[Discusion] Animation Canceling; a good thing & a bad thing

Varicite

Razzak wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Razzak wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Deheart wrote: »

I have played ESO off and on since Beta.

Up until now, I have always ignored any posts having to do with animation canceling since I assumed that it was an exploit.

Thank you for the informative post. This means that I need to check how I play since I probably do animation canceling sometimes without realizing it, and I should be able to increase my effective DPS if I deliberately work on it.

I wish more players felt the way that you do.

"Hey, this thing exists and can help me do even better. Maybe I should try to practice it a little."

Instead, it's become:

"Hey, this thing exists and can help me do even better. Maybe I should try to make it so that nobody can do this because I don't want to do it."

That could also be said for exploits or use of macros.

Except that it's been very clearly stated by devs on more than one occasion that this is not an exploit and entire skills have been reworked to accommodate animation cancelling.

It is an intended interaction of skill usage that was used creatively in a way that surprised ZOS when we were using it in beta, but has since been embraced and encouraged since early access.

Exploits have NEVER been embraced or encouraged by the devs, and macro usage falls into the use of third-party tools that are generally frowned upon.

So no, not really the same thing at all.

I know, but truth be told, it is an exploit that has become officially sanctioned due to ZOS's inability to fix it. Otherwise there would be no animations as canceling them as the only way to be competitive, negates the reason for their existance.

Again, it is the intended interaction of skill usage and it has nothing to do w/ ZOS not being able to fix it, they don't feel the need to fix it because of a couple different factors.

1) Every skill / attack is capped by a GCD, meaning that there is already a hard-coded limit in the game to how fast a player will be able to attack. Animation cancelling does not allow you to bypass this GCD.

2) The alternatives are worse than what they have currently for their idea of fluid combat.

3) They already did "fix it" by adjusting most animations accordingly to accomodate animation cancelling better.

It seems like when people say "they don't know how to fix it", what they really mean is "ZOS didn't get rid of it entirely like I wanted them to, so clearly they must be incompetent".

That's not really the case, they just don't agree w/ you that it's a problem. Why? Mostly for the reasons I just listed.

Rune_Relic

There is actually some signs animation cancelling will actually lower your DPS.
I was playing around with light and heavy attacks intermingled with blocks.
Let say it was far from beneficial.
So you need to get the spreadsheets out to find what combos work and what don't.

BUT....that doesn't help when all the LEET guys say L2P and read the telegraphs...when the telegraphs have been cancelled too.
Even more so in the heat of battle with many other players around you.

Those two points should be reason enough to dump animation cancelling.
1. You need to be a min maxer to get the best out of the system giving them a distinct advantage to everyone else.
2. You cant defend against stuff if you don't know its coming.

Xandryah

By some curious chance i came across the term "Animation CAncelling" only yesterday or 2 days ago!

I think I know what it is, especially after your very detailed and well explained post (i think i understood)

I also think that i now understand why swtor had global cooldown, when using any ability...it prevents to chain attacks undiscriminately and even keybind the chains...i have the feeling that was also the cause why i got killed in Cyrodill in 3 seconds many times in 1v1 fights....

My impression is that there should be a global cooldown...if you can use 3rd-party-software for fighting then it's not good...
I have played swtor for quite a bit and did not know about animation -cancelling...now , i don't believe that even all hardcore players know about animation cancelling...i dare say that 80% of all MMO players around the globe don't know about animation cancelling , so i think that's one reason why there should not be animation cancelling... it's too easy and lazy... it shortens fights and you can't even learn anything because it's so fast... critical chance is already way too high; if you can one-botton-kill a player, i don't think the player would appreciate it; the faster you get killed the faster you start feel you are in the wrong place. it gets a matter of existence basically..

Global Cooldown gives some oxigen in the fight and you can hope not to get killed too fast and "learn" stuff...

i hope i'm correct with my understanding of Animation Cancelling..

