Combat Animations (Prioritization issue) not working since Dark Brotherhood

Alcast

Ever since Dark Brotherhood the Animations feel very clucky and not very responsive. In Thieves Guild ZOS tried to implement changes to the animations because some forumQQers did not like how animation canceling was working. Thus ZOS tried to change block/bash canceling but left Weaponswap canceling the same. The intend was to make so people actually see what they get hit with for example Light Attack > Executioner > Bash could be pulled off insanely fast.

Sounds all good yes, people tested it on PTS and literally everyone hated it because combat animations went from smooth and fast to clucky and non responsive. So ZOS decided NOT to implement the changes in Thieves Guild.....

But did anyway so in Dark Brotherhood because YOLO (yes, thats right )

Ever since we are stuck with this pile of ....... that made the game worse. ESO is great because it has fast paced combat, but if those animations do not work it is not fun at all. Macroslices and stuck in heavy attack issues were also kind of introduced because of those changes. Which is kind of hilarious because the intend in the first place was to make the animations more visible.

Pray to the gods that this mess with animations gets fixed in 2018. @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Wrobel @ZOS_GinaBruno

It looks like it is not an animation issue but rather a prioritization issue of how abilities interact with light/heavy attacks, block, bash, dodgeroll etc. Still unsure what they exactly changed in Dark Brotherhood to make it like that.

Joy_Division

Many people brought these critiques up at the times and afterward, it's disappointing ZoS just implemented them in anyway without even trying to improve them.

Pr0Skygon

I myself made quite a few threads talking about this in the General site. A lot of people seems to have the opposite ideas, with many bs reasons: "This is not an action game", "That's how MMORPGs are, the combat doesn't matter", "Don't compare this game's combat animation to games like Dark Souls", "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", and so on.

Hopefully with someone more recognizable, things can make a turn for the better in 2018.

itsfatbass

I absolutely agree with this post. Animations seem to really just slowly get worse as time progresses, and I'm sick of my character having seizures to pull proper dps...

vMaick

Agreed. I play on both pc and xbox and its even worse on xbox.

Vaoh

We’ve asked since Dark Brotherhood went live for those animation changes to go away. ZOS succeeded in doing the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do.

Pretty sure it was only like a few combos mainly revolving around Uppercut that needed animation changes back then..... not every skill animation in the game.

Rip smooth gameplay We all miss it. I can’t even begin to go over how clunky and broken animations have been since then.

REdream90

I wish i had played before Dark Brotherhood so i could experienced that juicy smooth gameplay

Getern

I can add some of my MagBlade's tears here as well. Funnel Health casting was never the same anymore...

Zorgon_The_Revenged

REdream90 wrote: »

I wish i had played before Dark Brotherhood so i could experienced that juicy smooth gameplay

Don't believe them, combat was clunky before.

davey1107

L2P, Alcast, L2P. Lol...just kidding.

There is a lot about fast paced combat right now that feels clunkier than 2016. I think you’re more of an expert on what’s causing it...I can’t figure out if it’s animations or targeting or broken abilities. But you are right, since DB the system responsiveness seems way down and it makes play uncomfortable at times, so your animation issue might be a big part of it.

RouDeR

if you think standart heavy attacks are bad... Try WW. For veteran WW player like me the feeling of 90% failing of Heavy Attack>How combo NOT Going off is a disaster . If I want my Heavy attack to go off I must not Animation Cancel it with HOW against moving target ^^ . and even then there is like 50% chance to miss so there is that ...

Zer0oo

To be fair you now can actually see sometimes what did hit you in pvp(or at least sometimes you can see the animation of skills). Just look how an animation canceled WB looked before the change.


But the rest did all go to crap in terms of how smooth a combo goes off.

Alcast

Zer0oo wrote: »

To be fair you now can actually see sometimes what did hit you in pvp(or at least sometimes you can see the animation of skills). Just look how an animation canceled WB looked before the change.


But the rest did all go to crap in terms of how smooth a combo goes off.

Tho the Wrecking Blow stuff was an issue with the skill and not how the complete animation system worked. They changed the complete animation system iirc

I think Wrobel showcased what they changed in a graph somewhere but I can not find it I am also not saying it was perfect, but it was way better than what we have right now, at least in my opinion.

