Is Animation Cancelling a Feature, not a Bug?

Banana

Get rid of it

hmsdragonfly

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Hey all, just joined the forums but I've been playing actively for a few weeks now. I'm not even 50 yet (taking my time with it, enjoying the story / crafting / completing each zone fully / etc), but I do browse these forums a lot at work.

From the perspective of a newcomer, animation cancelling seems scary and kinda messed up. Having to actually swap action bars on the fly in combat already seems annoying, but reading that I actually have to clip animations and mash keys like a maniac while weaving light attacks in between skills to be successful at high end endgame makes me want to vomit. I doubt I'll ever get "good" enough to compete at that "level", despite being in a top tier raiding guild in my previous game.

I'm coming from WoW and more recently Rift, and those games have tons of problems. Tons. I started playing this more because I fully expected to quit Rift altogether. I quit WoW years ago. But one thing they do nicely is combat itself. Global cooldowns and autoattack make it so that you don't have to do janky things like animation cancel in order to squeeze out the most dps possible. You can say it dumbs the game down, but I will counter that by saying this system is counter-intuitive and makes the game feel more like an action game than an MMO.

Despite the differences in combat (lack of ability to create macros is frustrating), ESO seemed like a great game, and I love the Elder Scrolls, so I intended to make it my only MMO moving forward. Now, I fear that I won't be able to compete at endgame because of this animation cancelling and weaving stuff.

I'll probably still play Rift for raiding (when they actually get around to releasing anything, but that's a story for another forum), and stay a "casual" here while I finish out all the content I can do. Not because I want to, but because the underlying game mechanics and this bizarre yet accepted meta will probably prevent me from ever doing anything more. I'm sure a lot of other new / prospective players are in the same boat, just throwing that out there...

Well, ESO is an action RPG, WoW is not, you have to actually aim at your opponent, "cooldown" is in ESO in the form or resource management, you will have to manage your resource effectively, if you spam an expensive ability too much you will run out of resources and die.
You can't say that WoW's combat is better because objectively it's not, it's just a matter of preference.

P/S: you don't need animation cancelling to complete 90% of the game. I even completed vMA without light attack weaving.

Saturn

Rainwhisper wrote: »

I've been seeing the necessity of animation cancelling coming up more and more in posts about end-game, veteran DPS. I know that the Elder Scrolls series has always been an action RPG as opposed to a straight-up numbers crunch. Consequently, your ability to aim, stay on your target, rapidly execute skills matter a lot in Elder Scrolls games.

Nonetheless, is the consensus that the game is built to require you to animation cancel to succeed in end-game content?

Also, is there a consensus method for animation cancelling? I doubt I'll ever be using it, since I can kill all the solo PvE mobs I need to without it , but I am curious what people are talking about. As usual, the YouTube videos were less than helpful, and clearly not made for someone over 40!

You don't need to animation cancel to beat anything, but it does help with some builds to get higher dps. With some abilities, like Endless Hail, it helps a lot that you can cancel the animation since it's a long animation. With other abilities, like Elemental Blockade, it becomes faster to place if you do a light attack before using it, and so on. It's definitely not necessary to be able to do well, but if you want to min/max it helps a lot since you are basically trying to shave off any deadtime you have in your rotation to optimise the damage output.

Joy_Division

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.

This is absolutely right. "Animation Canceling" makes the game more forgiving & easier.

nursingninja

The problem with animation cancelling is that it unbalances crafted and looted sets. Without using animation cancelling your uptime on burning spellweave for example will be very low. And this will even you out with julianos or twice born star.

But with animation cancelling you can maximize uptime by squeezing in all those light attacks.

They should definitely need it. Maybe if cancelling an animation doubled the cost of your next attack or something.

Runkorko

Just a exploit.

LilySix

SublimeSparo wrote: »

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

Light attacks can be ac by skills but skills can't be ac by light attacks. That is why i say that they must be done at the right time. If you are able to "AC" your light attacks, then you get more dps.

If you think you AC your skills with LA then you're wrong and you don't get more dps. Your skills animation can visualy be cut but the duration time is still there and you can't do anything else even if you think so.

