Is Animation Cancelling a Feature, not a Bug?

hmsdragonfly

Rainwhisper wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

It was unintentional, but the consensus of the devs and basically any skilled player is that it adds a layer to the combat system that makes it much more dynamic, fun, and skill-based.

That makes perfect sense. I'm definitely old-school RPG, in that I want combat to be numbers/gear based, not click-speed/coordination-based.

But I don't plan on running veteran content any time soon, if ever. If I do, it will be as a tank. Is animation-cancelling important for tanks?

Not really "important" i would say, but if you can do heavy attack into a pierce armour, it will helps your sustain a lot.

Also in Trial you will have to block cast, but one step at a time i think

BRogueNZ

Is normally what people get confused with macro use. Relatively easy to do even unintentionally.
Some skill lines like 2H and bow can queue up attacks with relative ease without any canceling.

Urza1234

bulbousb16_ESO wrote: »

Tryxus wrote: »

It was an unintended effect, but eventually accepted feature of the game

It is a bug and a cancer on the game. Nobody "accepts" it - if we all protest enough, we can see it gone.

Hear hear!

Honestly though its not bloody likely, it would require an autistic level of attention to detail in their game design, like the upcoming medieval combat game Mordhau. Does that sound like good ole Zenni to you?

hmsdragonfly

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

Animation cancelling is cheating and the developers encourages this practice because their unable to fix the bug.


This is why I refuse to PvP in this game due this exploitative practice.

There's animation cancelling in the top tier competitive Esport game: CSGO.

Yup animation cancelling is definitely cheating, it is allowed and encouraged in a top tier competitive Esport game.

Shad0wfire99

If animation cancelling were cheating, the Hawk Eye passive wouldn't exist. Stop with this nonsense already.

Rainwhisper

Royaji wrote: »

In trials tanks perma-block. You can say that is a sort of animation cancelling and it might be somewhat immersion breaking for some people but it is significantly easier to pull off. No button mashing just always hold block.

That I can do

Kalante

If you want to do or be part of higher difficult content you bet your **** better learn animation cancelling because there is no way you are going to even survive without it. Think of animation cancelling as a higher step up in becoming better and distinct yourself from everybody else. Just as a masters degree is better than a bachelors or high school diploma. These people that say is cheating have no inspiration to do anything in the game that requires a higher body and mind function. That's just how i see it, because people that learn the game are out there making money and taking advantage of others. oh boy just like real life.

Sharee

Valera Progib wrote: »

Weave master race.

It is a feature. Everyone calling AC bugbor exploit should get gud, this game is already super casual friendly. Stop. Stop it.

I don't buy the argument that removing animation cancelling would make combat more casual friendly. If anything, the ability to cancel any ongoing animation at any time makes the game much easier.

Take dark souls for example. Once you commit to an animation, there is no coming back, you have to finish it. If you misjudged the enemy, he will kill you because you are unable to block or dodge until your attack finishes. In TESO, if i charge up a wrecking blow against someone who is doing the same, but i'm a split second later (which means i would get stunned before finishing the windup) i can just cancel my "cast" with a roll or block, no problem. That's super casual/forgiving compared to having to actually judge the timing before acting. It is the latter what truly requires skill, IMHO.

adriant1978

I hate it with a passion, but really only because I cannot do it.

BRogueNZ

Kalante wrote: »

If you want to do or be part of higher difficult content you bet your **** better learn animation cancelling because there is no way you are going to even survive without it. Think of animation cancelling as a higher step in becoming better and distinct yourself from everyone else. Just as a bachelors degree is better than a high school diploma. These people that say is cheating have no inspiration to do anything in the game that requires a higher body and mind function.

harsh.

I know a lot more people who do more for themselves, communities, family and country than some who have degree's.
its not crazy hard to cancel animations and mastering it doesn't make someone good, better perhaps. still bad but better.
If the game was un survivable without it you bet it would've been changed by now.

I can understand some people striving to be the best as they can be, go for it, no need to be pretentious and condescending about it.

Shunravi

https://youtu.be/ThZtwhYkKSs

Lylith

CyrusArya wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

That also confuses me. Isn't cheating by definition something that gives someone an unfair advantage that others don't possess? But how does ani canceling give anyone an unfair advantage when it's there for anyone/everyone to use?

lol Mag, dont bother with logic with these types. They will do extreme mental gymnastics to justify their inability to perform.

because rheumatoid arthritis could never be a factor, yes?

dday3six

Sharee wrote: »

Valera Progib wrote: »

Weave master race.