Alcast

finally I found the thread: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/245038/official-feedback-thread-for-prioritization-of-combat-animations/p1

that is where it all went to poop

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

In the Thieves Guild update, we wanted to make it more clear which attacks players are using, while preserving the responsiveness and feel of the combat system. So, we started with a simple premise: if an ability is successful, you should be able to see it impact (or launch, in the case of projectiles). Now, every successful attack will display until the moment of impact/launch. Instead of canceling the impact/launch of the first ability, we now obscure the first few milliseconds of the interrupting ability.



The above examples show a Heavy Attack interrupted with an instant ability. The green part is what you see, and the red part is what is not shown. In the first example, you can see the way it is currently on the Live megaservers and has been since launch. The Heavy Attack can be interrupted at almost any time during the wind-up. At the time it is interrupted, the strike happens, but it is invisible because it is obscured by the beginning of the interrupting ability. The second example shows our current method of handling interruptions. Instead of obscuring the strike/launch, we show it up until that point of impact/firing, opting to instead obscure the (less important) first few frames of the interrupting ability.

We believe this visual adjustment meets the criteria we set when we were designing this improvement:

• A successfully-fired ability should not be visually obscured; if an attack lands or an ability is launched, we should show it happening
• DPS and other playstyles should not be adversely affected
• The game’s “feel” should not change

One side effect of this change is that there are shorter (or in some cases, no) blend times to smooth the transitions depending on exactly when you choose to fire an interrupting ability. When you’re dealing in milliseconds and giving players that kind of freedom , you sometimes have to forego perfectly smooth transitions in order to make sure the player is receiving proper feedback and telegraphing to other players exactly what they are choosing to do. Having said that, if you find particularly egregious combinations (ability X interrupted with ability Y), please let us know; there may be some things we can do to help smooth them out.

As always, we welcome your feedback. In fact, it will be instrumental in informing us how to proceed with this improvement. Our internal testing has proven to be very successful, but there are so many different playstyles, builds and rotations, we want to make sure we try to implement this in a way that feels good in all cases and doesn’t need to be taught through a tutorial; exactly what you see is what is happening.

And like I said previously, you can see they tried to change it in thieves guild but did not go through with it because it did not work. But implemented it anyway in dark brotherhood

Alcast

@ZOS_EdLynch @ZOS_RichLambert Are you aware of the issue? Abilities not firing off for seconds and then 5 abilities hit in 0.5s or getting stuck in heavy attack, fully charged heavy attacks dealing no damage etc? If you are not aware of the issue and you need videos please let us know

Pr0Skygon

Alcast wrote: »

@ZOS_EdLynch @ZOS_RichLambert Are you aware of the issue? Abilities not firing off for seconds and then 5 abilities hit in 0.5s or getting stuck in heavy attack etc? If you are not aware of the issue and you need videos please let us know

DO IT! JUST DO IT!

GCVDJ11T

Getern wrote: »

I can add some of my MagBlade's tears here as well. Funnel Health casting was never the same anymore...

Amen Brother

Juhasow

Zer0oo wrote: »

To be fair you now can actually see sometimes what did hit you in pvp(or at least sometimes you can see the animation of skills). Just look how an animation canceled WB looked before the change.


But the rest did all go to crap in terms of how smooth a combo goes off.

Actually WB because of that changes can be garbage skill sometimes which have invisible cast animation and is clunky as hell doesnt matter light or heavy attack weaved. It can be worse then it was for both caster and enemie. Miat is only putting nail in the coffin.

vMaick

Alcast wrote: »

@ZOS_EdLynch @ZOS_RichLambert Are you aware of the issue? Abilities not firing off for seconds and then 5 abilities hit in 0.5s or getting stuck in heavy attack, fully charged heavy attacks dealing no damage etc? If you are not aware of the issue and you need videos please let us know

Just make a video anyway! It will reach more people and hopefully get the devs full attention.

luen79rwb17_ESO

I agree, gotta love when my lightning staff fires a heavy attack out of nowhere or when I weapon swap for a heavy attack but my character gets stuck in the animation but doesn't do anything.