I'm talking about ps4 gameplay. Don't know if it's the same on PC or Xbox.

dday3six

Sharee wrote: »

dday3six wrote: »

The game play wouldn't be harder, it would be different. The game is designed with reactive actions such as blocking and dodging in mind. Removing a player's ability to do those sort of reactions means the game play would need to be altered as well.

Of course the removal of anim cancelling might not make the game harder *if* at the same time ZOS made other alterations to counteract the difficulty increase, but that is not what i am talking about. I am talking about how removal of animation cancelling would affect the difficulty in the game as it currently is, not in some hypothetical game whose gameplay has been altered in other ways.

Right now to "master" the game, with animation cancelling, all you need to learn is how to press button fast in the correct sequence. This is so trivial that you can even macro it to some degree.
With animation cancelling disabled, you would instead have to learn to pay attention to what your enemy is doing, as to not lock yourself into a bad animation at a time when a defensive measure was needed. That, IMHO, requires a much more skilled gameplay, which is why i don't buy the argument that animation cancelling would dumb the game down or make it easier.

Then you're talking a turn based game. There are no modern action games that function like that. Being stuck in a lengthy animation is not deemed to be 'fun' by most in an action game. Then a system like that is highly susceptible to frame rate drops, lag, and latency which is why it would not function well in an online environment.

You're understanding of Animation Canceling seems limited. There is a great deal more to it than you believe. It's not simply presseing the inputs in the correct order swiftly and because the timing is different for each animation marcos aren't that efficient. It takes practice to learn the ins and outs of the most effective way to AC within a rotation. That is why players feel AC adds another layer of skills. It's a deep and detailed system to learn.

Raeph

exeeter702 wrote: »

Raeph 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.

This exactly.

It's fine to be able to cancel and block, dodge, whatever. But the damage shouldn't go through. The game still needs to be responsive, but the damage doesn't make sense and I agree is immersion breaking.

Hypothetical situation time ---

Im in a bout with another player, we go back and forth and i notice the opponent is not alone, he has a friend coming who happens to be set up for max snipe damage. I acknowledge this. As i successfully land a well timed dizzying swing i realize that the approaching player has cocked a snipe and it is flying right towards me.....

According to you and most opponents of "animation canceling", I, by all rights, should be bound to the follow through animation of dizzying swing (the animation where i am recovering from the weight of the 2h weapon). I should have no right to react to the nuke flying my way? Even despite successfully resolving the dizzying swing, the skill was checked, the damage was applied, it was completely resolved. So now i have to artificially be locked out of any sort of reaction and eat the snipe? The reason block, dodge roll, and bash are off the GCD is because when they were crafting this combat system, they wanted it to be responsive. They wanted it to reward the player for being aware and successfully landing hits.

Pro tip.. if you cancel a skill with block or dodge roll before it resolves then you are not awarded anything, this is the case with cast time abilities. For instant cast abilities, it is irrelevant because they are instant cast anyways, you are provided the ability to dodge or block as soon as the game allows regardless.

This is the crux of the issue... there are far too many people that have no clue as to what is actually going on under the hood of this combat system and instead make up nonsense and hyperbole in the tune of "exploiting" and "cheating" to squeeze in numerous skills within a short time frame where as you would not normally be allowed to.

The reality is that you can not do that, the global cool down keeps this in check. What animation canceling is REALLY doing is simply masking the recovery animation of abilities.

Why quote my post if you obviously didn't read it? I specifically said I don't have a problem with cancelling to block. Also I never said it was cheating or an exploit, so slow your roll. I'm aware of how and why it works, but thanks for the "pro" tips anyway.

I mostly am not a fan of the light attack canceling as it looks strange, ends up in a bunch of button mashing, isn't exactly hard to do, and unlike canceling to block or dodge it doesn't reward awareness and reaction time. It's just kind of mindless.

Ideally id rather have the damage resolve at the end of the animation. But yeah, they obviously aren't going to redesign everything to fix it so it's a moot point. Just my opinion.

exeeter702

Raeph wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Raeph 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.

This exactly.

