Is Animation Cancelling a Feature, not a Bug?

raidentenshu_ESO

Magdalina wrote: »

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

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

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?

It's not that confusing at all. Don't you see? When someone uses animation cancelling gives them an unfair advantage over others in form of DPS numbers. Those who uses animation cancelling can boost their DPS up far more then someone who doesn't use it. This is unfair IMO. combat animation is there for a reason... to provide realism.

Tell me something. Do you think the top players in this game would have 40k or 50k DPS without using any kind of animation cancelling whatsoever? What if ZOS actually took action and decided to finally fix the animation cancelling bug? You would see that the top players would no longer have the kind of DPS numbers that they love to brag about on Youtube.

ynimma

I also find animation cancelling quite harmful for the overall game environment.
All reasons has been told and I can only repeat them but really skill animation and the time they take is there for a reason. Reducing the casting and skill times with exploiting a bug may result in a higher "performance" but the price everyone pays is dear: the game balance is seriously off, PVP suffers even more on top of the server lags, some classes and other skill lines become "non-beneficial" and therefore abandoned by more and more players, it lights the highway and strenghtens abusive behaviour (no matter if ZOS in lack of other options "agreed" to this, it's still an abuse as it's not intended and can create an unfair advantage over others and the environment).

I'm sure there are good reasons why it's "great" and exciting to take advantage on a bug and in lack of other options we all need to adapt but I'd really be happy if ZOS could eliminate this phenomenon and the game on one more area could work as intended.

kevlarto_ESO

Tryxus wrote: »

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

This^^ Paul sage said back in the day when we had a real dev team, that animation canceling was something they did not really like but became a by product of to keep combat from feeling clunky.

My only complaint about animation canceling is if you cancel something you should not get the benefit of the damage done by what ever you canceled, canceled should mean just that, if I give you a check then cancel it you don't get any money, should work the same way with animation canceling you can still cancel have the flow of combat, but not reap these huge benefits from doing crazy damage as a result of something being canceled.

xblackroxe

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

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

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?

It's not that confusing at all. Don't you see? When someone uses animation cancelling gives them an unfair advantage over others in form of DPS numbers. Those who uses animation cancelling can boost their DPS up far more then someone who doesn't use it. This is unfair IMO. combat animation is there for a reason... to provide realism.

Tell me something. Do you think the top players in this game would have 40k or 50k DPS without using any kind of animation cancelling whatsoever? What if ZOS actually took action and decided to finally fix the animation cancelling bug? You would see that the top players would no longer have the kind of DPS numbers that they love to brag about on Youtube.

So by your definition its also cheating to farm the best gear, test every single ability to find the one BiS setup that makes me 20% than someone that couldn't be bothered with farming? (numbers just as example)

And it wouldn't change a thing about bragging. Noobs will still be noobs with no idea how to play and the top few % will still be the top few % nothing is gonna change in that regard.

xblackroxe

ynimma wrote: »

I also find animation cancelling quite harmful for the overall game environment.
All reasons has been told and I can only repeat them but really skill animation and the time they take is there for a reason. Reducing the casting and skill times with exploiting a bug may result in a higher "performance" but the price everyone pays is dear: the game balance is seriously off, PVP suffers even more on top of the server lags, some classes and other skill lines become "non-beneficial" and therefore abandoned by more and more players, it lights the highway and strenghtens abusive behaviour (no matter if ZOS in lack of other options "agreed" to this, it's still an abuse as it's not intended and can create an unfair advantage over others and the environment).

I'm sure there are good reasons why it's "great" and exciting to take advantage on a bug and in lack of other options we all need to adapt but I'd really be happy if ZOS could eliminate this phenomenon and the game on one more area could work as intended.

You lost any credibility when you called something thats not a bug a bug.

AC isn't the problem its just an easy outlet for bad players to blame them being bad on. Nothing more. Without AC 95% of the ppl you find in cyrodil would still be crushed with little to no effort by players that know how to play.

LilySix

Again... AC has no impact on dps.... (for ps4 players).... Best AC you can do is switch bar. But with L2 you don't dps quicker..... So where's the cheating there ?