It is a feature. Everyone calling AC bugbor exploit should get gud, this game is already super casual friendly. Stop. Stop it.

I don't buy the argument that removing animation cancelling would make combat more casual friendly. If anything, the ability to cancel any ongoing animation at any time makes the game much easier.

Take dark souls for example. Once you commit to an animation, there is no coming back, you have to finish it. If you misjudged the enemy, he will kill you because you are unable to block or dodge until your attack finishes. In TESO, if i charge up a wrecking blow against someone who is doing the same, but i'm a split second later (which means i would get stunned before finishing the windup) i can just cancel my "cast" with a roll or block, no problem. That's super casual/forgiving compared to having to actually judge the timing before acting. It is the latter what truly requires skill, IMHO.

For Dark Souls in depends completely on the animation. Some can be canceled, others cannot. It also depends on how far along the animation is. Most of them have a "point of no return", but can be canceled before that. Many can also be cut short after a certain point as well.

The reason you think it is otherwise is due to Dark Souls having more frames per animation.

zyk

I don't mind cancelling in general, but I think cancelling makes competitive trial PVE DPS rotations hideously tedious and doing so enough will eventually result in a major RSI.

SirAndy

Rainwhisper wrote: »

Is Animation Cancelling a Feature, not a Bug?

Having spent many, many, many years in the industry, i'd say about 20% of features are bugs that nobody bothered to (or was able to) fix and people got used to them.

Drasn

bulbousb16_ESO wrote: »

Tryxus wrote: »

It was an unintended effect, but eventually accepted feature of the game

It is a bug and a cancer on the game. Nobody "accepts" it - if we all protest enough, we can see it gone.

It's not a bug. Animation canceling is a side effect of ESO's combat priority system:

Interupt > Bar Swap > Block/Dodge > Skill > Light/Heavy

The priority system is there to make combat more fluid and give players the ability to counter their opponent (be it PVE mobs or another player in PVP) It is true that this can be taken further and used to boost DPS in certain builds/rotations.

The common misconception is that players are somehow using abilities quicker than intended and that is simply not the case. There is a global cooldown shared by abilities and another global cooldown for light/heavy attacks. No amount of animation canceling can bypass this.

If the priority system were removed players would be locked into cast time and channel abilities with no way to block/dodge an attack directed at them. Bar swapping would have to wait for a global cooldown to be reached prior to switching. In general the game would feel less responsive than it already does.

Nifty2g

Rich himself said he likes it. It's a feature at this point.

ArchMikem

Tryxus wrote: »

It was an unintended effect, but eventually accepted feature of the game

It's not a feature if it wasn't intended. It's a glitch that the Devs have just decided not to try and fix because if they did there would be a gigantic backlash from the "too pro" playerbase.

It's even kind of funny. Animation Cancelling is practically an Exploit, but since SO MANY players take part in it and have been for so long any kind of opposition to it would be met with fierce retaliation because it's such an "important part of the game".

Urza1234

SirAndy wrote: »

Rainwhisper wrote: »

Is Animation Cancelling a Feature, not a Bug?

Having spent many, many, many years in the industry, i'd say about 20% of features are bugs that nobody bothered to (or was able to) fix and people got used to them.

Lol, yes, ever heard of last hitting in MOBAs, the most popular competitive genre? It always cracked me up that an industry grew up around people practicing a 'mechanic' that was just some warcraft 3 modders implementing a haphazard kill reward system.

idk

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

Animation cancelling is cheating and the developers encourages this practice because their unable to fix the bug.


This is why I refuse to PvP in this game due this exploitative practice.

This is patently false. Nothing to support the claim and it is obviously and certainly not cheating.

Nifty2g wrote: »

Rich himself said he likes it. It's a feature at this point.

This is so much closer to the reality ani canceling is not cheating.

Koensol

bulbousb16_ESO wrote: »

Tryxus wrote: »

It was an unintended effect, but eventually accepted feature of the game

It is a bug and a cancer on the game. Nobody "accepts" it - if we all protest enough, we can see it gone.

How the frak is it a bug? Do you even know what a bug is?