It's fine to be able to cancel and block, dodge, whatever. But the damage shouldn't go through. The game still needs to be responsive, but the damage doesn't make sense and I agree is immersion breaking.

Hypothetical situation time ---

Im in a bout with another player, we go back and forth and i notice the opponent is not alone, he has a friend coming who happens to be set up for max snipe damage. I acknowledge this. As i successfully land a well timed dizzying swing i realize that the approaching player has cocked a snipe and it is flying right towards me.....

According to you and most opponents of "animation canceling", I, by all rights, should be bound to the follow through animation of dizzying swing (the animation where i am recovering from the weight of the 2h weapon). I should have no right to react to the nuke flying my way? Even despite successfully resolving the dizzying swing, the skill was checked, the damage was applied, it was completely resolved. So now i have to artificially be locked out of any sort of reaction and eat the snipe? The reason block, dodge roll, and bash are off the GCD is because when they were crafting this combat system, they wanted it to be responsive. They wanted it to reward the player for being aware and successfully landing hits.

Pro tip.. if you cancel a skill with block or dodge roll before it resolves then you are not awarded anything, this is the case with cast time abilities. For instant cast abilities, it is irrelevant because they are instant cast anyways, you are provided the ability to dodge or block as soon as the game allows regardless.

This is the crux of the issue... there are far too many people that have no clue as to what is actually going on under the hood of this combat system and instead make up nonsense and hyperbole in the tune of "exploiting" and "cheating" to squeeze in numerous skills within a short time frame where as you would not normally be allowed to.

The reality is that you can not do that, the global cool down keeps this in check. What animation canceling is REALLY doing is simply masking the recovery animation of abilities.

Why quote my post if you obviously didn't read it? I specifically said I don't have a problem with cancelling to block. Also I never said it was cheating or an exploit, so slow your roll. I'm aware of how and why it works, but thanks for the "pro" tips anyway.

I mostly am not a fan of the light attack canceling as it looks strange, ends up in a bunch of button mashing, isn't exactly hard to do, and unlike canceling to block or dodge it doesn't reward awareness and reaction time. It's just kind of mindless.

Ideally id rather have the damage resolve at the end of the animation. But yeah, they obviously aren't going to redesign everything to fix it so it's a moot point. Just my opinion.

I did in fact read your quote... There is not a single ability that isnt a cast time or channel that can be block canceled before it resolves and still deliver its damage so the complaint about it being an issue doesnt make sense. You cant block cancel instant cast abilites because they resolve instantly. The general statement was beyond just your single quote so dont get too worked up over it.

Woopy

Animation cancelling is an unintended mechanic in many many MMOs that has become accepted to be not a hack or bug and most of the time does not get fixed because at times it takes technique to do, and not everyone is capable of performing it as swiftly as others... leaving it to be kind of a luxury if you take the time to learn how to do it.

Izaki

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

OdinForge wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

xblackroxe wrote: »

ynimma wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

The current development of action mmos is to embrace animation canceling and to build systems around the flow of combat you can achieve with it. ESO is not the only one.

Right. I'll love to gank you in Cyrodiil with 5 attacks carried out in 1.5 seconds. Don't bother thinking about what happened, you can see it on the death recap anyway.
Because all for the wonderful flow of combat after you have ridden a lot just to get this.
And maybe it's not you I'll gank but someone. Someone who actually BELIEVES that the information being given on a skill is valid while it's just not.
Now if you could please tell me and that so called "vocal minority" how this can make my or the other's game more wonderful...

You anti AC people are like the anti vaxxer guys. You got debunked over and over but still spout the same nonsense anyways. There´s no 5 abilities in 1.5 seconds not with macro not with skill not with anything. Its just doesn´t happen.
And if you don´t wanna get ganked in pvp maybe have more than 20k health and put at least a bare minium effort into survival or maybe dont let your riding stamina drain. If you die from a gank thats on you and only you nobody else.

For everyone's viewing pleasure .

