A desperate plea for ZOS: Please remove Animation cancelling..

KramUzibra

No thanks I look forward to learning how to animation cancel. It gives eso a unique fighting experience. Plus it weeds out the weak and non skilled players.

Remdale

No. Having to deal with long animations is a pain in the ass and a PvP killer. I remember Aion and how me and others left due to being locked in animations. Furthermore, it adds another element of skill and interaction in this game that is much needed for the longterm, since it is made for consoles and there is only so much you can do with that.

Instead, the game needs to be better balanced with animation cancelling in mind, and players need to be made more aware of what it is, how to do it, and why to do it. Some repeated tips, and if possible an in-game instruction.

Because, it IS a very large difference in player effectiveness, and for someone to be unaware of it and try to be competitive with others with the game difficulty somewhat balanced around it is terrible.

jrkhan

@Hiero_Glyph

Instant abilities are instant cast
There may be travel time for a projectile, or a dot component, but the ability has been cast instantly. If you were required to wait for an animation to finish, how is that different than a cast time?

Regarding latency:
This is testable in game.
Try playing normally with a light attack + ability + bash

Then connect to a VPN on the other side of the country.
Use the same timing in your input.

The game will feel less responsive, but animation canceling is happening client side, there's no latency involved in clipping your attack. The inputs make it to the server slightly later, but the relative timing between the 3 inputs isn't effected at all.

Test it.
I know it's usually against TOS but for the sake of testing, try it with a macro - the same sequence that works at 50ms ping works at 300ms.

Don't trust me on it.
Try it in a controlled test, and prove me wrong.

Ishammael

Jowrik wrote: »

Hiero_Glyph wrote: »

Cuyler wrote: »

Hiero_Glyph wrote: »

@Cuyler

Not everyone has a choice of selecting an optimal server location. I mean there are no Oceanic servers or Asian servers and depending on where you are in comparison to the regional megaserver (NA=Texas, EU=Germany) your speeds may vary. This is compounded when we include FPS loss due to performance issues as registering an input may require additional milliseconds that you do not have. As I noted previously, the other night I was unable to weapon swap cancel consistently since the game was struggling to keep up with what was happening. The result is that if the game requires a low ping to compensate for FPS drops then there is a problem that is outside of the player's control.

And yes, milliseconds can matter as anyone who has played a competitive shooter knows since when you face a player with a superior ping you can often be shooting at their ghost. What I mean is that you will see them come around a corner but in reality they already came around it and reaacted to you before you even saw them. The problem is that everything you do is delayed so not only do you see updates more slowly, but your inputs are registered more slowly, and you must wait for the animations (which are delayed) before you can input the next action, etc. The result is that what may only be a miniscule delay can end up costing you a noticeable amount of time since all of these things add up.

I fully understand (I played COD since the first modern warfare, I was the guy with the 30:1 K:D ratio). Anyways, the solution however is not explicit to animation cancelling, as simply balancing that would not alleviate the actual problem. I know it's a long shot, but requesting additional servers and requesting for bug fixes is really the solution. Animation cancelling is just a scapegoat.

As I have noted in detail previously, clipping an entire enimation is not skilled animation canceling. ZOS did not design ESO to handle animation canceling in a balanced manner. The fact that they are accepting it is just a lazy resolution to a current problem. I agree that animation canceling is not the primary issue but leaving it as is only makes these issues all the worse.

All animations needs to be given mandatory portions that cannot be clipped short. Even instant abilities should still have some portion of their animation visually represented. This gives players time to react and also allows them to counter certain abilites with reflects or other defensive skills. This would promote skillful play as it allows every player a chance to react. Additionally it would make knowing when you can clip an animation critical as you could literally abort an action instead of just animation canceling it.

Could you imagine a 1v1 where a Sorc aborts their own damage shield animation by mistake? Yes, mistakes like that should be costly and if you mess up the other player should be given a chance to take advantage of your mistake. Additioanlly, requiring a mandatory portion of an animation allows players a chance to interrupt the ability. ZOS could balance certain abilities like they mistakenly did with Wrecking Blow so that spamming interrupts would not work. Again, it's about balancing the animation canceling by giving players a chance to react according to what visual cues they see, not about seeing who can cancel the most animations in the shortest amount of time.