AnviOfVai

Tryxus wrote: »

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

^^

Pretty much this, it was unintended but it would take a full game overhaul to fix so it was accepted.

As you can see there is much controversy about AC, some people like it, some people hate it, then you get the people in the middle.

In my opinion I don't like it but I use it against players who use it against me. I have a thing with animation... when I'm casting I hate seeing it being cut short...it makes the game feel jumpy and laggy. (perhaps its because I work with animation that it bugs me) I also think its unfair on players who enter Cyrodiil for the first time, not only will they get smashed up but they pretty much won't have a clue how to defend against it unless someone teaches them, or they come on the forums and find all the threads about it

Its something that can be learned pretty fast, and can give a huge advantage, heck sometimes you use it by accident if your fast with your fingers

Darkstorne

Didaco wrote: »

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".

Exactly. I'd be fine with animation cancelling if it actually cancelled the skill/attack as well. If I'm winding up a weapon swing for a skill attack then suddenly decide to block an incoming attack instead of delivering my own, that's fine. But it's clearly broken when blocking that attack also magically ends up with the enemy taking damage from the skill I just cancelled and clearly didn't execute.

What's more, this is not intended by game design. The game doesn't explain in a tutorial "you can insta-light attack by cancelling into a skill, then block-cancel all your skills so they fire much faster, dealing much more damage overall, without your character visually executing them!" And why would it? How dumb does that system sound? So instead it's something the core playerbase exploits and the majority of casual players who don't visit the forums never even hear about, let alone make the most of. It's bad for balance, and it makes the combat system look like a glitched out mess. I'd rather they fixed the animation cancelling to make sure skills and light attacks don't deal damage if you cancel them, and then balance skill and attack damage out to compensate for that loss of DPS if required. That requires work and man hours spent fixing a core game issue though, like the jump bug or memory leak that have persisted for years now, so clearly it's never going to happen. ZOS either can't, or won't, put that effort in on the game's underlying systems.

Flameheart

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.

The TO awakened some ghosts in Pandora's box.

Flameheart

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.

...and another ghost out of Pandora's box :-)

Nelson_Rebel

Darkstorne wrote: »

Didaco wrote: »

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".

Exactly. I'd be fine with animation cancelling if it actually cancelled the skill/attack as well. If I'm winding up a weapon swing for a skill attack then suddenly decide to block an incoming attack instead of delivering my own, that's fine. But it's clearly broken when blocking that attack also magically ends up with the enemy taking damage from the skill I just cancelled and clearly didn't execute.

What's more, this is not intended by game design. The game doesn't explain in a tutorial "you can insta-light attack by cancelling into a skill, then block-cancel all your skills so they fire much faster, dealing much more damage overall, without your character visually executing them!" And why would it? How dumb does that system sound? So instead it's something the core playerbase exploits and the majority of casual players who don't visit the forums never even hear about, let alone make the most of. It's bad for balance, and it makes the combat system look like a glitched out mess. I'd rather they fixed the animation cancelling to make sure skills and light attacks don't deal damage if you cancel them, and then balance skill and attack damage out to compensate for that loss of DPS if required. That requires work and man hours spent fixing a core game issue though, like the jump bug or memory leak that have persisted for years now, so clearly it's never going to happen. ZOS either can't, or won't, put that effort in on the game's underlying systems.

We'll it's not an exploit since the developers have endorsed it as a feature side-effect of the games combat system. But on the whole I agree with your post. The execution of AC is very shady especially in regards to pvp where thousands of players still have no idea how some skills killed them because AC causes those skills not to be heard/seen before the damage is already applied and by the time the game shows anything it is usually a death recap XD

The trick is convincing the developers to change it. Which is unlikely as their team has shown numerous times now they are unable to competently alter basic mechanics in the game as the team now doesn't fully understand it like the teams that actually built it. What we have now are just "maintainers" of the current design

Izaki

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?