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ekmGtWaj5CU&ebc=ANyPxKppHfnbxKf-mwNokuP-icfIxdgnbQapaUkM2W1fMJ3Cog6JPf_1LTDW0W7-WAq3KVEZbq7R

Do you actually think anything in that video has anything to do with animation canceling? You guys need to stop confusing bugs and lag with the capabilities of animation canceling, which are so farfetched in your minds.

In that first clip he had 15K health and got ganked, and via some typical ESO fall damage uneven terrain bug he died. This bug has a long ESO history going back to meteor and leap on uneven terrain insta-killing people for no reason. His death recap didn't even pickup the ambush that was likely used, and there is no way to see what the lag conditions were like.

15K health is barely enough to survive just a heavy attack and ambush from stealth, not taking into consideration whatever proc set activates on hit (in the case of that video, viper). But ultimately he got taken down not by the player, but by the long standing fall damage bug.

Double procs despite a proc cool-down limitation, how can you even prove this is somehow due to animation canceling and not just terrible armor set coding. If a set is designed to proc on melee attacks only, how does it proccing on ranged attacks suddenly make it an AC issue and not just a bad coding issue for whatever rule dictates how it procs?

When yo do the combo correctly for that gank you must AC . The screen will freeze for a second , you hear one attack go off but all the attacks land at once . Only really fast animation canceling Nightblades pull it off right . So to answer your question , yes , AC is the reason . It can still be done on stamblade even without double proc bugs present . Try doing that without AC , I guarantee you can't pull it off on a good player .

That has to do with the attack travel times, more than with AC. The screen freeze is not an AC feature either. Ganking isn't so muchabout AC,its about overlapping cooldowns and travel times to make things hit at the same time. The bow heavy attack takes time to get to the target, whereas Ambush is instant. Even though Ambush is cast 0.5 seconds after the heavy attack, they both hit at the same time.
Much like a Templar casting Dark Flare and immediately beaming, the Jesus Beam will hit the target before the Dark Flare although it was cast a second later (GCD). Or Snipe + Ambush.
Remember, no form of AC allows you to bypass the strict 1 second global cooldown on skill casts. Light attacks and bashes also have a similar cooldown. You can overlap all 3 to achieve the famous LA > Skill > Bash combo. You can also cast a skill that has a projectile travel time beforehand and make those 4 different things hit at once. Its more about timing and overlapping cooldowns.
By itself, the most common AC technique, block cancelling, doesn't do anything aside from hiding the animation of an instant skill. Even then the animation will still show, just your character won't be seen doing anything with his hands or body. So block cancelling is totally one of the most useless things to do as every animation of the impact will still show, but you'll stop your stamina recovery for 2 seconds and you'll still have to wait a second before being able to perform another skill. Block cancelling is really just that, you react to an incoming attack while performing an animation, thus overriding the animation you were doing with the blocking animation.
Roll dodge and bar swap cancelling is very similar, except it doesn't stop your recovery and you've actually achieved something useful with animation cancelling: dodged an incoming attack or bar swapped. You still have to wait 1 second before performing another skill.
AC is really just priorities: light attack/heavy attack > skill > bar swap > bash/block > roll dodge. That's all it is. Without it, you woundn't have any sort of fluidity in combat, and you wouldn't be able to react to an incoming attack while performing your own attack.

Crafts_Many_Boxes

I realize I'm very new here comparatively speaking, but I'm gonna try and make another point from experience in other MMOs. I've read in this thread that there IS an absolute gcd. And that's nice I guess, but when you have animations that are on a separate timer from the gcd, things become, well....messed up. Very messed up. Honestly, having both on the same timer just makes the game much cleaner / more manageable for everyone. There's a flow to it all.

You can argue that it's "more realistic" that way I guess, because sure you can stop actions while in the middle of them IRL, but two points on that:

1) Isn't that a bit much? Like, do we really need THAT much realism? It just seems to make the game more complicated and button-mashy than any game needs to be.

2) If it were truly realistic, there would be harsh resource penalties for animation cancelling. EX: cancelling a weapon swing mid-action is far more physically taxing than letting the action finish and moving to a new one. As is evidenced by your in-game character, your movements need to be far faster / jerkier / more awkward to pull it off, and there is something to be said for momentum and drastic shifts in force direction instantaneously.