Anyway, ZOS has a lot of work before Cyrodiil is working properly so fixing animation canceling is secondary to general performance issues but it is worth noting that the way ZOS implemented animation canceling demonstrates their inexperience in this area.

I agree on this 100%.

Here's a private message from a user on the forums sent to me on this subject. It's worth thinking about... @Wrobel @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

"Saw post about animation cancelling. Actually, having studied PvP for 2 years, I can say I am 99% certain that it is what is at the root of the PvP lag. Yes, there have been other issues, which ZOS is slowly clearing up, but now the only time servers lag is when the large well known AOE bomb groups are present, and they always use animation cancelling.

What I believe is happening is their client cancels, the server acknowledges to them, but to the rest of the world the server wants to play the animation. This causes a desync because the server has no instruction about what to do in that case. The best supporting evidence on this is the NUMEROUS times I hear players attacking me, yet there is NO one engaged with me from my clients view. This is not lag, I have the highest most recent gaming machine (six months old) and the prior one was 1 year old.

While many believe that number of players cause issue, well to a point yes, but even in the busiest city, my latency never goes over 100 and FPS is always at least 50 so that shows it is something caused specifically with the mechanics I speak of.

Feel free to repost this, I am muted from posting due to the fact I pointed out too many wrong posts from devs."

This probably the dumbest thing I have read all day. Claim after unproveable claim.

@Ezareth is correct. Animation canceling isn't going to win you a fight you would not have otherwise won. Sure, it is important for top pve dps.

usmcjdking

Remember that time Mike Tyson animation cancelled his right uppercut for a sweet KO?

Yeah I don't.

Ezareth

Maim wrote: »

Debate this all you want. When I notice that mashing buttons, coupled with mild latency and a 2H weapon equates to me 'weaving' *coughwhatabullspitwaytojustifybrokenmechanicscough* a heavy attack and wrecking blow spam in less time than it should take to do both I'm bothered by this. O wait. Been using this now as those big clunky TWO HANDED (read as SLOW, HEAVY, DIFFICULT TO WEILD) weapons slice through the air faster than a set of daggers???? Animation cancel a Steel Tornado (with that room clearing reach?????) with block. Cast faster, do more damage on a high area execution aoe....

I'm sorry. Leave animation cancelling alone like all those people who depend on it for their DPS numbers want you to. Leave it alone, but for the sake of hoping that something that occurs in this game MAKES ANY SENSE AT ALL for all that you do, REMOVE THE DAMAGE THAT OCCURS WHEN YOU CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL a skill in exchange for something relevant to the course of your combat.

Gonna animation cancel payment of subscription. It won't actually charge my credit card, but I'll still get ESOPlus membership status. Sound about right?

Total falsehoods. You can't cast anything faster by animation cancelling it. Block casting Steel tornato allows you to cast it at exactly the same speed as spamming it normally except you are then blocking (and no longer regenning Stam) while you use it.

The fact that 4 people agree with you and think this is a thing shows just the kind of people we're dealing with here.

Hiero_Glyph wrote: »

@jrkhan

No instant ability is actually instant in the sense that it deals damage the moment you press the button. All instant abilities have an animation that begins to play the instant you press the button. The only way for an instant ability to deal damage at that exact moment is if you animation cancel. This was a huge problem for Dawnbreaker as it applied not only the initial damage but the full DoT all at once when it was animation canceled. This is just one example of how poorly animation canceling is programmed by ZOS. Even when you weave light attacks you will hear the sound of the attack while performing another action. The game simply does not know what to do when you animation cancel as it tries to apply multiple effects simultaneously, which is why it is so broken.

As for latency, this causes all the inputs to be delayed. you can still animation cancel but your response time will be delayed so if you light attack, skill, bash then it will take slightly longer for all of these inputs to occur. This is no different then my shooting at ghosts example that occurs in many shooters. The point being that as all of the inputs are delayed the player with high latency will be weaving slower even if they input the commands just as fast as a low latency player.

Regarding fps drops, these can actually cause inputs to be missed by the game. So if you gap close, light attack, skill and that skill has a conditional range then the game cannot perform that action unless it properly performs the previous actions. This is also why spamming just one skill is far more consistent even during fps drops. Likewise, weapon swapping can be delayed and inputs lost since certain conditions are no longer met. Just the other night I was weapon swap canceling and the next thing I knew I was on the wrong bar casting the wrong skills since the game dropped my weapon swap input. This can also happen with CCs as you may be affected after you have input commands and are just waiting for the game to catch-up but the CC invalidates those inputs.

