The block changes should be reverted - Combat fluidity has been severely damaged

React · January 2020

The block changes on the PTS feel terrible. After several hours of dueling and time spent just hitting dummies and testing different things, there are a number of different issues I've run into.

1. Animation cancelling did NOT remain untouched, as the developer comment states. Certain abilities can still be block cancelled in the same manner as before, while others seem to play out their entire animations before allowing you to activate block. On live, you can block cancel every ability with 100% consistency across the board, cutting off the animations at the same points every time. On the PTS, this is wildly inconsistent and makes the skill based mechanic of animation cancelling feel far less rewarding.

2. "Note the visual effects for blocking still appear as soon as block as officially activated, which has been untouched in terms of how long it takes to activate."
This does not appear to be true in all cases. For example when barswapping on live, your block drops for a VERY small window (somewhere in the range of .3-.5s). On the PTS, it feels like barswapping causes your block to drop and not re-activate for 1.5s. This severely hampers the player's ability to respond quickly to incoming damage by bar swapping and blocking, and makes the practice of "tap blocking", or predicting/rapidly responding to burst damage by blocking for short periods of time, completely inconsistent and unreliable.

3. There is a severe bug occurring in duels (and likely all combat scenarios) where something is causing your character to be FULLY UNABLE TO ACTIVATE BLOCK until you relog. It is hard to say exactly what action causes this to occur, whether it be getting CC'd through block, mid dodge roll, hit by certain effects/abilities, etc. But in probably 4 hours of constant dueling, this happened to me 6x times. I witnessed it happening to opponents 3x times during that same session. Dying does not fix this, /reloadui does not fix this, fast travelling does not fix this. The only way is to log out and back in.

I'm sure more issues related to this new system will arise as we progress further into the PTS. However, I would strongly suggest that the system simply be reverted until a POLISHED rework can be implemented. By implementing a half completed and poorly functioning system that affects the CORE COMBAT MECHANICS, you are going to completely destroy the user experience for people who have spent hundreds, or even thousands of hours honing their timing and skills with the combat system.

Stratforge · January 2020

ZOS please listen to this man.

Spartabunny08 · January 2020

Stratforge wrote: »

ZOS please listen to this man.

Yes please listen. If this goes live I'll have like two builds out of 15 I can use. I really dislike this.

llElLoboll · January 2020

Great points and explanation, I hope they listen.

Elsonso · January 2020

I am going to throw out a wild guess and suggest that they cannot "undo" this change. They are going to have to fix things going forward, if that is the case, so you will want to be pedantically explicit about skills, times, and situations. Otherwise, they won't know what to fix.

Kronuxx · January 2020

Exactly what the OP said. Fix this broken mess, you guys at ZOS assume is an upgrade to block. It is definitely a downgrade compared to live.

React · January 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

I am going to throw out a wild guess and suggest that they cannot "undo" this change. They are going to have to fix things going forward, if that is the case, so you will want to be pedantically explicit about skills, times, and situations. Otherwise, they won't know what to fix.

There is no reason they shouldn't be able to undo this. They simply need to revert any and all changes they made to block, and how block interacts with skill animations during this PTS cycle. They can then release the next iteration of the PTS with all the upcoming changes, minus this mess of a blocking rework.

It HAS to get reverted. They aren't going to be able to fix everything they've broken in the next 5 weeks. The other thing to consider is that these tests have been done in near optimal environment, i.e empty PTS instances. Imagine what it will feel like in cyrodiil, or for console.

Dagoth_Rac · January 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

I am going to throw out a wild guess and suggest that they cannot "undo" this change. They are going to have to fix things going forward, if that is the case, so you will want to be pedantically explicit about skills, times, and situations. Otherwise, they won't know what to fix.

Years ago, they made a fix to animation cancelling in a similar effort to prevent us from hiding what you were doing via animation cancelling. It was such a mess that they completely removed it between PTS and live. I hope they were smart enough to design this block change in a similar way, where if it is causing serious problems (as appears to be the case), they can undo and try again next Update, rather than leave us with broken blocking mechanics for 3 months.

exeeter702 · January 2020

Just so im clear as I havent bothered re downloading the pts to test this, are you saying that the block indication graphic (the little shield outline graphic) is not being displayed when you hit block during the recovery animation of some skills, thus indicating that block is not active? Or are we specifically talking about animations no longer being cut off when hitting block?