Again, I could be dead wrong about this, but I think a nice solution would be to make animation canceling double the cost of the ability you used to cancel the previous animation. That way, you can still animation cancel to block / int / do important things, but it isn't a part of the accepted standard rotations.

exeeter702

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

I realize I'm very new here comparatively speaking, but I'm gonna try and make another point from experience in other MMOs. I've read in this thread that there IS an absolute gcd. And that's nice I guess, but when you have animations that are on a separate timer from the gcd, things become, well....messed up. Very messed up. Honestly, having both on the same timer just makes the game much cleaner / more manageable for everyone. There's a flow to it all.

You can argue that it's "more realistic" that way I guess, because sure you can stop actions while in the middle of them IRL, but two points on that:

1) Isn't that a bit much? Like, do we really need THAT much realism? It just seems to make the game more complicated and button-mashy than any game needs to be.

2) If it were truly realistic, there would be harsh resource penalties for animation cancelling. EX: cancelling a weapon swing mid-action is far more physically taxing than letting the action finish and moving to a new one. As is evidenced by your in-game character, your movements need to be far faster / jerkier / more awkward to pull it off, and there is something to be said for momentum and drastic shifts in force direction instantaneously.

Again, I could be dead wrong about this, but I think a nice solution would be to make animation canceling double the cost of the ability you used to cancel the previous animation. That way, you can still animation cancel to block / int / do important things, but it isn't a part of the accepted standard rotations.

With all due respect.. that, on a fundamental level, makes absolutely no sense. Cast time abilities ONLY charge the player its cost in resources when the ability successfully resolves. If you block cancel it before its resolution, you obviously dont get the damage nor do you take the hit on your resources. Instant cast abilities resolve instantly and thus the cost is also paid instantly. You cant cancel an ability with another ability, so your suggestion to increase the cost of the following ability 2x if you animation cancel one prior is asinine.

All animation canceling does is mask the recovery animation of a skill. The truth is, the recovery animation of a skill is purely cosmetic from a system standpoint. As far as the combat system is concerned, as soon as the ability is resolved, you are free to act. You can only perform a single ability every 1 second. Much light standard post WoW mmos, "white attacks" or auto attacks are off the GCD, a similar structure is in place here, where in the player is allowed to perform 1 basic attack and one ability per GCD.

If you want players to sit through every recovery animation of every skill, then you are punishing them for successfully landing skills by denying them the right to react defensively to something else immediately after. There is more going on under the hood of this combat system then a vast majority of players realize.

This is a natural effect of the combat system, if you want to eliminate it entirely, then you must increase the GCD between ability use, force players to sit in recovery animations and / or place ability resolutions at the tail end of the entire skills animation all of which would make for an incredibly awkward looking, awkward feeling, stiff and unresponsive combat system.

waterfairy

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 dislike it because it's stupid quick-scoping, mmo style. I also avoid cheesy proc sets like viper...I may be weaker in pvp but I can walk through Cyrodiil with head held high

LucaBrasi

Animation canceling is cheating bottom line! It was a Bug that was not intended to be in the game and cheaters exploited it, now eso don't know how to fix it so they leave it in the game instead of addressing the issue like so many other broken things in this game. What's even sadder is some ppl go the extra mile and download 3rd party addons that allow them to use macros and then they tell everyone "I'm just really good at animation canceling" thing is how does an honest player know if someone is just a good animation canceler or using macros? you can't for sure so why the BLANK would you not try to fix this flaw? After zos allowed all the cheaters to come back to eso last year they sent a clear message to the eso community- cheating is fine just don't get reported by hundreds of ppl or zos will give you a 3 day ban(LOL). Seriously I blame streamers the most, they couldn't live without the Bug (animation canceling). ZOS grow a pair of nuts and kick the cheaters/exploiters for good but most importantly fix the game so animation canceling isn't a thing! Cheating in ESO has become the norm, go to any pvp campaign the regulars know who in their campaign is running cheats its not a secret zos just refuses to do anything about it.

