Animation Canceling

SirMewser

Heavy attack builds.

Rohamad_Ali

Wouldn't it be nice to have a game where cheating could not exist ? Then no one could blame people for losing .

Seri

Kessra wrote: »

Of course, lag spikes are also a thing on its own. Just today in PvE (vAS), Olms killed me with a single visual hit that effectively resulted in two hits simultaneously. Before the hit I was almost at full health when one single (visual) swing hit me with 18.315 + 19.262.

So basically Olms just macro'd you? It's a harsh world when even the NPCs use them

disintegr8 wrote: »

And if all of this is caused by the servers inability to handle the input load, why are some of us always at the receiving end of these 'bursts' instead of being the 'deliverer'?

This is entirely theoretical on my side, but I'd suspect the sender does not see the burst of animations, as their own actions are less dependent on getting a response or 'action acceptance' from the server, and before the server processes them, interpolates everyone's positions and actions, and sends updated details to the other clients with the processed data and skills.

ValkynSketha

necronyteub17_ESO wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

Do more research, you have no idea what you are talking about.

I'll help you out.

There is a global cooldown of 1 second after every ability you cast. NOTHING can bypass this global cooldown. Not animation cancelling, not macros.

Macroslice has nothing to do with macros itself. A macroslice occurs because the server can't keep up with the input traffic and queues abilities up infinitely and then fires them all off at once. This will simply happen in situation with a lot of data transfer (PVP, trials). Players have no control over this.

That's a load of crap haha. If that was the case , everyone would have this happening especially in LARGE Graphic fights. Every time anyone posts about this sort of thing , there is always 1 or even a few people spout off some gibberish to try and make sense or make it look legit .

As if the name macroslice isn't good enough. Hell i wish 1 time all my qued spells would fire at once and give me a free millasecond kill rofl. That's such a load of garbage.

Because we ALL know that every one of us are instant 1 kill wonders and its all due to lagg and traffic data. It's really the server that's the super killer right rofl? For some reason, there is ALWAYS the same people and select few that ONLY they have this happen to them , Hmmmm , gee thats weird huh? GTFOOH

No hard feeling, but you have no idea, i discovered it or rather happened by accident when i started getting better at the game and my skill mashing, rotations and bar swapping became better, for example on a sorc sometimes when i bar swap quickly from a heavy or light attack, and start casting liquid lightning+light attack+blockade+la+familiar, they don't fire at all instead they fire all at once after the familiar, same happen on stam, not only with bar swapping for example on stam sometimes when you gap close+la it happens as well.

kypranb14_ESO

ZOS_MollyH
Hi @Casdha !

The use of gaming keyboards and mice are not prohibited, but the use of third-party software or other means of creating macros to automate in-game functions is a violation. I apologize for the confusion!

Just to clarify further, part of the Terms of Service document includes an agreement to follow other Supplemental Terms pertaining to Your Service and/or Game, such as a Code of Conduct, provide guidance on behavior that ZeniMax deems to be inappropriate and specify restrictions on Your Account, Your use of the Game, or Your participation in the Services.

There is a paragraph in the Terms of Service agreement that is as follows:

You agree not to use any hardware or software or any other method of support that is not authorized by ZeniMax or that may in any way influence or advantage Your playing abilities, or influence or advantage Your use of the Services. Third party tools, the use of ‘bots’, “speed hacks”, “deep-link”, “page-scrape”, “robot”, “spider”, algorithm or other programs that copy or monitor any part of the Services (including, but not limited to, the Game(s) and/or forums), software that transmits, manipulates, or distributes (including, but are limited to, “mirroring”) the data stream or any aspect of the Services to another computer, server websites or other publication or distribution media, or software that permits You to use Services without human input are examples of methods not authorized by ZeniMax

Whether it provides an advantage or not, utilizing macros do fall under this category and are prohibited. Please be sure to let us know if you still have any further questions or concerns!


This was posted in May 2015 by ZOS_MollyH.

Glad I decided against using my mouse macros for this game, and stuck with my Xbox controller.

GC0

LiquidPony wrote: »

L2P.

Git gud.

Delete this thread.

Etc., etc.

My hero

Dymence

disintegr8 wrote: »

I want to know why the dude didn't die in the third video.