Darkstorne

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

It was unintentional, but the consensus of the devs and basically any skilled player is that it adds a layer to the combat system that makes it much more dynamic, fun, and skill-based. As the game has developed, it is clear that the developers have designed skills and balanced content with AC in mind. This is particularly true with the recent patch. Experienced light attack weavers are now even further ahead of the rest, as light attacks have moved into the first or second spot on most damage recaps.

Like it or not, it's here to stay. I am in the camp that thinks for the most part, it is a good thing. Is it required to clear most content? No, but I am sure as heck not running VMOL HM with someone that refuses to weave. Both your sustain and DPS would take a noticeable hit.

ZOS have "accepted" animation cancelling for exactly the same reason they've "accepted" the jumping bug where you take forever to slide down near-vertical surfaces like rocks and house roofs, and the FPS degradation over time memory leak. They have no idea how to fix any of them, presumably because the team members that created the engine have all moved on and only a skeleton crew remains behind to manage the core systems, with the majority of ZOS staff focused on content creation.

Luckily for ZOS, enough players like animation cancelling enough that they've been able to spin it as a feature. "Oh yeah, look at that! The game IS broken with animations! I think we'll keep it though, since it adds a layer of 'skill', right guys?" No need to waste man hours fixing a broken and exploitable system that a large chunk of the playerbase enjoys. Especially when they refuse to fix engine issues that everyone hates universally.

zaria

Drasn wrote: »

bulbousb16_ESO wrote: »

Tryxus wrote: »

It was an unintended effect, but eventually accepted feature of the game

It is a bug and a cancer on the game. Nobody "accepts" it - if we all protest enough, we can see it gone.

It's not a bug. Animation canceling is a side effect of ESO's combat priority system:

Interupt > Bar Swap > Block/Dodge > Skill > Light/Heavy

The priority system is there to make combat more fluid and give players the ability to counter their opponent (be it PVE mobs or another player in PVP) It is true that this can be taken further and used to boost DPS in certain builds/rotations.

The common misconception is that players are somehow using abilities quicker than intended and that is simply not the case. There is a global cooldown shared by abilities and another global cooldown for light/heavy attacks. No amount of animation canceling can bypass this.

If the priority system were removed players would be locked into cast time and channel abilities with no way to block/dodge an attack directed at them. Bar swapping would have to wait for a global cooldown to be reached prior to switching. In general the game would feel less responsive than it already does.

This, for dps animation canceling has two effects:
it give very fast light attacks making it practical to weave in light attack between most actions.
It give cheap bar swaps as you cancel the previous cast animation, this gives cheap bar swap, without it we would have to stay longer on one bar.

Didaco

Magdalina wrote: »

Rainwhisper wrote: »

Tryxus wrote: »

It was an unintended effect, but eventually accepted feature of the game

I suppose I may be the only player on the server who dislikes it because it breaks immersion?

I might well be missing something becaue it's my first MMO and maybe I'm just taking a lot of things differently than someone with prior MMO experience, but isn't it quite the contrary? A skilled swordsman would make his sword weave into next attack right from the previous one, not patiently wait for his sword to return back to its original posture, no? Seems to make sense for a mage to interweave his spells for biggest effect too if his goal is fast paced combat.

I can't quite imagine what ESO combat should be like without it...does it mean we'd have to always wait for any skill we start to fully play its (rather slow in many cases) animation? "Press a key - waaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiitttttt - press a key - waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiitttttttt- ..." ...maybe it'd look prettier but it just seems so...boring to me
Also what happens if an enemy does a heavy attack while we're in the middle of the animation in that scenario? Do we just die because we're unable to cancel it and block/dodge instead?
That's not trying to be condescending, it's genuinely something ever so puzzling to me every time I see topics like this, I feel like I'm missing something

It's called risk/reward factor.
You don't play Ninja Gaiden Black and say "I was in the middle of my combo and I got hit because I couldn't block!".
The same logic applies to every other game that claims to have an action based combat system.
99% of them has animation canceling but it works in a completely different way, and you can always tell that they're better than Eso's because they're actually INTENDED.

In those games you can cancel the RECOVERY frames (animation frames that play after the effect of the hit are registered) to be faster, if the system allows you to use it with that particular move at all, beause it's up to the devs to decide which recovery frame you can cancel or not.