Oh well, at least I thought this was all because of my noob self not cancelling like a pro or my potato client but now I know it happens to everyone else

Kilandros

Agreed. Revert weapon animations please. They were so much smoother.

Ragnarock41

IF this means my dizzy swing wont take 5 seconds to charge, Im interested.

kojou

I have done a lot of testing around this because Merciless Resolve depends on light attacks going off, and when weaving there are some timings that have to be perfect, or the system doesn't register your light attack and kills your DPS.

Where it really gets dicey is when some skills animations have different timings than others and you "lose" light attacks because the animation just wasn't finished yet. I can "block cancel" or "swap cancel" skills to end the animations so I can get the light attack off earlier, but again that makes combat look clunky and disconnected. You also have to hold the mouse button down for about 2/10 of a second or sometimes the light attack doesn't register.

Add to that my frustration around heavy attacks. The animation of the actual heavy attacks doesn't match when they strike at all, so you can hold your mouse button down and it looks like you are doing something, but the heavy attack went off a little while ago, and you are losing DPS watching the whole animation. I have figured out the appropriate part of the animation to cut things off at, but it adds to the stupidity of the system when you just raise your daggers in the air and never actually hit anything with them because you cast a skill before the animation finishes. I wish they would just make the heavy attack animation fast enough to finish when the strike, damage, and resource return happens.

To me it feels like they need to do 2 things.

1. Improve the command queuing system where even if you click the light attack or heavy attack a little too early while the animation of a skill is still running (up to say 2/10 of a second) the system still registers it and performs the animation when it can instead of pretending you never did it.

2. Make the animations for all skills and heavy attacks match the duration of their strike point and "Cool Down" so that there is no benefit to animation canceling.

Its not that I am against animation canceling, I abuse it as much as the next player, but the combat would be so much better and feel smoother if they would spend some time speeding the animations up so you don't have to cancel them. It would also help new players since the animation finishing would actually be a cue for when to start the next attack instead of it being an arbitrary point in the animation that you have to learn when to cancel so you can start your next attack.

At least that is my 2 cents...

Minno

ztyhurstub17_ESO wrote: »

I have done a lot of testing around this because Merciless Resolve depends on light attacks going off, and when weaving there are some timings that have to be perfect, or the system doesn't register your light attack and kills your DPS.

Where it really gets dicey is when some skills animations have different timings than others and you "lose" light attacks because the animation just wasn't finished yet. I can "block cancel" or "swap cancel" skills to end the animations so I can get the light attack off earlier, but again that makes combat look clunky and disconnected. You also have to hold the mouse button down for about 2/10 of a second or sometimes the light attack doesn't register.

Add to that my frustration around heavy attacks. The animation of the actual heavy attacks doesn't match when they strike at all, so you can hold your mouse button down and it looks like you are doing something, but the heavy attack went off a little while ago, and you are losing DPS watching the whole animation. I have figured out the appropriate part of the animation to cut things off at, but it adds to the stupidity of the system when you just raise your daggers in the air and never actually hit anything with them because you cast a skill before the animation finishes. I wish they would just make the heavy attack animation fast enough to finish when the strike, damage, and resource return happens.

To me it feels like they need to do 2 things.

1. Improve the command queuing system where even if you click the light attack or heavy attack a little too early while the animation of a skill is still running (up to say 2/10 of a second) the system still registers it and performs the animation when it can instead of pretending you never did it.

2. Make the animations for all skills and heavy attacks match the duration of their strike point and "Cool Down" so that there is no benefit to animation canceling.

Its not that I am against animation canceling, I abuse it as much as the next player, but the combat would be so much better and feel smoother if they would spend some time speeding the animations up so you don't have to cancel them. It would also help new players since the animation finishing would actually be a cue for when to start the next attack instead of it being an arbitrary point in the animation that you have to learn when to cancel so you can start your next attack.

At least that is my 2 cents...

This is how I want combat to look as well.

olsborg

Yea like someone said here, speed animations up and make combat "faster", but not rly since they should also make animation canceling not possible. We would end up with basicly same combat speed as before, but atleast we would see all animations and that imo, would be alot better.