And if all of this is caused by the servers inability to handle the input load, why are some of us always at the receiving end of these 'bursts' instead of being the 'deliverer'?

Surely the attacker is doing something to cause the 'burst' that I don't know about. whether it is animation cancelling or whistling dixie out of your butt cheeks, you are taking advantage of a situation to gain the upper hand.

If you've never had it happen to yourself, then you simply aren't playing "fast" enough. It requires a lot of inputs in short time to possibly have it trigger. Also, some weapons seem to be more susceptible to this than others. Two handed weapons and lightning staves seem to be the most common offenders.

That said, OP is an idiot and further discussion will bring nothing.

Mic1007

Really, this again?

This horse was already beaten, killed, beaten while dead, revived by necromancers, and beaten to death again.

Can’t we just leave it alone?

Epicasballs

I believe the clip with Fengrush was taken shortly after housing release. If they banned accounts during that time for macroslicing no account that played stamina toons would have survived. Dual wield was insanely bad during that time... unplayable in PvE and abused in PvP but it was not the fault of any player. Marcoslicing and creating Macros are not the same thing. Fengrush wasn't trying to cheat it was just a thing that happened and was really bad until ZOS fixed it... it was a bug. OP must be new to the game I guess haha.

Animation canceling is fine.

OdinForge

People who come onto these forums asserting that cheating is rampant, macros are useful and animation canceling is an exploit, tend to be highly unsuccessful at this game.

If animation canceling vanished from ESO, they'll find something else to complain about to consume their time.

Izaki

SirAndy wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

They just can't do it

Easy fix that even ZOS could do in a weekend, simply make the global cooldown unique to each skill and have it match the length of the animation for the skill.
Voila, no more animation canceling and best of all, no need to redo any of the animations!

Of course, that would also give half the player population a heart attack on release day ...

Oh yeah and if you wanted to block or dodge roll AFTER having cast the skill, what would you do? You'd be locked in your skill's animation of course! And you'd get killed by that boss mechanics or that empowered Crystal Frag. Animation canceling is evil and everything but it is the one thing that makes ESO combat so flexible and its what allows you to have complete control over your character at any given second. If you start putting abilities on global cooldowns, we mgiht as well go and play WoW.

Mr_Gallows

There is nothing wrong with animation cancelling, but something wrong with the game pretending you did not cancel it

LiquidPony

necronyteub17_ESO wrote: »

Yeah and now i'm out because i gotta go give my neighbor back his Keyboard haha. He's been messaging me since i borrowed it and wants it back.

GO TRY IT , cause its kinda wild. Guess it works better or worse with other types of mice / keyboards but this is what i had access to haha.

Better games coming out soon anyhow ( shrug ) cya

You are full of shite.

LiquidPony

Linaleah wrote: »

Gothren wrote: »

umm how about no. combat is a lot more fun since animation canceling. zos likes it and a good majority of players still like it. I don't want to go back to the crappy combat when the game was released. again always the pvpers complaining. enjoy your lagodill pvp though.

ZoS gave up on trying to fix it and now they are acting like a cat that fell off the table and now is behaving like it meant to fall of the table. majority of the players are incapable of using animation canceling which is why their dps is such magnitudes lower than that of those that can. there is a reason why so few people are able to get through DLC dungeons on veteran. and now its not just mechanics. and don't try to "stop spamming light attack" at me either. you can go through a full rotation and still struggle to hit 15k SOLELY because of inability to animation cancel. and btw? ZoS knows that too. this is why overworld content is so much more forgiving. because MAJORITY of people cannot pull off the numbers possible with animation canceling and MAJORITY of people solo anyways, so they tailor the world to MAJORITY.

in any case, it is highly unlikely they can fix it. sadly. so we are stuck with this mess

Nonsense.

Anyone can "animation cancel." PvE "animation canceling" is light weaving and bar swapping out of skills. Light weaving takes all the skill of "spam LMB or RT while pressing other skills once per second." A moderately well-trained monkey could do it.