Simply not true. The game has networking logic built in to account for latency. All good multiplayer games have had this in the past decade of gaming. Your actions responses will still be received by the server exactly as a player who has a sub 100 ping would be received...the only difference is the communication back to your client. I animation cancel with 300+ ping all the time, (my internet is garbage many times) and other than the obvious latency issues caused by my connection I don't have any issues chaining various commands together.

Ezareth

usmcjdking wrote: »

Remember that time Mike Tyson animation cancelled his right uppercut for a sweet KO?

Yeah I don't.

That's because it was an instant cast and didn't need to be wound up for a second before he could hit his opponent with it.

usmcjdking

HEY ANIMATION TEAM!

YOU'RE FIRED. THE PLAYERBASE HAS SPOKEN, AND WE WANT TO CANCEL ALL OF YOUR ANIMATIONS.

Hiero_Glyph

Ezareth wrote: »

Maim wrote: »

Debate this all you want. When I notice that mashing buttons, coupled with mild latency and a 2H weapon equates to me 'weaving' *coughwhatabullspitwaytojustifybrokenmechanicscough* a heavy attack and wrecking blow spam in less time than it should take to do both I'm bothered by this. O wait. Been using this now as those big clunky TWO HANDED (read as SLOW, HEAVY, DIFFICULT TO WEILD) weapons slice through the air faster than a set of daggers???? Animation cancel a Steel Tornado (with that room clearing reach?????) with block. Cast faster, do more damage on a high area execution aoe....

I'm sorry. Leave animation cancelling alone like all those people who depend on it for their DPS numbers want you to. Leave it alone, but for the sake of hoping that something that occurs in this game MAKES ANY SENSE AT ALL for all that you do, REMOVE THE DAMAGE THAT OCCURS WHEN YOU CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL a skill in exchange for something relevant to the course of your combat.

Gonna animation cancel payment of subscription. It won't actually charge my credit card, but I'll still get ESOPlus membership status. Sound about right?

Total falsehoods. You can't cast anything faster by animation cancelling it. Block casting Steel tornato allows you to cast it at exactly the same speed as spamming it normally except you are then blocking (and no longer regenning Stam) while you use it.

The fact that 4 people agree with you and think this is a thing shows just the kind of people we're dealing with here.

Hiero_Glyph wrote: »

@jrkhan

No instant ability is actually instant in the sense that it deals damage the moment you press the button. All instant abilities have an animation that begins to play the instant you press the button. The only way for an instant ability to deal damage at that exact moment is if you animation cancel. This was a huge problem for Dawnbreaker as it applied not only the initial damage but the full DoT all at once when it was animation canceled. This is just one example of how poorly animation canceling is programmed by ZOS. Even when you weave light attacks you will hear the sound of the attack while performing another action. The game simply does not know what to do when you animation cancel as it tries to apply multiple effects simultaneously, which is why it is so broken.

As for latency, this causes all the inputs to be delayed. you can still animation cancel but your response time will be delayed so if you light attack, skill, bash then it will take slightly longer for all of these inputs to occur. This is no different then my shooting at ghosts example that occurs in many shooters. The point being that as all of the inputs are delayed the player with high latency will be weaving slower even if they input the commands just as fast as a low latency player.

Regarding fps drops, these can actually cause inputs to be missed by the game. So if you gap close, light attack, skill and that skill has a conditional range then the game cannot perform that action unless it properly performs the previous actions. This is also why spamming just one skill is far more consistent even during fps drops. Likewise, weapon swapping can be delayed and inputs lost since certain conditions are no longer met. Just the other night I was weapon swap canceling and the next thing I knew I was on the wrong bar casting the wrong skills since the game dropped my weapon swap input. This can also happen with CCs as you may be affected after you have input commands and are just waiting for the game to catch-up but the CC invalidates those inputs.

Simply not true. The game has networking logic built in to account for latency. All good multiplayer games have had this in the past decade of gaming. Your actions responses will still be received by the server exactly as a player who has a sub 100 ping would be received...the only difference is the communication back to your client. I animation cancel with 300+ ping all the time, (my internet is garbage many times) and other than the obvious latency issues caused by my connection I don't have any issues chaining various commands together.