The game's combat system wouldn't exist without animation cancelling. Everytime you do a bar swap, a light attack, a roll dodge or a block in between a skill you've been doing animation canceling. Its what makes combat system fluid. Animation canceling still doesn't allow you to bypass the GCD on skills, so all the people telling you that 5 attacks are possible in 1 second (without any travel time) are just flat out making things up.

Magdalina

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

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

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?

It's not that confusing at all. Don't you see? When someone uses animation cancelling gives them an unfair advantage over others in form of DPS numbers. Those who uses animation cancelling can boost their DPS up far more then someone who doesn't use it. This is unfair IMO. combat animation is there for a reason... to provide realism.

Tell me something. Do you think the top players in this game would have 40k or 50k DPS without using any kind of animation cancelling whatsoever? What if ZOS actually took action and decided to finally fix the animation cancelling bug? You would see that the top players would no longer have the kind of DPS numbers that they love to brag about on Youtube.

That doesn't make sense. How is it unfair? What stops you from ani canceling? I weave at 200-300 ping, it's not as smooth as it'd be at 50 ping but it works. Hell I actually started doing it long before I got to endgame and before I even found out people call it "ani canceling", I just started weaving crushing shock with light attacks at some point because it was just so effective. Why wouldn't you want to do something that's effective?

That seems like saying someone wearing (set) armor does better dps than someone fighting naked and that gives them an unfair advantage...

If anything animation cancelling is super fair. You don't need to be high level, you don't need cp, you don't need to farm any sets or golden out your weapon to do it. Literally anyone can do it. It's a FREE way to improve your performance which only depends on you and not your gear or cp. Isn't that awesome?(no sarcasm intended)

Izaki

Shad0wfire99 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.

This guy. Every time someone says "animation cancelling" this guy pops out from under his bridge.

Yet he doesn't realize that the combat system would be so terrible that he won't even play the game. Not in the sense of adding extra attacks, but even the basic functions such as stopping your Jesus Beam or you Rapid Strikes to block an incoming attack.

altemriel

just check out Wrobel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZtwhYkKSs

Darkstorne

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

Didaco wrote: »

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".

Exactly. I'd be fine with animation cancelling if it actually cancelled the skill/attack as well. If I'm winding up a weapon swing for a skill attack then suddenly decide to block an incoming attack instead of delivering my own, that's fine. But it's clearly broken when blocking that attack also magically ends up with the enemy taking damage from the skill I just cancelled and clearly didn't execute.

What's more, this is not intended by game design. The game doesn't explain in a tutorial "you can insta-light attack by cancelling into a skill, then block-cancel all your skills so they fire much faster, dealing much more damage overall, without your character visually executing them!" And why would it? How dumb does that system sound? So instead it's something the core playerbase exploits and the majority of casual players who don't visit the forums never even hear about, let alone make the most of. It's bad for balance, and it makes the combat system look like a glitched out mess. I'd rather they fixed the animation cancelling to make sure skills and light attacks don't deal damage if you cancel them, and then balance skill and attack damage out to compensate for that loss of DPS if required. That requires work and man hours spent fixing a core game issue though, like the jump bug or memory leak that have persisted for years now, so clearly it's never going to happen. ZOS either can't, or won't, put that effort in on the game's underlying systems.

We'll it's not an exploit since the developers have endorsed it as a feature side-effect of the games combat system.

That seems to be where the difference in opinion lies for most people. Clearly ZOS have only "endorsed" it because they either can't be bothered to fix it or don't know how. On any level it's an objectively flawed system: It doesn't explain this "feature" in game to players, so only the core players know about it giving them a huge advantage; it's visually broken, with light attacks dealing damage without a weapon connecting, and skills dealing damage and applying effects even though your character is just standing still and blocking; and it doesn't take skill to button mash, which is all this system encourages.

If the developer says "We think this flawed and exploitable system is now a feature", does that make it okay? I'm certainly not saying anyone is cheating for using it, but I do get confused by the folks who think it adds to the game and is a positive or skill-based feature, as though a working animation system would detract from the game...

Zyrudin

Just for the benefit of anyone new to the topic.