People with extremely low DPS have extremely low DPS because they haven't put the effort in. People can't get through vet DLC dungeons because they're bad at the game. They're wearing the wrong gear, they don't know the dungeon mechanics, they don't understand core game mechanics, they have their attributes set up weird, their CP are all funky, they have the wrong morphs of skills, they're Ambushing bosses and tanking with a 2H and their healer's running heavy armor and a S&B and standing in the red circles. I know this because I used to be that guy. It has nothing to do with animation canceling and your statement that people "struggle to hit 15K SOLELY because of the inability to animation cancel" is utterly ridiculous. If you can't hit 15K, you've either got a terrible build/rotation or you need to camp out in front of that target skeleton and practice, practice, practice. Simple as that.

This game is outrageously easy at its core. This isn't SC2 or LoL where elite players are firing off 500+ APM. We have a GCD. We are capped at about 120 APM and in most cases will fall well under that number due to heavy attacks, and fully half of the actions come from literally just spamming LMB/RT.

asneakybanana

necronyteub17_ESO wrote: »

Just take animation canceling OUT of the game and solve almost every overpowered problem. Make it so if you cancel an animation then you cancel the spell or ability it was tied to . If you want to cast something or use an ability , you better make damn sure that's what you want to do.

No more instant 5 different ability's from the same A-hole in less then a second while using a macro . YES they have macros and tie them to macroing keyboards and macro mice. Don't even say its not possible because that's BS.

If anyone says they haven't witnessed this then they are new players or just lying their ass off. It happens a lot and plenty of videos and statistic pics to prove it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZa4c-WZoE&t=108s

Yeah weaving my ASS rofl load of ***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mlblie7FkEQ

Worse then macros and still exists lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shyc8WtLPUw

Macro PLUS Animation Canceling is a big bunch of the problem. FIX your GAME Zos . Check this jackass out that thinks he's accomplished something from cheating. YES MACROS ARE CHEATING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohJ91nRKFe0

Video one was from a totally different combat system before cp or anything back in the first 6 months of the game. Many, many things were broken back then.

Video two and four are of the same bug, it was a bug that had to do with getting stuck in a gap closer then still casting while youre stuck in the gap closer and when you get out of being stuck all the skills seemingly go off at once when in reality the server is registering you hitting them but not sending the updates to their healthbar because it doesnt actually see you doing the skills this is mainly due to spaghetti code, its why your health can be desynced so you have more or less health than your game thinks you had. Even though the game is tracking your health in the server it is not keeping the same value as what your client shows. Thats why he seemingly just falls over at full health.

Video three is likely the same thing or it could be a bug that was around like a year or so ago. Not sure what caused it or why it happened but soemtimes players would bug out and appear to be dead when they aren't and for some reason you cant kill them.

None of these things have to do with animation cancelling, animation cancelling is simply just stopping the animation of a light attack or skill with some other animation that shares a different cooldown. For instance, light attack and heavy attack have their own cooldown separate from skills and block and bash so theoretically in 1 second you could do a light attack, a skill and a bash through animation cancelling because they all share different GCDs. Nothing other than using real exploits such as cheat engine will allow you to cast more than 1 skill within its GCD period. Would love to elaborate more if you have any more questions and help you better understand how the system works.

Valen_Byte

The last video isnt a macro but thats ok. I still agree with you. I cant defend against what I cant see, and that can make for a poor gaming experience.

"ZoS better be glad no other good MMO has come out in awhile rofl."

And this is the truest statement Ive seen on the forums in a very long time lol

MinuitPro

Valen_Byte wrote: »

The last video isnt a macro but thats ok. I still agree with you. I cant defend against what I cant see, and that can make for a poor gaming experience.

"ZoS better be glad no other good MMO has come out in awhile rofl."

And this is the truest statement Ive seen on the forums in a very long time lol

Thank you for a finally non-hurtful spam on the OP.

I empathize with the OP. There was a time many of us didn't know this was due to server lag and blamed it on players advantage. The issue isn't the players (with the exception of maybe some 0.001%) but the servers and latency. I hear heartache from my Aussie friends with their 350+ pings and I feel for them - not being able to account for what's going on in the game is the issue when trying to be competitive. The main hurt I get is when I have a 80-90 ping, 80+ fps and I'm still getting that instagib from a player... not because of him but because the server decided to finally catch up. I hope they do something about that but, like someone once said "Bugfixes don't make money".

I do agree with the reasons presented and it's best to read through previous forums before hanging the dead horse up...