By the very definition of the term latency there is no way your response time is the same if your connection is slower. I never stated anywhere that this delay is significant but noted how when chaining multiple actions there will be slight delays throughout as it takes longer for the server to recognize and register the input. Again, anyone who has played a competitive shooter undertands how this works as even with things like networking logic, unless all players are in the same room, some of them will get updates faster than others. The famous example is that you shoot first but still die, only to see in the killcam that you never even fired a shot. No amount of logic will offset latency unless you are delaying every player to the slowest connection rate, which is not what happens. For most players this difference is imperceptible, but it is still present and can become noticeable if other factors compound it. How often have you tried to Bolt Escape only to have the game take a full second before registering the command? This issue is not exclusive to fps drops either but is far more pronounced when they do occur.

EDIT: Also, your ping is just an average and does not mean that your connection never spikes. As a result, some connections may spike more frequently than others and the result is a perceptible delay despite otherwise being stable with a ~300 ping.

Lava_Croft

The problem is that animation cancelling is a bit nasty in a game where you're supposed to get your information from visual indicators. Implement it properly and it's a great gameplay mechanic.

Chori

Lava_Croft wrote: »

The problem is that animation cancelling is a bit nasty in a game where you're supposed to get your information from visual indicators. Implement it properly and it's a great gameplay mechanic.

Exactly.

Like some other people said and questioned, how can a game or such feature could offer skillful gameplay when you only see 2 of the 4 things casted at you. The lack of counterplay to the 2 moves you can't/didn't see, is what goes completely opposite to a concept of a skillful game/mechanic.

aidenmoore

Please do not remove animation cancel. If possible, I want them remove all animations. I just want my character to stood there and stare at the bad guys and they all die.

stewart.leslie76b16_ESO

aidenmoore wrote: »

Please do not remove animation cancel. If possible, I want them remove all animations. I just want my character to stood there and stare at the bad guys and they all die.

+Why am I think Men that stares at goats?

zornyan

Chori wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

The problem is that animation cancelling is a bit nasty in a game where you're supposed to get your information from visual indicators. Implement it properly and it's a great gameplay mechanic.

Exactly.

Like some other people said and questioned, how can a game or such feature could offer skillful gameplay when you only see 2 of the 4 things casted at you. The lack of counterplay to the 2 moves you can't/didn't see, is what goes completely opposite to a concept of a skillful game/mechanic.

But you can counter anything, nobody can cast more than 1 skill a second, or more if a channel like biting jabs or wrecking blow, the GCD stops that.

All you would be missing is a quick light attack, which you can't really counter unless blocking, which you would be blocking the skill before hand anyway?

Even macros can't do more than 1 a second. Period

Chori

zornyan wrote: »

Chori wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

The problem is that animation cancelling is a bit nasty in a game where you're supposed to get your information from visual indicators. Implement it properly and it's a great gameplay mechanic.

Exactly.

Like some other people said and questioned, how can a game or such feature could offer skillful gameplay when you only see 2 of the 4 things casted at you. The lack of counterplay to the 2 moves you can't/didn't see, is what goes completely opposite to a concept of a skillful game/mechanic.

But you can counter anything, nobody can cast more than 1 skill a second, or more if a channel like biting jabs or wrecking blow, the GCD stops that.

All you would be missing is a quick light attack, which you can't really counter unless blocking, which you would be blocking the skill before hand anyway?

Even macros can't do more than 1 a second. Period

Im not talking about abilities, I'm talking about damaging hits. Someone can be jabbin you and or doign whatever else and for example cast an attack then dawnbreaker followed by a block or bash or whatever you use, and then you use something else.

Result: You saw everything but the dawnbreaker and the bash, you died to it and then the person goes what the hell did just kill me type of thing.

I do that to people too, so no. We should not be obligated to wear an specific armor/item setup so I can be blocking an entire fight and have that as the so called counterplay for a broken mechanic. Bring more arguments, I just proved you wrong on how you cannot see things coming at you.

jrkhan

usmcjdking wrote: »

Remember that time Mike Tyson animation cancelled his right uppercut for a sweet KO?

Yeah I don't.

This should be our new barometer for balance decisions in ESO.

Remember that time Mike Tyson kept slipping punches and 1vx'd Sypher Ali, Ali Saber, and Ezareth Ali!?

Seriously, nerf Mike Tyson so OP.


Edit.