xblackroxe

Khrogo1 wrote: »

Animation canceling is cheating bottom line! It was a Bug that was not intended to be in the game and cheaters exploited it, now eso don't know how to fix it so they leave it in the game instead of addressing the issue like so many other broken things in this game. What's even sadder is some ppl go the extra mile and download 3rd party addons that allow them to use macros and then they tell everyone "I'm just really good at animation canceling" thing is how does an honest player know if someone is just a good animation canceler or using macros? you can't for sure so why the BLANK would you not try to fix this flaw? After zos allowed all the cheaters to come back to eso last year they sent a clear message to the eso community- cheating is fine just don't get reported by hundreds of ppl or zos will give you a 3 day ban(LOL). Seriously I blame streamers the most, they couldn't live without the Bug (animation canceling). ZOS grow a pair of nuts and kick the cheaters/exploiters for good but most importantly fix the game so animation canceling isn't a thing! Cheating in ESO has become the norm, go to any pvp campaign the regulars know who in their campaign is running cheats its not a secret zos just refuses to do anything about it.

Oh boy.

Where do I start.

No matter if something was intended or not at the start it is intended and embraced now so there is no cheating, exploiting or whatever other bad word you find involved.
We can argue about the reason why they embraced it. Maybe it was indeed bc they couldn't fix it or maybe it was bc they saw it and thought "oh what a nice thing we have made here by accident, lets keep it". Doesn't change that it now is a key component of the game. Also I tend more to the 2nd reason since all they did since was with AC in mind even the latest changes to light- and heavy attacks.
There are so many mechanics in this game that were built with AC in mind the combat system would be completely different. So if you don't like the combat the good. BB you won't be missed have fun in other games.

QuebraRegra

wait... is this the "triggered" thread?

cause I was just triggered.

QuebraRegra

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

xblackroxe wrote: »

ynimma wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

The current development of action mmos is to embrace animation canceling and to build systems around the flow of combat you can achieve with it. ESO is not the only one.

Right. I'll love to gank you in Cyrodiil with 5 attacks carried out in 1.5 seconds. Don't bother thinking about what happened, you can see it on the death recap anyway.
Because all for the wonderful flow of combat after you have ridden a lot just to get this.
And maybe it's not you I'll gank but someone. Someone who actually BELIEVES that the information being given on a skill is valid while it's just not.
Now if you could please tell me and that so called "vocal minority" how this can make my or the other's game more wonderful...

You anti AC people are like the anti vaxxer guys. You got debunked over and over but still spout the same nonsense anyways. There´s no 5 abilities in 1.5 seconds not with macro not with skill not with anything. Its just doesn´t happen.
And if you don´t wanna get ganked in pvp maybe have more than 20k health and put at least a bare minium effort into survival or maybe dont let your riding stamina drain. If you die from a gank thats on you and only you nobody else.

For everyone's viewing pleasure .

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ekmGtWaj5CU&ebc=ANyPxKppHfnbxKf-mwNokuP-icfIxdgnbQapaUkM2W1fMJ3Cog6JPf_1LTDW0W7-WAq3KVEZbq7R

This is hard evidence

I can get behind banning AC from the game to prevent this

There's been evidence presented from the very beginning, and ZOS does not deny this. The problem was they were unable to technically address the problem (this was also admitted), and as such declared the bug (as it was listed) to be a feature.

The full animations were intended to be a balancing factor, but why worry about balance in this game now anyway?

Prive

Animation cancelling is clearly cheating. I've reported thousands of players already!

Sigtric

Khrogo1 wrote: »

Animation canceling is cheating bottom line! It was a Bug that was not intended to be in the game and cheaters exploited it, now eso don't know how to fix it so they leave it in the game instead of addressing the issue like so many other broken things in this game. What's even sadder is some ppl go the extra mile and download 3rd party addons that allow them to use macros and then they tell everyone "I'm just really good at animation canceling" thing is how does an honest player know if someone is just a good animation canceler or using macros? you can't for sure so why the BLANK would you not try to fix this flaw? After zos allowed all the cheaters to come back to eso last year they sent a clear message to the eso community- cheating is fine just don't get reported by hundreds of ppl or zos will give you a 3 day ban(LOL). Seriously I blame streamers the most, they couldn't live without the Bug (animation canceling). ZOS grow a pair of nuts and kick the cheaters/exploiters for good but most importantly fix the game so animation canceling isn't a thing! Cheating in ESO has become the norm, go to any pvp campaign the regulars know who in their campaign is running cheats its not a secret zos just refuses to do anything about it.