The lag monster is a sore fact of ESO one must accept - it's not perfect and sometimes crap happens... but there's a ton in the game that can make you smile and we just need to embrace such things.

Xvorg

Izaki wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

They just can't do it

Easy fix that even ZOS could do in a weekend, simply make the global cooldown unique to each skill and have it match the length of the animation for the skill.
Voila, no more animation canceling and best of all, no need to redo any of the animations!

Of course, that would also give half the player population a heart attack on release day ...

Oh yeah and if you wanted to block or dodge roll AFTER having cast the skill, what would you do? You'd be locked in your skill's animation of course! And you'd get killed by that boss mechanics or that empowered Crystal Frag. Animation canceling is evil and everything but it is the one thing that makes ESO combat so flexible and its what allows you to have complete control over your character at any given second. If you start putting abilities on global cooldowns, we mgiht as well go and play WoW.

And a game full of bars, bars and more bars to do something

magictucktuck

necronyteub17_ESO wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

Do more research, you have no idea what you are talking about.

I'll help you out.

There is a global cooldown of 1 second after every ability you cast. NOTHING can bypass this global cooldown. Not animation cancelling, not macros.

Macroslice has nothing to do with macros itself. A macroslice occurs because the server can't keep up with the input traffic and queues abilities up infinitely and then fires them all off at once. This will simply happen in situation with a lot of data transfer (PVP, trials). Players have no control over this.

That's a load of crap haha. If that was the case , everyone would have this happening especially in LARGE Graphic fights. Every time anyone posts about this sort of thing , there is always 1 or even a few people spout off some gibberish to try and make sense or make it look legit .

As if the name macroslice isn't good enough. Hell i wish 1 time all my qued spells would fire at once and give me a free millasecond kill rofl. That's such a load of garbage.

Because we ALL know that every one of us are instant 1 kill wonders and its all due to lagg and traffic data. It's really the server that's the super killer right rofl? For some reason, there is ALWAYS the same people and select few that ONLY they have this happen to them , Hmmmm , gee thats weird huh? GTFOOH

Misery but that guys right.. you’re wrong.. it’s just a fact


Edit: I meant sorry he is right, but I guess misery is ok? But yeah animation canceling is not what you’re seeingn

Inig0

asneakybanana wrote: »

necronyteub17_ESO wrote: »

Just take animation canceling OUT of the game and solve almost every overpowered problem. Make it so if you cancel an animation then you cancel the spell or ability it was tied to . If you want to cast something or use an ability , you better make damn sure that's what you want to do.

No more instant 5 different ability's from the same A-hole in less then a second while using a macro . YES they have macros and tie them to macroing keyboards and macro mice. Don't even say its not possible because that's BS.

If anyone says they haven't witnessed this then they are new players or just lying their ass off. It happens a lot and plenty of videos and statistic pics to prove it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZa4c-WZoE&t=108s

Yeah weaving my ASS rofl load of ***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mlblie7FkEQ

Worse then macros and still exists lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shyc8WtLPUw

Macro PLUS Animation Canceling is a big bunch of the problem. FIX your GAME Zos . Check this jackass out that thinks he's accomplished something from cheating. YES MACROS ARE CHEATING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohJ91nRKFe0

Video one was from a totally different combat system before cp or anything back in the first 6 months of the game. Many, many things were broken back then.

Video two and four are of the same bug, it was a bug that had to do with getting stuck in a gap closer then still casting while youre stuck in the gap closer and when you get out of being stuck all the skills seemingly go off at once when in reality the server is registering you hitting them but not sending the updates to their healthbar because it doesnt actually see you doing the skills this is mainly due to spaghetti code, its why your health can be desynced so you have more or less health than your game thinks you had. Even though the game is tracking your health in the server it is not keeping the same value as what your client shows. Thats why he seemingly just falls over at full health.

Video three is likely the same thing or it could be a bug that was around like a year or so ago. Not sure what caused it or why it happened but soemtimes players would bug out and appear to be dead when they aren't and for some reason you cant kill them.

None of these things have to do with animation cancelling, animation cancelling is simply just stopping the animation of a light attack or skill with some other animation that shares a different cooldown. For instance, light attack and heavy attack have their own cooldown separate from skills and block and bash so theoretically in 1 second you could do a light attack, a skill and a bash through animation cancelling because they all share different GCDs. Nothing other than using real exploits such as cheat engine will allow you to cast more than 1 skill within its GCD period. Would love to elaborate more if you have any more questions and help you better understand how the system works.