Actually, come to think of it..
I played Mike Tyson's Punch Out back in the day. If I remember correctly (from when I was 10), Mike Tyson effectively animation canceled some of his punches Made the last fight the challenge that it was.

usmcjdking

jrkhan wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

Remember that time Mike Tyson animation cancelled his right uppercut for a sweet KO?

Yeah I don't.

This should be our new barometer for balance decisions in ESO.

Remember that time Mike Tyson kept slipping punches and 1vx'd Sypher Ali, Ali Saber, and Ezareth Ali!?

Seriously, nerf Mike Tyson so OP.


Edit.

Actually, come to think of it..
I played Mike Tyson's Punch Out back in the day. If I remember correctly (from when I was 10), Mike Tyson effectively animation canceled some of his punches Made the last fight the challenge that it was.

I don't remember that time, but I don't think that's too far off from the truth.

NEways. MTPO he didn't animation cancel. It was animation skipping. Weave, Weave, no frames, Mike's left hook is in your face and KTFO.

gelbermeister

I'm fully able to use animation cancelling, but i don't like it. I like to see what i'm doing, i like to see the results of my doing. Long animations may are PVP killers, half animations definetly are RPG killers... A speedup for animations was already suggested. One could implement theese speedups for PVP and Vet dungeons only.

MrGrimey

Love animation canceling, It adds to ESO's amazing combat system even though I never animation cancel unless I really need to block. Due to the 1 second global cooldown, animation canceling doesn't really do anything anyways.

If anyone here played DCUO when they removed clipping, then they know how much that ruined the game

Van_0S

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Removing animation canceling makes this game another copy pasted generic MMO with uninspired combat that plays itself for you once you get geared out. Animation canceling adds a whole new layer of depth to this game that sets it aside from other current MMO's and even most games. ESO is filled with poor coding, issues, lag, and bug all abound. If you remove the redeeming quality of this game, the combat satisfaction, you kill this game.

What ZoS needs to do is further embrace animation canceling and explain it in game via questing/combat queue tips. Instead of making a few comments here and there about how it's here to stay they need to flat out make sure it is seen and accepted by the community to the extent where all of these utterly stupid and pointless threads disappear. Opinions are great, but a lot of this community's opinions are based on extremely outdated or flat out incorrect information. If people would take more time researching and dissecting/thinking about things like balance, mechanics, etc- so much negativity would wash away and these forums could move forward to more civil and rational discussions.

ZoS has even made a lot of strides in trying to appease the small crowds who insist on refusing to learn these mechanics by making sets that revolve around non animation canceling builds/play styles. While I personally think it's a waste, at least they've understood some people don't like that sort of mechanical demand in this game.

If you're going to say this game feels clunky with animation canceling or immersion breaking because you can't watch your enemy do a light attack in between a cast or ability, you really think adding a half second animation to it that you can't override is going to be any different? Combat will be filled with artificial time that is spent just watching, rather than reacting. If I have 20k health and you can only do one attack every second, and someone hits me with an instant cast ability for 5k, that's 4 seconds of those attacks before I'm dead. In between each of my responses to his attack, I can't change my mind or queue up my next attack because I'm locked into an animation. Animations rip freedom of reaction and force you to into something that may spell your doom. You force people into animations and nothing is going to change. People will still die in PvP and complain about all the same stuff they do now, but even louder.

If you want skill, learn animation canceling beyond what most people know about. There's so much more to this game's combat system other than clipping animations, there are special rules that are in place that dictate the flow of combat, but there are many ways to alter the flow with special tricks you can learn and master.

I guess, zeni should make a tutorial quest of how make use of animation canceling like kill that enemy in 1 sec by making use of animation canceling

a.skelton92

It is tacky. Not much more to say. I can animation cancel (not that its bloody difficult anyway), but I just refuse to use it. I want to win a fight through good gameplay and skill than through some glitchy mechanism. The ONLY time I will use it is if my opponent is doing it continuously thinking he is awesome so I will fight fire with fire.

JaJaLuka

Cuyler wrote: »

JaJaLuka wrote: »

Cuyler wrote: »

NO.

"Skill Weaving" adds complexity and dynamics to the combat system. If your only gripe is that the animation doesn't match what is happening, then request the animations be shortened. The combat system is more intuitive than any other I've played.