It's not cheating if it's embraced by the makers.
It's not a bug. Bugs are things that are broken. It is a side effect of the combat system having a prioritization table. In order for us to effectively block/roll/weap swap when we need to during combat, actions are cancelled. What happened was players figured out how to make this much more valuable and efficient than expected.

The 'bottom line' is it was embraced by the developers and your feelings on the matter are irrelevant. AC is here, it's not going anywhere, and if you don't like it that's your own problem.

Fiskerton

Considering there is an absolute GCD, it just means that AC hits are oGCD abilities. You do the same thing in other games' pvp: line up all your oGCD with one GCD for a nice clean burst. I don't really see the problem with that.

Fallen_Ray

Yes it's a glitch no matter what other's might say. Is an unintended outcome when performing certain actions. Most if not all game do have these issues, but some aren't seen as problematic since to be reproduced require good timing and skill to execute and to the community's request aren't patched.

Some examples:

In FPS games like call of duty you have "quick scoping"which if done correctly could greatly reduce or eliminate the sniper's recoil allowing one to strafe through a map instead of playing like an actual sniper should.

Dark Souls has "reverse rolls" a technique that is done by locking on a target and removing the lock as you roll while pointing towards the desired direction manually, done correctly this was exploited to land easy back stabs when pvping(dark souls veterans will remember the good ol' days).

Dark Souls also has the "toggle escape" it is triggered by swapping to left hand secondary weapon and right hand secondary weapon continuously (spamming left & right directional buttons on consoles) this animation completely nullifies the staggered effect a heavy weapon like the Zweihander could inflict. This way a player could avoid being comboed to death due to stagger, by using "toggle escape" and simply walking out of the attack range.

ESO has the animation cancelling. No explanation needed as we all know how it works.

Bottom line these are glitches since are unexpected results when performing certain actions. Depending on the developer some get fixed and some become part of the game's play style

drakhan2002_ESO

Banana wrote: »

Get rid of it

They can't; that's why the Dev's said it was "part of the game".

Izaki

Damn it. I'm triggered.

Its been said 3 *** years ago. "Keep having fun and doing more DPS with animation canceling" - Eric Wrobel. So that's exactly what people are doing. Its not a a bug, an exploit or anything of the sort. Its part of the game. In fact, the game's combat system wouldn't even be as fluid as it is now without AC. And for those who say that they never knew about it because its not in the game's tutorial or some other "tip" in the game... So technically, anything that wasn't in the tutorial is an exploit. Just learn to play. It not hard to learn, although it takes quite a while to get used to it.

drakhan2002_ESO

Khrogo1 wrote: »

Animation canceling is cheating bottom line! It was a Bug that was not intended to be in the game and cheaters exploited it, now eso don't know how to fix it so they leave it in the game instead of addressing the issue like so many other broken things in this game. What's even sadder is some ppl go the extra mile and download 3rd party addons that allow them to use macros and then they tell everyone "I'm just really good at animation canceling" thing is how does an honest player know if someone is just a good animation canceler or using macros? you can't for sure so why the BLANK would you not try to fix this flaw? After zos allowed all the cheaters to come back to eso last year they sent a clear message to the eso community- cheating is fine just don't get reported by hundreds of ppl or zos will give you a 3 day ban(LOL). Seriously I blame streamers the most, they couldn't live without the Bug (animation canceling). ZOS grow a pair of nuts and kick the cheaters/exploiters for good but most importantly fix the game so animation canceling isn't a thing! Cheating in ESO has become the norm, go to any pvp campaign the regulars know who in their campaign is running cheats its not a secret zos just refuses to do anything about it.