Because the later is intended, and the former should still display the block indicator regardless of what superfluous animation is currently playing out.

MentalxHammer · January 2020

We're destroying core mechanics of the game in an attempt to lower server stress??? THIS IS NOT THE WAY. Revert.

BalticBlues · January 2020

I assume that Block now needs to confirmed by the server before it becomes active.
I am afraid that this will destroy fluid battle and S&B builds in PvP:

ZOS, please think about what LAG does.
It does not hurt so much if an attack will not happen because of LAG.
But it can destroy a player if a block will not happen because of LAG.

colossalvoids · January 2020

They definitely need more time on this as right now it's not even close to be live implemented and like always couple of weeks will not do much.

Sandman929 · January 2020

Isn't changing block the central focus of their performance improvements?

Elsonso · January 2020

Liam12548 wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

I am going to throw out a wild guess and suggest that they cannot "undo" this change. They are going to have to fix things going forward, if that is the case, so you will want to be pedantically explicit about skills, times, and situations. Otherwise, they won't know what to fix.

There is no reason they shouldn't be able to undo this. They simply need to revert any and all changes they made to block, and how block interacts with skill animations during this PTS cycle. They can then release the next iteration of the PTS with all the upcoming changes, minus this mess of a blocking rework.

This is all mixed up in server optimizations, so there are reasons. Certainly reasons that prevent them from doing it for this update. This may be one of those things. Naturally, I don't know for sure. Maybe they can toggle it.

NoSoup · January 2020

Isn't the point of the PTS to find bugs like these so they can be fixed before going live instead of just throwing your hands in the air and saying nope, dont change it?

Clearly there are performance gains to be had for changing it, now the source of the bugs have to be identified and fixed, it's literally been 4 days for the PTS. Chill mate

React · January 2020

NoSoup wrote: »

Isn't the point of the PTS to find bugs like these so they can be fixed before going live instead of just throwing your hands in the air and saying nope, dont change it?

Clearly there are performance gains to be had for changing it, now the source of the bugs have to be identified and fixed, it's literally been 4 days for the PTS. Chill mate

Which performance gains are so clear that you've already seen them on day 4 of the PTS, "mate"? So far, the PTS feels laggier than ever.

The fact is that this attempt they've made is fully breaking the system, not just causing some minor bugs to occur. I don't think anyone who knows the history of this game thinks the current development team is capable of making changes to something like blocking or animation cancelling without fully breaking the system.

It is important that they know as early as possible that this was a failed attempt, so that we actually might have a chance of it being reverted before the patch goes live.

Qbiken · January 2020

Revert the block changes like they're on live, because the implementation on PTS is absolutely horrible.

Anyron · January 2020

Whohoo! Blockcasters RIP

xaraan · January 2020

Because PvE tanking in this game wasn't already miserable enough. They should not have made blocking this complicated.

WreckfulAbandon · January 2020

I use S&B in PvP right now mainly since all of my other builds have been nerfed steadily over the years.

And lately I've been enjoying getting into PvE tanking. So this change looks really bad right now to me.

ZOS_Mika · January 2020

Greetings,

We have recently removed some rude/non-constructive commentary from this thread. This is a reminder to keep the discussion civil. We highly value everyone's feedback, but we do ask that it stays constructive.

Mettaricana · January 2020

Liam12548 wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

Isn't the point of the PTS to find bugs like these so they can be fixed before going live instead of just throwing your hands in the air and saying nope, dont change it?

Clearly there are performance gains to be had for changing it, now the source of the bugs have to be identified and fixed, it's literally been 4 days for the PTS. Chill mate

Which performance gains are so clear that you've already seen them on day 4 of the PTS, "mate"? So far, the PTS feels laggier than ever.