I sincerely hope ZOS never makes this game a boring combat copy of other games where I can literally take a smoke break after activating an ability while watching my animations.

ps. block casting is not lazy, it's the opposite actually. NOT blocking is lazy. Plus they addressed this with the no stam regen while blocking. moving on.

Hexyl wrote: »

learn animation canceling ? skilled player use it ?

that joke. All players who use it, do it with macro. Macro is skilled ? u_u

Here's an obligatory L2P post for you. Where is my LOL button?! Skill weaving (aka animation canceling, whatever you want to call it) is SO FREAKING EASY. Just get over it and L2P already. No macros needed.

Lol! (lol button pressed). Consider those with higher ping (but still considered acceptable levels); they're dead or taking extreme damage before they even realise the attacks have happened (in PvP at least). Animation cancelling was an extremely unbalanced anomaly to enter this game.

I remember one post ages ago of someone claiming how intelligent it was and was trying to teach players how to do it, I agreed with the post as it was trying to bring all players onto a fair playing field, but it doesn't cancel the fact that given this game is real time, it makes it extremely unbalanced in some areas.

ZOS is supposed to balance the game around players who play on potatoes, with dial up connections or choose to join a server located on the other side of the world now?

Even when I played on the MacBook I was never audacious enough to suggest such selfish requests. The game has recommended system requirements for a reason, and ZOS spends millions to build servers "close" to where people live. It's not their fault that someone chooses to play on a server that is not located in their hemisphere. THE PLAYER takes on the responsibility associated with that choice, not ZOS.

Finally, the fact of the matter is that with or without animation cancelling, high latency will put you at an disadvantage. Myth debunked.

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Animation Cancelling since day one, I still do it heavily when I play.

Animation Cancelling does not add a layer of skill, it adds a layer of advantages for people who have the frame rate and latency to successfully animation cancel. You might as well say your 50 ping means you have more skill than someone with a 200 ping.

We have great animations in ESO that act as cooldowns, please make them function properly.

No no....the latency excuse is the biggest cop out ever. I've played ESO on a MacBook that had consistently high latency (10-20 fps and 100+ ping) and a brand new PC gaming rig @90 fps on ultra <100 ping and I can tell you this rebuttle is just that, an excuse. I had no problems weaving when I was dealing with latency. What the latency arguments are about is a difference of milliseconds..... MILLISECONDS. It's just not an issue at that small a scale.

And when they market the game in Australia with NO server located in that hemisphere?

Also, don't be stupid, there is no myth. Yes someone with 50 ping has an innate advantage over someone with 200 ping, it's just with animation cancelling they have even more of said advantage.

JaJaLuka

Ezareth wrote: »

Maim wrote: »

Debate this all you want. When I notice that mashing buttons, coupled with mild latency and a 2H weapon equates to me 'weaving' *coughwhatabullspitwaytojustifybrokenmechanicscough* a heavy attack and wrecking blow spam in less time than it should take to do both I'm bothered by this. O wait. Been using this now as those big clunky TWO HANDED (read as SLOW, HEAVY, DIFFICULT TO WEILD) weapons slice through the air faster than a set of daggers???? Animation cancel a Steel Tornado (with that room clearing reach?????) with block. Cast faster, do more damage on a high area execution aoe....

I'm sorry. Leave animation cancelling alone like all those people who depend on it for their DPS numbers want you to. Leave it alone, but for the sake of hoping that something that occurs in this game MAKES ANY SENSE AT ALL for all that you do, REMOVE THE DAMAGE THAT OCCURS WHEN YOU CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL a skill in exchange for something relevant to the course of your combat.

Gonna animation cancel payment of subscription. It won't actually charge my credit card, but I'll still get ESOPlus membership status. Sound about right?

Total falsehoods. You can't cast anything faster by animation cancelling it. Block casting Steel tornato allows you to cast it at exactly the same speed as spamming it normally except you are then blocking (and no longer regenning Stam) while you use it.

The fact that 4 people agree with you and think this is a thing shows just the kind of people we're dealing with here.

Hiero_Glyph wrote: »

@jrkhan

No instant ability is actually instant in the sense that it deals damage the moment you press the button. All instant abilities have an animation that begins to play the instant you press the button. The only way for an instant ability to deal damage at that exact moment is if you animation cancel. This was a huge problem for Dawnbreaker as it applied not only the initial damage but the full DoT all at once when it was animation canceled. This is just one example of how poorly animation canceling is programmed by ZOS. Even when you weave light attacks you will hear the sound of the attack while performing another action. The game simply does not know what to do when you animation cancel as it tries to apply multiple effects simultaneously, which is why it is so broken.