You need to read up on the history of the game, my friend. It is a consequence of the developers not testing the game thoroughly enough. It's not a bug, it's not an exploit. The developers have said "it is part of the game" as they cannot or will not make the change otherwise. I suspect that it would have all kinds of knock-on affects if they changed it so you could not animation cancel.

That said, it's allowed. You can learn how to do it to increase your DPS...or not...either way, people are still going to use it - personally, it's part of my rotation at this point.

Izaki

drakhan2002_ESO wrote: »

Khrogo1 wrote: »

Animation canceling is cheating bottom line! It was a Bug that was not intended to be in the game and cheaters exploited it, now eso don't know how to fix it so they leave it in the game instead of addressing the issue like so many other broken things in this game. What's even sadder is some ppl go the extra mile and download 3rd party addons that allow them to use macros and then they tell everyone "I'm just really good at animation canceling" thing is how does an honest player know if someone is just a good animation canceler or using macros? you can't for sure so why the BLANK would you not try to fix this flaw? After zos allowed all the cheaters to come back to eso last year they sent a clear message to the eso community- cheating is fine just don't get reported by hundreds of ppl or zos will give you a 3 day ban(LOL). Seriously I blame streamers the most, they couldn't live without the Bug (animation canceling). ZOS grow a pair of nuts and kick the cheaters/exploiters for good but most importantly fix the game so animation canceling isn't a thing! Cheating in ESO has become the norm, go to any pvp campaign the regulars know who in their campaign is running cheats its not a secret zos just refuses to do anything about it.

You need to read up on the history of the game, my friend. It is a consequence of the developers not testing the game thoroughly enough. It's not a bug, it's not an exploit. The developers have said "it is part of the game" as they cannot or will not make the change otherwise. I suspect that it would have all kinds of knock-on affects if they changed it so you could not animation cancel.

That said, it's allowed. You can learn how to do it to increase your DPS...or not...either way, people are still going to use it - personally, it's part of my rotation at this point.

Yeah like you wouldn't be able to bar swap to heal before the follow through of an animation is finished, or you would be able to get out of a channel to block, heal, dodge or shield.

LucaBrasi

Animation canceling is a bug in the game that was not intended those that animation cancel are just exploiting the bug for malicious purposes, zos cant fix it so they left it in the game still doesn't make it ethical, just because its there doesn't mean it should be used. You can spin it however you want fact is still the same it's a bug in the game that players exploit not much different then ambushing inside a keep or dragon leaping on keep walls ect. Players that have to exploit flaws in a game to get ahead are garbage! Anyone who defends animation canceling should be banned for promoting an exploit!

TOS-
You agree not to use any Service to:
Promote, upload, transmit, encourage or take part in any activity involving hacking, cracking, phishing, taking advantage of exploits or cheats and/or distribution of counterfeit software and/or Virtual Currency or virtual items. In an effort to continuously improve the Services, You and other players discovering exploits, cheats, cracks or other inconsistencies are required to report them to ZeniMax;

Izaki

Khrogo1 wrote: »

Animation canceling is a bug in the game that was not intended those that animation cancel are just exploiting the bug for malicious purposes, zos cant fix it so they left it in the game still doesn't make it ethical, just because its there doesn't mean it should be used. You can spin it however you want fact is still the same it's a bug in the game that players exploit not much different then ambushing inside a keep or dragon leaping on keep walls ect. Players that have to exploit flaws in a game to get ahead are garbage! Anyone who defends animation canceling should be banned for promoting an exploit!

TOS-
You agree not to use any Service to:
Promote, upload, transmit, encourage or take part in any activity involving hacking, cracking, phishing, taking advantage of exploits[/b] or cheats and/or distribution of counterfeit software and/or Virtual Currency or virtual items. In an effort to continuously improve the Services, You and other players discovering exploits, cheats, cracks or other inconsistencies are required to report them to ZeniMax;

Eric Wrobel said 1 thing that just renders your whole post useless: "Animation Cancelling is not a bug or an exploit, so keep using it!" You can even find the video if you're not convinced.

Izaki

@Khrogo1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZtwhYkKSs