. I just got back into the game recently, made a new build I really like. Super ironic that this would happen now.

MashmalloMan · November 2

New system seems to prioritize end animations over animation cancelling, but because most ability animations weren't made to fit within the 1s GCD, they interupt the starting animation of the next queued ability instead.

Blade Cloak and Jabs have about 1.4s animations, you can see the first few mileseconds of Jabs is hidden behind Blade Cloak despite actually casting on time.

You can also see it has about 0.4s extra animation time leading to the main reason the ability flails around like a pool noodle after the previous animation was changed.

Blade Cloak in particular is really hard to follow up with a light attack weave, appearing to not actually fire. The whole thing feels less responsive.

MashmalloMan · November 2

Radiate77 wrote: »

If this makes it to Console launch, that’s going to be the final straw for me, and I’d imagine a lot of other customers.

I’d rather play dying New World for another year while waiting for Chrono Odyssey or Archeage Chronicles than watch my character have a seizure every time I try to do anything combat related.

It's not like they had 6 weeks for the PC NA launch to remove it, and another 2 weeks on live for a total of 8 weeks (2 months) to do the right thing.... Oh wait they did and they won't.

guarstompemoji · November 3

I'm trying to assume it has to do w the rumored upcoming crossplay.

The animations are causing so many issues.

Poor Bahsei -.-;

Æthërnüm · November 3

guarstompemoji wrote: »

I'm trying to assume it has to do w the rumored upcoming crossplay.

The animations are causing so many issues.

Poor Bahsei -.-;

current - yes, old - no.

silentxthreat · November 3

ive noticed skills dont work a lot now

Morvan · November 10

The incremental patch broke even more animations, whenever you barswap to Dual Wield from another weapon you get locked into that other weapon's idle...

Æthërnüm · November 10

Morvan wrote: »

The incremental patch broke even more animations, whenever you barswap to Dual Wield from another weapon you get locked into that other weapon's idle...

nice! finally some patch that broke nothing!

god damn, when they will even do something worthy..........

@ZOS_Kevin , sorry for ping, but this is getting hilarious and frustrating.

Renato90085 · November 10

good new:Fixed few bug
bad new : add more bug

PurpleScroll · November 10

The new patch also broke Gloambound weapons for dual-wield, at least the daggers - when you bar swap from them and back to them, the weapons completely disappear. They also do not unsheathe as fast as other weapons on mouse click, doing it slowly as if you've pressed the keybind instead.

It's beyond ridiculous at this point.

lostineternity · November 10

2h and dual wield swap looks hilarious

@ZOS_Kevin I beg you hire at least 1 QA engineer, this is unacceptable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evCOtNIAV-w

Morvan · November 10

Those animations are definitely on a spaghetti code, though it's funny seeing how other things break as they try to fix it.

Morvan · November 10

Sneaking on 2H is also broken lol

Skorro · November 10

Morvan wrote: »

Sneaking on 2H is also broken lol

Can you imagine being a guard during a sacrament and seeing this go past you 🤣🤣🤣

ImpostorSyndrome · November 10

PurpleScroll wrote: »

The new patch also broke Gloambound weapons for dual-wield, at least the daggers - when you bar swap from them and back to them, the weapons completely disappear. They also do not unsheathe as fast as other weapons on mouse click, doing it slowly as if you've pressed the keybind instead.

It's beyond ridiculous at this point.

Same issue

Majkiy · November 10

Am I the only one who feels like the animations are way slower? been parsing on my DD Dual Wield / 2h sword beamer and it feels sooo slow. It's even slower than before they sped it up

merevie · November 10

I am gutted to lose my dance move after pvp porch victories.

Like, there's almost no joy left in this game, and you guys went after a freaking dance move?

I don't want stupid bright light flashes after doing an ability -hurts my head -but I DO want to be able to afk dance without looking like a nerdy computer geek.

And no, do NOT now go put dance animations in the Crown Store, because we are all so very, very done with current decisions in this game.

Majkiy · November 10

Guys, you can't make this up, the bar swap animation is just gone, daggers spawning literally in XD While my gf's character is holding daggers like two handed weapon after bar swap

ImpostorSyndrome · November 10

2h/2w swap animation is broken

NoticeMeArkay · November 10

I have to hold block on my necromancer to cast skills. Doesn't matter which ones, it affects all of them.
Cannot participate in any form of combat this way.

Tra_Lalan · November 10

Combat feels so bad right now. It makes the game unfun to play.

Treeshka · November 10

I think this memory reduction should be reverted entirely for now, given all the bugs that is now in game. If this memory reduction is so important for new things, they can put it in game in next patch.

Gabriel_H · November 10

Majkiy wrote: »

Guys, you can't make this up, the bar swap animation is just gone, daggers spawning literally in XD While my gf's character is holding daggers like two handed weapon after bar swap

Swapped from 2H to Dual-Wield:

Persists after LA/Skill use.

lostineternity · November 10

Treeshka wrote: »

I think this memory reduction should be reverted entirely for now, given all the bugs that is now in game. If this memory reduction is so important for new things, they can put it in game in next patch.

It was intended to be a part of u46, but postponed because of all negative response. However zos decide to push these in u48 despite everything. We can see the result right now. They ignored players feedback and now chaotically trying to fix all these trash without any testing. AAA experience for playerbase.

frogthroat · November 10

That's not how you hold daggers, you silly dunmer.

And it seems that when switching to dual wield does not have any animation, the weapons just appear in hands. But switching from dual wield to a bar with some other weapon has an animation.

tomofhyrule · November 10

lostineternity wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

I think this memory reduction should be reverted entirely for now, given all the bugs that is now in game. If this memory reduction is so important for new things, they can put it in game in next patch.

It was intended to be a part of u46, but postponed because of all negative response. However zos decide to push these in u48 despite everything. We can see the result right now. They ignored players feedback and now chaotically trying to fix all these trash without any testing. AAA experience for playerbase.

Add to that that we just finally got a reason for it. Granted, many of us suspected it, but Kevin did confirm it in the other thread.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

There’s definitely a lot of consternation about the fact that last-gen consoles and potato PCs are essentially keeping the game hostage. All of this animation rework (and we got the same explanation for Account-wide Achieves and the furnishing limits for housing) are essentially telling us that ESO is physically unable to add new things unless they remove what they already have to cannibalize that space back.

It definitely feels bad that the solution ZOS has taken is “let’s make the current experience worse so we can expand the game in the future.”

It is high time that ZOS consider sunsetting 10+ year old hardware. Yes, that would mean some players who have not upgraded their tech in those 10 (or more!) years would need to upgrade or leave, but technology normally goes obsolete on an 8-year cycle. It is time. And I’m sure the people they’d get back by saying “we’re dropping old hardware support but now you get double furnishing limits!” would even out a lot more than they expect.