As for latency, this causes all the inputs to be delayed. you can still animation cancel but your response time will be delayed so if you light attack, skill, bash then it will take slightly longer for all of these inputs to occur. This is no different then my shooting at ghosts example that occurs in many shooters. The point being that as all of the inputs are delayed the player with high latency will be weaving slower even if they input the commands just as fast as a low latency player.

Regarding fps drops, these can actually cause inputs to be missed by the game. So if you gap close, light attack, skill and that skill has a conditional range then the game cannot perform that action unless it properly performs the previous actions. This is also why spamming just one skill is far more consistent even during fps drops. Likewise, weapon swapping can be delayed and inputs lost since certain conditions are no longer met. Just the other night I was weapon swap canceling and the next thing I knew I was on the wrong bar casting the wrong skills since the game dropped my weapon swap input. This can also happen with CCs as you may be affected after you have input commands and are just waiting for the game to catch-up but the CC invalidates those inputs.

Simply not true. The game has networking logic built in to account for latency. All good multiplayer games have had this in the past decade of gaming. Your actions responses will still be received by the server exactly as a player who has a sub 100 ping would be received...the only difference is the communication back to your client. I animation cancel with 300+ ping all the time, (my internet is garbage many times) and other than the obvious latency issues caused by my connection I don't have any issues chaining various commands together.

Actually using a simply example such as light attack -> flame lash -> shield bash your burst damage is certainly upped by a margin, it may or may not win you the fight but the fact remains it does increase your burst. That particular example is a weaker one, but perhaps using dawnbreaker and cancelling that, it certainly does hit you much faster and without warning.
I'm sure you've tried it, and I assume it just slipped your mind because you're usually pretty spot on with some facts, but if you haven't, go up to an enemy and try dawnbreaker with and without cancelling the animation with a shield bash and you definitely see a difference. You only need to examine a certain former EP emperor's tactics (NA server PC, name starts with M, not shaming, just using as an example) using dawnbreaker to see this in action, in fact I think he released a video playing this style. Those are just some examples.
On the chaining commands together, I agree with you in that 200 - 250 ping won't stop you from AC yourself, but it's seeing it coming that's an issue. For me there have been times it has definitely made a difference in that I block something on my screen, only for that damage to still land in full.

Jade1986

lordrichter wrote: »

If ZOS likes it, I think that animation canceling is here to stay. Unintended or not, it makes the combat feel more responsive because you are not waiting for some animation to end before the next attack. Button mashing is much more satisfying when the buttons actually do something.

Without animation canceling, people will say the game is laggy or that the game is unresponsive. People will /unsubscribe and there will be many vocal complaints about how ZOS nerfed the game, listened to the wrong people, did not listen to the people, etc.

If ZOS is good with animation canceling, their best play is to leave it alone. They cannot win if they change it.

Actually they only rolled with it because they didn't know how to fix it. That is the ony reason, they never fully endorsed it or supported it.

@ OP - Very well thought out post and I agree 100%, but you are going to get macro using players coming in here screaming it requires skill, when it really does not. It took me a whole 5 minutes of practice to get it down perfectly for my SnB dps character.

If it were officially endorsed, there would be a tutorial IN GAME that described how to do it, and there is not, so it is unintended, and ZoS has only went with it because they are too lazy to fix it. Fixing animation cancelling would fix a plethora of balancing issues, without fixing it, you can forget any kind of real balance.

Jade1986

Note the amount of agrees the original poster got and then compare that to the people defending animation cancelling. It is clear what the people want. And the people that don't come on the forums probably don't even know what it is, and when they see it, it probably boils down to cheating to them. So better to be rid of it.

Jade1986

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

OdinForge wrote: »

Jowrik wrote: »

OdinForge wrote: »

There isn't anything wrong with animation canceling as it stands, it's an extra layer of responsiveness that many people enjoy.

Taking it away would slow down combat way too much.

Essentially you could speed up the animations, and still achieve the same thing as animation skipping allows today. The benefit would be that you would also get full complete good looking animations, instead of the invisible/spasm/half-finished fidgeting hits we have today.

No that's not how it works.