The fact is that this attempt they've made is fully breaking the system, not just causing some minor bugs to occur. I don't think anyone who knows the history of this game thinks the current development team is capable of making changes to something like blocking or animation cancelling without fully breaking the system.

It is important that they know as early as possible that this was a failed attempt, so that we actually might have a chance of it being reverted before the patch goes live.

Accurate ive skipped last 2 dlcs of the year of the dragon after reading all the stuff they broke nerfed buffed then nerfed again lookin like skipping year of skyrim if they done hire a crew that can do more than mash their face into a keyboard and call it coding...

WAMB0 · January 2020

As I understand the actual point of "blocking" did not change - only the visuals.
Except for the barswap, that should be improved definitely.

It will need adjustments / getting used to on player side, but I kind of think its nice to see more of the animation without really loosing "block defense". (I didnt test myself but watched nefas video, and you can still react really fast with block canceling, the block works, even if the skill animations continues a bit longer)

exeeter702 · January 2020

WAMB0 wrote: »

As I understand the actual point of "blocking" did not change - only the visuals.
Except for the barswap, that should be improved definitely.

It will need adjustments / getting used to on player side, but I kind of think its nice to see more of the animation without really loosing "block defense". (I didnt test myself but watched nefas video, and you can still react really fast with block canceling, the block works, even if the skill animations continues a bit longer)

This is what I'm asking... are people just confused and upset that superfluous recovery animations are no longer getting cut off regardless of the blocking state?

Kronuxx · January 2020

WAMB0 wrote: »

As I understand the actual point of "blocking" did not change - only the visuals.
Except for the barswap, that should be improved definitely.

It will need adjustments / getting used to on player side, but I kind of think its nice to see more of the animation without really loosing "block defense". (I didnt test myself but watched nefas video, and you can still react really fast with block canceling, the block works, even if the skill animations continues a bit longer)

No, the blocking defense has been altered in fact slowed down, to the point if you bar swap, and try to immediately block, it is delayed. In addition, block cancelling has been negated for many skills ultimately leading to slower reactionary blocks because sometimes the skill playout is rather prolonged compared to block cancelling. It's not just visuals, the block changes in general have affected the "block defense" as you put it.

usmcjdking · January 2020

Liam12548 wrote: »

The fact is that this attempt they've made is fully breaking the system, not just causing some minor bugs to occur. I don't think anyone who knows the history of this game thinks the current development team is capable of making changes to something like blocking or animation cancelling without fully breaking the system.

It is important that they know as early as possible that this was a failed attempt, so that we actually might have a chance of it being reverted before the patch goes live.

To be clear, there isn't a single poster on this forum that has the technical acumen to make a claim like this. And no matter how salient your original point was, this type of attitude will get the baby thrown out with the bathwater.

jadarock · January 2020

Why are they tinkering with block and all these other things? How about fixing cc break/immunity and such ? You know stuff thats broken! We are all tired of the unnecessary changes when there is a clear list of broken things they could fix.

And I respectfully disagree @usmcjdking
Zos has a track record that we all have had a front row seat to. They break things and dont even know it then we have to live with it waiting for fixes for months at a time. Not to mention all the buffs and then subsequent nerfs they dont play their own game to spot these and other bugs/issues
That is telling enough ...

Kesstryl · January 2020

Because of Carpal Tunnel, I mainly play tanks and healers PVE. I really hope they don't mess up tanking with this change. I was pleased to see not so many nerfs this patch and thought about re-subbing, but not if they mess up tanking like this. Tanks need to be able to block on demand to survive one shot mechanics that newer content keeps relying on.

Gilvoth · January 2020

i love this new change, makes block and block casting far better.
i hope this change stays this way.

Gilvoth · January 2020

one of the main things i love about this block change,
is that we are now able to see the other actions taking place that were previously hidden by the block canceling.
all of the canceled animations now are showing and allow us a fair chance to react to all the animations and damage skills coming at us instead of just a FLASH and glitched actions appearance.
i love this and hope we see more of it.

Fruity_Ninja · January 2020

ZOS please revert the block changes. They are by far the worst changes on this PTS. OP has covered the reasons why perfectly.