Animation canceling and those that think its cheating

exeeter702

Im going to repost this from a comment i made in a youtube video, if you see it there, it is mine and dont flame me

To all those that are saying this is cheating, you have absolutely no idea of what your talking about. It is mechanically engraved into the game, let me explain. Every ability has a duration to its animation until it reaches the point where the damage is calculated when it connects, either over the course of its duration for channeled skills, or at the apex like uppercut.



When uppercut for example, hits the end of its hidden cast bar, the damage is calculated and delivered, after the cast ends, there is a recovering animation or "follow through" based on ZOS, ie your character will "sway back" the weight of the 2h and re-balance. During this recovery animation, the player is BY DESIGN given the freedom to take another action, these actions are basic attack, block or dodge roll. This was done so that combat does not feel barred or restricted artificially.

As a player lets say you successfully land an uppercut on a target, but right as the damage connects, you notice an incoming aoe on the floor, or a snipe incoming and you have the ability to roll out of the way or quickly block the ranged attack. Those that claim animation canceling is cheating and should be removed from the game, are advocating that your character should be rooted for the duration of the recovery animation, despite already earning the pay off of the skill by landing it and taking the hit from the incoming attack. This removes all player agency and punishes those that play well and disallows good players with fast reactions or awareness the opportunity to excel.

And as for its actual effectiveness in pve rotations

there is no reason to block cancel in pve whatsoever, unless you need to block an untimely attack in the middle of a rotation. If you hit steel tornado and held light attack, the game is going to queue up and deliver it as soon as the game itself allows thanks to an internal GCD. If you hit block immediately after steel tornado then try to weave a light or medium attack, it will not come out any sooner than if you had just held attack right after casting it, there will still be a small delay. No matter what. Basically, blocking, basic attacks and roll dodge both occupy the same space between abilities, they are off the GCD, and they cannot be used to increase the frequency of which you are allowed to use abilities on your bar.

Block canceling can help with an individuals timing however, espeically when light weaving as sometimes it gets a little tricky depending on the abilities being used. But block canceling can not by execution increase the speed of a rotation involving light and medium weaving beyond what the game allows on its internal GCD.

Unsent.Soul

Why is this still a thing? Was there really a need for yet another thread about this topic?

Tandor

Unsent.Soul wrote: »

Why is this still a thing? Was there really a need for yet another thread about this topic?

Yes, its turn has come round again. We've had auction houses, and we've had RNG, so it's the turn of animation canceling and then we'll be back round to PvP in the Justice System followed by server transfers.

The old saying "what goes round, comes round" has never been truer than on a game forum !

waterfairy

It's like quick-scoping...not "cheating", just cheap.

SirAndy

exeeter702 wrote: »

To all those that are saying this is cheating, you have absolutely no idea of what your talking about.

Cute, but false ...

The reason we even have to talk about this at all is the fact that ZOS didn't bother to sync the attack/skill animations with their respective cooldown times.

That was a rookie mistake but what really put the nail in the coffin is their apparent inability to fix this.

Publius_Scipio

I mean in a perfect world ESO would behave like the real world where if you are swinging a sword YOU HAVE TO FINISH YOUR ANIMATION to strike. lol.

But in video game world animation canceling is a necessary byproduct of having the game function and flow as it does. Yeah its cheesy if you think about it but I understand why it's there.

Surragard

I started playing during beta in November 2013 and this was an active discussion then. I'm pretty sure enough feedback has been given on the forums that ZOS understands the concerns on both sides for the issue.

Billzihang123

It doesn't strike me as particularly innovate gameplay in that maximising damage involves doing a light attack before EVERY SINGLE ability.

This seems broken to me, not to mention tedious.

The fact is there is skill in that once you perform an attack, you commit yourself for a very brief period making yourself vulnerable-- isn't that how it works on Skyrim and Oblivion? We're not talking about Dark Souls here, as there is a question on the speed of animations.

When a red telegraph ability appears, you always have a brief time to react, so even if you've started a light attack as soon as it appears, the 1 second or so it takes to go through the animation should still give you enough time to move out of the way.

As far as PvP goes, well everyone is subject to the same rules.

Light and heavy attacks CLEARLY need to be weaved in to combat with synergy. What exists at the moment is not synergy at all.

I really hope they do away with this obviously unintended 'mechanic'.

exeeter702

SirAndy wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

To all those that are saying this is cheating, you have absolutely no idea of what your talking about.