This is one of the several threads on the subject of Animation Cancelling:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-GB/discussion/321846/animation-canceling-my-point-of-view-and-reflection-on-the-subject/

You will find good points there about, for and against it.

Darkstorne

IzakiBrotherSs wrote: »

Shad0wfire99 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.

This guy. Every time someone says "animation cancelling" this guy pops out from under his bridge.

Yet he doesn't realize that the combat system would be so terrible that he won't even play the game. Not in the sense of adding extra attacks, but even the basic functions such as stopping your Jesus Beam or you Rapid Strikes to block an incoming attack.

No-one is against animation cancelling specifically, just the fact that when you cancel an attack in this game that attack still goes on to deal damage even though your character hasn't executed it. It's a shortcut to avoid the animation durations, dealing damage even though visually your character hasn't executed any attacks, when in all other games that offer animation cancelling the game allows you to cancel into a block or dodge but also actually cancels the skill as a whole, and not just its animation.

Animation cancelling is fine, it if it cancels the damage as well as the animation. Otherwise it just looks weird. I love how fast the game's combat is with the cancelling, but I'd rather ZOS fixed the system so cancelling actually cancels, and if I want to use a skill I need to see the awesome animations that go with it. If they also need to buff the damage of those skills at the same time, to make up for the loss of DPS from this "shortcut", then that's great.

zaria

Darkstorne wrote: »

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

Didaco wrote: »

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".

Exactly. I'd be fine with animation cancelling if it actually cancelled the skill/attack as well. If I'm winding up a weapon swing for a skill attack then suddenly decide to block an incoming attack instead of delivering my own, that's fine. But it's clearly broken when blocking that attack also magically ends up with the enemy taking damage from the skill I just cancelled and clearly didn't execute.

What's more, this is not intended by game design. The game doesn't explain in a tutorial "you can insta-light attack by cancelling into a skill, then block-cancel all your skills so they fire much faster, dealing much more damage overall, without your character visually executing them!" And why would it? How dumb does that system sound? So instead it's something the core playerbase exploits and the majority of casual players who don't visit the forums never even hear about, let alone make the most of. It's bad for balance, and it makes the combat system look like a glitched out mess. I'd rather they fixed the animation cancelling to make sure skills and light attacks don't deal damage if you cancel them, and then balance skill and attack damage out to compensate for that loss of DPS if required. That requires work and man hours spent fixing a core game issue though, like the jump bug or memory leak that have persisted for years now, so clearly it's never going to happen. ZOS either can't, or won't, put that effort in on the game's underlying systems.

We'll it's not an exploit since the developers have endorsed it as a feature side-effect of the games combat system.

That seems to be where the difference in opinion lies for most people. Clearly ZOS have only "endorsed" it because they either can't be bothered to fix it or don't know how. On any level it's an objectively flawed system: It doesn't explain this "feature" in game to players, so only the core players know about it giving them a huge advantage; it's visually broken, with light attacks dealing damage without a weapon connecting, and skills dealing damage and applying effects even though your character is just standing still and blocking; and it doesn't take skill to button mash, which is all this system encourages.

If the developer says "We think this flawed and exploitable system is now a feature", does that make it okay? I'm certainly not saying anyone is cheating for using it, but I do get confused by the folks who think it adds to the game and is a positive or skill-based feature, as though a working animation system would detract from the game...

They could remove animation canceling simply by giving all skills including light attacks an casting time.
You can animation cancel skills with casting time just fine but this removes the effect.
You can cancel skills with casting time just fine but but this also cancel the effect.
Make the casting time a bit shorter than the global cool down.

Major effect in PvP as you would telegraph all your moves.
Main effect in PvE is that light attacks now take as long as abilities, bar swap is more expensive, you loose two moves so you want to stay mostly on one bar

Nelson_Rebel

Darkstorne wrote: »

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

Didaco wrote: »

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".

Exactly. I'd be fine with animation cancelling if it actually cancelled the skill/attack as well. If I'm winding up a weapon swing for a skill attack then suddenly decide to block an incoming attack instead of delivering my own, that's fine. But it's clearly broken when blocking that attack also magically ends up with the enemy taking damage from the skill I just cancelled and clearly didn't execute.