Animation canceling is a layer of "skill", as in it's something one should practice to get better at to do more consistently. The game can be viewed as a mindless button smash, but removing canceling and speeding up animations would worsen this. It separates one person from another, allows for variations in build numbers that otherwise wouldn't exist if everyone consistently hit at the same speed.

In the case of ESO, animation canceling is good.

lol wtf. Layer of skill? Animation cancelling is the exact definition of button mashing. Mash buttons with no respect to your enemy.

Animation cancelling, for the sake of this thread can be fixed. Damage simply needs to be tied to the ending animation frames instead of halfway through.

Out of all the unnecessary "solutions" to this imaginary problem, yours is the worst I've ever seen. People would waste time on cancelled attacks frequently... it would be incredibly frustrating. Then, in order to compensate, players would slow their attacks WAY down, so slow that they were wasting a second or more in between attacks, just to make sure they didn't miss one. And THEN you know what would happen?

Everyone and their mother would start using MACROS in order to time their attacks perfectly so that they don't waste time or cancel attacks by mistake. Your "solution" would cause more cheating than ESO has seen yet.

Because people aren't using macros now?

Jura23

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

Fellhand_ESO wrote: »

I like the pace of the combat, just wish it looked like we were actually fighting rather than having seizures.

This. This. This.

The fact that ZOS didn't include all this into development of the game so they were actually surprised when animation cancelling became a thing just shows huge incompetence. And I want them to solve this esthetic problem, because it's their responsibility.

When ZOS says stuff like that, what they really mean is that they didn't expect COMPLAINTS about animation cancelling to become a thing. Of course they know all about animation cancelling... they CODED it into the game!

ESO was NEVER designed to have slow combat with long-assed cooldowns like an old fashioned MMO. The sooner you and all the other complainers understand that, the sooner you'll be able to get with the program and learn to play ESO the way it was intended: FAST.

Please go home with this l2p nonsense. I don't care about that at all. What I said is that this game has clear esthetic problem that should be adressed. If it is shortening or removing animations completely, so be it, but the game shouldn't pretend they have some meaning.

Jura23

Jura23 wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

Fellhand_ESO wrote: »

I like the pace of the combat, just wish it looked like we were actually fighting rather than having seizures.

This. This. This.

The fact that ZOS didn't include all this into development of the game so they were actually surprised when animation cancelling became a thing just shows huge incompetence. And I want them to solve this esthetic problem, because it's their responsibility.

When ZOS says stuff like that, what they really mean is that they didn't expect COMPLAINTS about animation cancelling to become a thing. Of course they know all about animation cancelling... they CODED it into the game!

ESO was NEVER designed to have slow combat with long-assed cooldowns like an old fashioned MMO. The sooner you and all the other complainers understand that, the sooner you'll be able to get with the program and learn to play ESO the way it was intended: FAST.

Please go home with this l2p nonsense. I don't care about that at all. What I said is that this game has clear esthetic problem that should be adressed. If it is shortening or removing animations completely, so be it, but the game shouldn't pretend they have some meaning.

What they could do for example when you cancel animation is not to cut them off completely, just speed them up accordingly so it at least looks like the toon is fighting.

edit: sry, I wanted to edit previous post.

The Uninvited

laced wrote: »

Note the amount of agrees the original poster got and then compare that to the people defending animation cancelling. It is clear what the people want. And the people that don't come on the forums probably don't even know what it is, and when they see it, it probably boils down to cheating to them. So better to be rid of it.

32 agrees? You're saying that's what the people want based on 32 agrees?

Man, 75% of the players I meet in the game use animation cancelling AND are not on the forum. You're trolling, right?

a.skelton92

People have just got too used to being able to take advantage of this unintended floor in the combat system and try justifying its use by claiming it "adds something" or "takes skill" to use. It takes more skill to steadily kill someone whilst using the appropriate interrupts/ cc's on time etc than it does killing someone before they even know they are in a fight. Thats just obvious.

Imagine if other games like WoW for example had a similar glitch.. Mages were able to fire 5 frostbolts off in 1.. There would be freaking uproar. Atleast Blizzard would find a solution to this issue and have it resolved.. Just because EVERYONE makes use of a glitch doesnt mean it gets promoted to "mechanic"..

As I said, I know how to AC. But any UNINTENDED "mechanic" that improves damage above what was intented IS a glitch and should be treated as one.