Thank you again for the explanatory post

Xandryah

RealRobD

An unnecessary and broken part of the game. Please fix it.

xMovingTarget

Varicite

Much like every thread about this topic, this one also seems to be full of loud, misinformed voices.

/shrug

Xerger

I vote it's a bad thing, I hope this bug gets fixed

Eliteseraph

Varicite wrote: »

Much like every thread about this topic, this one also seems to be full of loud, misinformed voices.

/shrug

Then perhaps you'd care to contribute to turning the discussion to something constructive by enlightening us?

The main problems I see with the animation cancelling issue is that it's fairly ambiguous. As people earlier in the thread have posted, there's no tutorial or tooltip explaining that it's even possible. There's very little information about how to do it correctly, and the info that IS there is often conflicting depending on the source.

Throw on top of that people using 3rd party macros and such to optimize and exploit it's use? Well, it's no wonder people are getting angry about it.

Arcanasx

If animation canceling is here to stay, why not give npc's the ability to intelligently animation cancel their attacks as well?!
You know, it would be so cool and make pve more unpredictable and challenging! Watch with awe as you only have 0.1 seconds to react to their heavy attacks and stuns. Feel helpless as they start doing twice the dps! Who cares about telegraphing, super fast animations that don't even connect are clearly the way to go! It would add so much to the skill factor to the game, whoever can press buttons the fastest is obviously a sign of serious skills. It would also make blocks at the proper time obsolete, which simply makes the game too difficult for some people; instead it'll make sure that all you need to do is hold the block button down if you want to block, and also cast at the same time! It would make pve more challenging for all the whiners who still want to keep their animation cancel and block casting and think pve is too easy. It would also make those people feel better, giving them the illusion that it all only helps themselves and that it doesn't benifit anyone else who takes advantage of the mechanic!

Varicite

Eliteseraph wrote: »

Then perhaps you'd care to contribute to turning the discussion to something constructive by enlightening us?

Varicite wrote: »

Again, it is the intended interaction of skill usage and it has nothing to do w/ ZOS not being able to fix it, they don't feel the need to fix it because of a couple different factors.

1) Every skill / attack is capped by a GCD, meaning that there is already a hard-coded limit in the game to how fast a player will be able to attack. Animation cancelling does not allow you to bypass this GCD.

2) The alternatives are worse than what they have currently for their idea of fluid combat.

3) They already did "fix it" by adjusting most animations accordingly to accomodate animation cancelling better.

It seems like when people say "they don't know how to fix it", what they really mean is "ZOS didn't get rid of it entirely like I wanted them to, so clearly they must be incompetent".

That's not really the case, they just don't agree w/ you that it's a problem. Why? Mostly for the reasons I just listed.

How strange, it's almost like I went into the past and did exactly that before you ever bothered to ask me.

And then was followed by a drove of people still calling it a "bug", saying they "can't fix it", saying that attacks need GCDs, etc.

Does that not pretty much illustrate exactly what I was just saying? <.<

Eliteseraph

Varicite wrote: »

How strange, it's almost like I went into the past and did exactly that before you ever bothered to ask me.

And then was followed by a drove of people still calling it a "bug", saying they "can't fix it", saying that attacks need GCDs, etc.

Does that not pretty much illustrate exactly what I was just saying? <.<

I was addressing the post which I quoted, which added nothing at all to the discussion, and actually seemed to be an attempt at trolling for an angry response from someone. At the very least it was dismissive in nature and didn't add anything useful to the discussion.

But thank you for pointing out your earlier post, since it's easy for me to lose track of who's posting what, especially when they don't have a custom avatar.

As to your counter to people saying Zenimax doesn't know how to fix it: I tend to agree. However, that doesn't mean animation cancelling is in a good state as far as player consumption. The two major flaws being that it's not very well explained(along with MANY other parts of the game mechanics), and it's commonly abused by players using macros rather than their own skill in order to use it.

In that regard I think maybe Zenimax has some work to do. I don't know if saying "they don't know how to fix it" is the right way of putting it, but there's clearly room for improvement.