In Eso you can cancel the wind up frames (animation frame playing before the hit is registered) and still accomplish to fire off the skill, with all its effects.
Any player coming from action games would say this is straight up blasphemy.

I'm not even talking about block casting.

And to be honest, this is the reason why I giggle every time I read that it takes skill to be able to AC in this game... In other action games, yes, it does.
In Eso just not. It's actually the opposite.

"Hey the boss is about to perform an heavy attack... Who cares, I can block or dodgle whenever I want".

Balticthunder

I hate it.
What's the point then of all those animations and cast timers if it can be bypasted with AC. Also imersion breaking for me, when you just stand there and boom, suddenly firebal appears out from you.
Unfortunately it is required now to be competitive in endgame, becasue for some ""pro"" players it's too long and enormous time wasting to kill the boss if you going to use full animations.

JDC1985

Its so easy to do a baby could do it and do it good.

LilySix

In fact if you're doing a DD test, it's useless to do that. Your light attack won't show quicker (on PS4 i mean, we've tested it with one of the best french DK on PS4 EU), so you don't get more DPS (that's a lie, a tale). BUT during trials it's very very very ok to do so as you are blocking "all the time" and get less damages...

If you want to DPS faster you must work on your rotate to push the right button at the right time...

Balticthunder

JDC1985 wrote: »

Its so easy to do a baby could do it and do it good.

I agree - I also soloed WGT with my lvl 10 templar few days ago, this game became so freaking easy of late.

Sharee

dday3six wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Valera Progib wrote: »

Weave master race.

It is a feature. Everyone calling AC bugbor exploit should get gud, this game is already super casual friendly. Stop. Stop it.

I don't buy the argument that removing animation cancelling would make combat more casual friendly. If anything, the ability to cancel any ongoing animation at any time makes the game much easier.

Take dark souls for example. Once you commit to an animation, there is no coming back, you have to finish it. If you misjudged the enemy, he will kill you because you are unable to block or dodge until your attack finishes. In TESO, if i charge up a wrecking blow against someone who is doing the same, but i'm a split second later (which means i would get stunned before finishing the windup) i can just cancel my "cast" with a roll or block, no problem. That's super casual/forgiving compared to having to actually judge the timing before acting. It is the latter what truly requires skill, IMHO.

For Dark Souls in depends completely on the animation. Some can be canceled, others cannot. It also depends on how far along the animation is. Most of them have a "point of no return", but can be canceled before that. Many can also be cut short after a certain point as well.

The reason you think it is otherwise is due to Dark Souls having more frames per animation.

My point is that *if* dark souls allowed you to cancel any animation at any point and perform a defensive action instead, it would make the game infinitely easier. Therefore removing animation cancelling from TESO(or any game) would not make the game easier, but harder. Which is the opposite of what is often being claimed on this forum.

Koensol

Sharee wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Valera Progib wrote: »

Weave master race.

It is a feature. Everyone calling AC bugbor exploit should get gud, this game is already super casual friendly. Stop. Stop it.

I don't buy the argument that removing animation cancelling would make combat more casual friendly. If anything, the ability to cancel any ongoing animation at any time makes the game much easier.

Take dark souls for example. Once you commit to an animation, there is no coming back, you have to finish it. If you misjudged the enemy, he will kill you because you are unable to block or dodge until your attack finishes. In TESO, if i charge up a wrecking blow against someone who is doing the same, but i'm a split second later (which means i would get stunned before finishing the windup) i can just cancel my "cast" with a roll or block, no problem. That's super casual/forgiving compared to having to actually judge the timing before acting. It is the latter what truly requires skill, IMHO.

For Dark Souls in depends completely on the animation. Some can be canceled, others cannot. It also depends on how far along the animation is. Most of them have a "point of no return", but can be canceled before that. Many can also be cut short after a certain point as well.

The reason you think it is otherwise is due to Dark Souls having more frames per animation.

My point is that *if* dark souls allowed you to cancel any animation at any point and perform a defensive action instead, it would make the game infinitely easier. Therefore removing animation cancelling from TESO(or any game) would not make the game easier, but harder. Which is the opposite of what is often being claimed on this forum.

No. It wouldn't make it harder, but rather more frustrating and rigid, which would result in worse results. Playing your character without animation canceling would be easier, but you would be achieving worse results, because it is less effective in the current state of balance. This doesn't make the playstyle harder.