What's more, this is not intended by game design. The game doesn't explain in a tutorial "you can insta-light attack by cancelling into a skill, then block-cancel all your skills so they fire much faster, dealing much more damage overall, without your character visually executing them!" And why would it? How dumb does that system sound? So instead it's something the core playerbase exploits and the majority of casual players who don't visit the forums never even hear about, let alone make the most of. It's bad for balance, and it makes the combat system look like a glitched out mess. I'd rather they fixed the animation cancelling to make sure skills and light attacks don't deal damage if you cancel them, and then balance skill and attack damage out to compensate for that loss of DPS if required. That requires work and man hours spent fixing a core game issue though, like the jump bug or memory leak that have persisted for years now, so clearly it's never going to happen. ZOS either can't, or won't, put that effort in on the game's underlying systems.

We'll it's not an exploit since the developers have endorsed it as a feature side-effect of the games combat system.

That seems to be where the difference in opinion lies for most people. Clearly ZOS have only "endorsed" it because they either can't be bothered to fix it or don't know how. On any level it's an objectively flawed system: It doesn't explain this "feature" in game to players, so only the core players know about it giving them a huge advantage; it's visually broken, with light attacks dealing damage without a weapon connecting, and skills dealing damage and applying effects even though your character is just standing still and blocking; and it doesn't take skill to button mash, which is all this system encourages.

If the developer says "We think this flawed and exploitable system is now a feature", does that make it okay? I'm certainly not saying anyone is cheating for using it, but I do get confused by the folks who think it adds to the game and is a positive or skill-based feature, as though a working animation system would detract from the game...

You

Darkstorne wrote: »

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

Didaco wrote: »

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".

Exactly. I'd be fine with animation cancelling if it actually cancelled the skill/attack as well. If I'm winding up a weapon swing for a skill attack then suddenly decide to block an incoming attack instead of delivering my own, that's fine. But it's clearly broken when blocking that attack also magically ends up with the enemy taking damage from the skill I just cancelled and clearly didn't execute.

What's more, this is not intended by game design. The game doesn't explain in a tutorial "you can insta-light attack by cancelling into a skill, then block-cancel all your skills so they fire much faster, dealing much more damage overall, without your character visually executing them!" And why would it? How dumb does that system sound? So instead it's something the core playerbase exploits and the majority of casual players who don't visit the forums never even hear about, let alone make the most of. It's bad for balance, and it makes the combat system look like a glitched out mess. I'd rather they fixed the animation cancelling to make sure skills and light attacks don't deal damage if you cancel them, and then balance skill and attack damage out to compensate for that loss of DPS if required. That requires work and man hours spent fixing a core game issue though, like the jump bug or memory leak that have persisted for years now, so clearly it's never going to happen. ZOS either can't, or won't, put that effort in on the game's underlying systems.

We'll it's not an exploit since the developers have endorsed it as a feature side-effect of the games combat system.

That seems to be where the difference in opinion lies for most people. Clearly ZOS have only "endorsed" it because they either can't be bothered to fix it or don't know how. On any level it's an objectively flawed system: It doesn't explain this "feature" in game to players, so only the core players know about it giving them a huge advantage; it's visually broken, with light attacks dealing damage without a weapon connecting, and skills dealing damage and applying effects even though your character is just standing still and blocking; and it doesn't take skill to button mash, which is all this system encourages.

If the developer says "We think this flawed and exploitable system is now a feature", does that make it okay? I'm certainly not saying anyone is cheating for using it, but I do get confused by the folks who think it adds to the game and is a positive or skill-based feature, as though a working animation system would detract from the game...

Why did you only quote one part of my paragraph? You completely ignored everything after that where I literally agreed with everything you just said.

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

Didaco wrote: »

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".

Exactly. I'd be fine with animation cancelling if it actually cancelled the skill/attack as well. If I'm winding up a weapon swing for a skill attack then suddenly decide to block an incoming attack instead of delivering my own, that's fine. But it's clearly broken when blocking that attack also magically ends up with the enemy taking damage from the skill I just cancelled and clearly didn't execute.