Cute, but false ...

The reason we even have to talk about this at all is the fact that ZOS didn't bother to sync the attack/skill animations with their respective cooldown times.

That was a rookie mistake but what really put the nail in the coffin is their apparent inability to fix this.

Care to elaborate? skills dont have cooldown times, unless you are referring to the recovery animations, a point that was clearly addressed.

idk

Unsent.Soul wrote: »

Why is this still a thing? Was there really a need for yet another thread about this topic?

Exactly. Especially since that is in the first post here does not explain why animation canceling is not cheating. I would think it would offer foder to those few who say it is cheating.

Devs have blessed animation canceling vocally. That alone is why it is not cheating.

SirAndy

exeeter702 wrote: »

Care to elaborate? skills dont have cooldown times, unless you are referring to the recovery animations, a point that was clearly addressed.

Yes, skills have internal cooldowns. You can't use them as fast as you can press a button.

That's the whole reason animation canceling even exists, because the animation length is not synced to the cooldown length.

SirAndy

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Devs have blessed animation canceling vocally. That alone is why it is not cheating.

That's one way of looking at it.

As a developer with many years of gaming industry experience, i see it as a cheap way out of "this is a mess and i don't want to do all the work to fix it, so i'm going to just say it's alright the way it is".

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Tryxus

Stick + Dead Horse = this thread

LuminaLilly

I used to be bad at animation cancelling and complained about it. Now I learned how to and it gives me the edge on common players.

Inb4 dead horse.gif

Cryptical

The comments in that image are lies.

The change was made because people were able to completely cancel the animation of attacks like wrecking blow, and land 2 attacks at the same time. Such as old wrecking blow and brawler, and land another wrecking blow before the body had landed. I know it could be done, because in testing I was able to do it.

I would be just fine with shortening the animations so that they complete at the same microsecond that the damage is applied. The physically measurable amount of time elapsed would remain exactly the same, so any whines about flow would be irrelevant.

c0rp

OP: I have played plenty of games without broken animation cancelling "mechanics" that were never intended but blessed by the game devs as a feature after their discovery... and none of them were "absolutely atrocious" as far as combat goes. In fact, they all felt just fine. In fact, many of them are the best feeling combat systems I've ever played.

ArchMikem

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Unsent.Soul wrote: »

Why is this still a thing? Was there really a need for yet another thread about this topic?

Exactly. Especially since that is in the first post here does not explain why animation canceling is not cheating. I would think it would offer foder to those few who say it is cheating.

Devs have blessed animation canceling vocally. That alone is why it is not cheating.

They know too many players do it, thats why they said its okay.

Fact is though, its an unintended side effect of the game mechanics, which is tantamount to an exploit. An exploit that would cause intense backlash if ZOS labeled it as such.

RebornV3x

It's definitely a grey area as far as I'm concerned since animation canceling shouldn't even be a thing to begin with but the Devs don't care and allow it. Secondly it's never mentioned in game that's animation canceling is a viable thing that can give you an edge over other players it

It definitely cheap to do and shouldn't even be a thing but whatever. I can kinda see why people think it's cheating.

Molydeus

The only reason the devs "blessed" this exploit is because they don't know how to fix it without changing everything about how combat works in this game. It was an oversight in the first place, but it's buried so deep into the basic fundamentals of ESO's combat system that it'd be harder to fix than just leave in place and say "it's fine guys, it makes for unique gameplay."

That doesn't mean it's a good system or a fair system or anything other than an accident that was easier to leave in place than fix.

Chrysa1is

I think its great that you had a proper sit down and thought about writing this, but it seems that you're more annoyed at the people who are annoyed about animation cancelling. Let them complain, let people make use of it while it lasts. And if it gets fixed, then it gets fixed.

It's not worth biting and going out of your way to prove your point about this, because ultimately, no one cares who's right or wrong.

Grab a fire extinguisher and use it on your keyboard.

SodanTok

Funny how the more competitive the game gets, the less people complain about such stuff. Its like people that dont care about "competitiveness" care too much about other people and how bring them down on their level.

exeeter702

c0rp wrote: »

OP: I have played plenty of games without broken animation cancelling "mechanics" that were never intended but blessed by the game devs as a feature after their discovery... and none of them were "absolutely atrocious" as far as combat goes. In fact, they all felt just fine. In fact, many of them are the best feeling combat systems I've ever played.

you misunderstand the point.. Put wrecking blows damage at the tail end of its follow through animation rather than at the point in which it makes contact with the target and you would have a very disjointed combat feeling.