What's more, this is not intended by game design. The game doesn't explain in a tutorial "you can insta-light attack by cancelling into a skill, then block-cancel all your skills so they fire much faster, dealing much more damage overall, without your character visually executing them!" And why would it? How dumb does that system sound? So instead it's something the core playerbase exploits and the majority of casual players who don't visit the forums never even hear about, let alone make the most of. It's bad for balance, and it makes the combat system look like a glitched out mess. I'd rather they fixed the animation cancelling to make sure skills and light attacks don't deal damage if you cancel them, and then balance skill and attack damage out to compensate for that loss of DPS if required. That requires work and man hours spent fixing a core game issue though, like the jump bug or memory leak that have persisted for years now, so clearly it's never going to happen. ZOS either can't, or won't, put that effort in on the game's underlying systems.

We'll it's not an exploit since the developers have endorsed it as a feature side-effect of the games combat system. But on the whole I agree with your post. The execution of AC is very shady especially in regards to pvp where thousands of players still have no idea how some skills killed them because AC causes those skills not to be heard/seen before the damage is already applied and by the time the game shows anything it is usually a death recap XD

The trick is convincing the developers to change it. Which is unlikely as their team has shown numerous times now they are unable to competently alter basic mechanics in the game as the team now doesn't fully understand it like the teams that actually built it. What we have now are just "maintainers" of the current design

That's my full post. I already agreed that AC is a shady system and that it's only in place because of sub par newer coders/developers

paulsimonps

altemriel wrote: »

just check out Wrobel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZtwhYkKSs

This little clip serves as proof that IT IS NOT A BUG AND IS INSTEAD A FEATURE OF THE GAME, MOVE A LONG!

Call it flawed all you want but the game would not function without it and right now doing high DPS is a matter of Learn too player no matter if you hate the phrase or not.

darthsithis

if vma adds can cancel, we should be allowed to as well lol

deepseamk20b14_ESO

Why are people talking about this after three years?

Nelson_Rebel

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

Why are people talking about this after three years?

Maybe just because something is in place doesn't mean it doesn't need to be adjusted as the game progresses just like everything else in every game ever and life in general


Food for thought

Amp151

Animation canceling isn't a feature or a bug...

IT'S A LIFESTYLE!

SublimeSparo

praglaud wrote: »

It's an accepted side effect, as others say. It's not really important to learn until vet trials. All 4 man content in the game - including vet-DLC - can be largely facerolled by any normally skilled player without touching animation cancelling. Sure, you can add DPS by learning it, but the standard dungeon content does not require it as the skill bar is relatively low.

Tanks do not tend to use it.

I use it on a tank, after an enemy heavy attack, i can drop block, light attack cancelled with a heroic slash, and cancel that with holding block again.
If rakkhat goes to empower a hulk but i am casting igneous or another buff i can bash cancel the skill and make the interrupt.
And i block/bar cancel warhorn

Shad0wfire99

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

Why are people talking about this after three years?

Because they still haven't learned how to do it, so "it's a bug." lol

SublimeSparo

LilySix wrote: »

Again... AC has no impact on dps.... (for ps4 players).... Best AC you can do is switch bar. But with L2 you don't dps quicker..... So where's the cheating there ?

AC includes light attack weaving, bar cancelling, bash and block cancelling.
While block cancelling will not increase dps, light attack weaving clearly does

DHale

You will not be able to pve or pvp competitively without animation cancelling. So whether it is a feature or bug is irrevelevant. Just do it.

OdinForge

Shad0wfire99 wrote: »

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

Why are people talking about this after three years?

Because they still haven't learned how to do it, so "it's a bug." lol

Really this is the only relevant explanation at this point in the game. ZOS has tweaked animation priority on several occasions for better or worse, they've addressed their stance on it through their twitch stream.

About the only thing they haven't done is created an in depth combat guide for new players, or the overwhelming amount of long term players in this game that still run around in white gear.