SirAndy wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Care to elaborate? skills dont have cooldown times, unless you are referring to the recovery animations, a point that was clearly addressed.

Yes, skills have internal cooldowns. You can't use them as fast as you can press a button.

That's the whole reason animation canceling even exists, because the animation length is not synced to the cooldown length.

Abilities do not have their own internal cooldowns, there is a universal GCD that governs all ability use. The only way to sync the animations while still giving player agency is if you chose not to animate any type of recovery visuals to abilities and place the resolving point of an ability at the very end of its cast time / animation time. The nature of this games combat system on a fundamental level would make that very strange looking and awkward.

The only half measure you could reasonably take is speed all abilities up across the board which is an entirely different can of worms that poses its own server / client issues.

Cryptical wrote: »

The comments in that image are lies.

The change was made because people were able to completely cancel the animation of attacks like wrecking blow, and land 2 attacks at the same time. Such as old wrecking blow and brawler, and land another wrecking blow before the body had landed. I know it could be done, because in testing I was able to do it.

You arent wrong in that the previous system was changed for those concerns, but would you care explaining why the quotations are lies? aside from not agreeing that combat would feel bad, the other points are reasonably sound. Abilities are resolved where its shown, and animation canceling gives back player control within the red area of the graph, otherwise you would not be able to block or roll dodge after landing a skill. Or is that an inaccurate observation?

Nerouyn

Of course it's cheating and it's by design.

Like in the single-player TES games, all those little exploits (like potions and enchanting) which they could very easily have fixed but never did.

Some people get off on cheating. Fine, I don't care. As long as it's not hurting anyone. So game designers inject some opportunity for that.

That said, it makes for stupid gameplay that feels weird and artificial.

THE big appeal of ESO compared to other most MMOs is having more control over your character and combat not being some arcane mini-game. Abilities use magicka or stamina, there aren't any cooldowns and they do what they do. I want to heal someone I execute a heal ability. I need some crowd control, I execute that ability. Wonderfully straightforward. Animation cancelling *** on that.

I'm never going to like it.

exeeter702

Nerouyn wrote: »

THE big appeal of ESO compared to other most MMOs is having more control over your character and combat not being some arcane mini-game. Abilities use magicka or stamina, there aren't any cooldowns and they do what they do. I want to heal someone I execute a heal ability. I need some crowd control, I execute that ability. Wonderfully straightforward. Animation cancelling *** on that.

I'm never going to like it.

There are those that would argue, animation canceling exists as a byproduct of such a combat system.

exeeter702

Chrysa1is wrote: »

I think its great that you had a proper sit down and thought about writing this, but it seems that you're more annoyed at the people who are annoyed about animation cancelling. Let them complain, let people make use of it while it lasts. And if it gets fixed, then it gets fixed.

It's not worth biting and going out of your way to prove your point about this, because ultimately, no one cares who's right or wrong.

Grab a fire extinguisher and use it on your keyboard.

Honestly its just a dialogue i would like to have, im not really salty to be honest.

Derra

Molydeus wrote: »

That doesn't mean it's a good system or a fair system or anything other than an accident that was easier to leave in place than fix.

How can it be unfair if every player can do it by simply pressing buttons on their peripherials?

It´s not like it only works on certain classes. Or with certain skills. It´s simply how the basic combat + animation system works and that´s the same for everyone (not using CE).

I´ve done it from the very first day i´ve played in beta and never even knew what i was doing. It just felt natural.

AcadianPaladin

I don't think it is cheating since all players can access it. I do, however, think it is a silly artificial and horrible design feature/flaw. This feature for more experienced players is the best 'advanced medieval combat' tactics we can come up with?

cjthibs

I think most people, that have a problem, have a problem with being able to cancel animation yet still doing damage or applying whatever effect.

If you cancel a skill's animation it should allow you to block or transition to another skill, but it should cancel that ability's damage. You're effectively making a choice as to which action is more important then, and not getting both.

Wollust

It was time for the weekly AC thread

Ackwalan

Thought this was settled long ago. If you feel it still needs defending, you have to ask yourself. Why?