Please use this as an opportunity to understand the game from someone who actually knows whats going on instead of spouting out nonsense and using "this is BS" as your main retort for thoughtful responses.

Sneaky is someone who has been around a long time and has been through all the iterations of the game like many of us and have seen the bugs and the fixes. Something else we've seen is ZOS's public acceptance of animation canceling and something they design into the combat system intentionally.

Feanor

I just love how the random insults replace any reasonable arguments. Is cheating possible in ESO? Sure. But animation cancelling isn’t the problem here.

VilniusNastavnik

SirAndy wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

They just can't do it

Easy fix that even ZOS could do in a weekend, simply make the global cooldown unique to each skill and have it match the length of the animation for the skill.
Voila, no more animation canceling and best of all, no need to redo any of the animations!

Of course, that would also give half the player population a heart attack on release day ...

This is what I reckon should happen. Would change a lot of the meta build, and open up trials slots to people who do not meet to 35-40K+ DPS tests that trials guilds demand for content clearing. Would make the trials more of a mechanic test than a how fast can we burn boss X to avoid mechanic Y.

I cannot weave as my ping sits at 350 on a good day being Australian on the US server. I can pull 30K on a MagSorc with a NORD using this rotation: Potion Rage LL EB <swap> Pet Prey HA HA <swap> Repeat. That is using 3/4 pce IA, 5 pce Necro, 2 pce Maw 1 VMA staff. I will never see this 46K DPS parses because my ping is too high. Abilities stick, don't register, cast the same thing twice instead of the next ability I press because it registered twice for some reason.. I use to be able to pull 40K DPS back before Lightning HA's were nerfed using the exact same build.

TL;DR Animation cancelling locks out players from high end content who have to suffer with latency issues because people don't want to risk having to do extra mechanic they can otherwise avoid.

If anything the people with high DPS are the ones that need to Gid Gud and learn the mechanics that they are so afraid of doing and trying to avoid.

SirAndy

Izaki wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

They just can't do it

Easy fix that even ZOS could do in a weekend, simply make the global cooldown unique to each skill and have it match the length of the animation for the skill.
Voila, no more animation canceling and best of all, no need to redo any of the animations!
Of course, that would also give half the player population a heart attack on release day ...

Oh yeah and if you wanted to block or dodge roll AFTER having cast the skill, what would you do? You'd be locked in your skill's animation of course! And you'd get killed by that boss mechanics or that empowered Crystal Frag.

Again simple, if you block or dodge roll before an attack/skill animation has finished, you would actually cancel the attack.

Imagine a Nirn where you had "attack canceling" instead of "animation canceling" ...

idk

hey, OP. There is a GCD on every skil that must pass before the skill will fire. It's in the basic design of the game. Animations are not designed as the limiting factor and some animations are longer than others.

Range effects this profoundly for ranged attacks.

Anyhow, it's not going away so I suggest figuring it out. Zos has made conscious change this past year cementing the most basic aspect of animation canceling as part of the game.

Kraynic

SirAndy wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

They just can't do it

Easy fix that even ZOS could do in a weekend, simply make the global cooldown unique to each skill and have it match the length of the animation for the skill.
Voila, no more animation canceling and best of all, no need to redo any of the animations!
Of course, that would also give half the player population a heart attack on release day ...

Oh yeah and if you wanted to block or dodge roll AFTER having cast the skill, what would you do? You'd be locked in your skill's animation of course! And you'd get killed by that boss mechanics or that empowered Crystal Frag.

Again simple, if you block or dodge roll before an attack/skill animation has finished, you would actually cancel the attack.

Imagine a Nirn where you had "attack canceling" instead of "animation canceling" ...

I can't imagine trying to tank that way.

Want to cast a shield? You now aren't shielded and cannot block for 1 second while casting the shield leaving you open to any incoming heavy damage.

Want to taunt (melee or range)? You now aren't blocking while doing so leaving you open to any incoming heavy damage.

If something like that was done, there would have to be a LOT of adjustment to how fights go in general in the game. The way things are now, you would be seeing a lot of dead tanks (and groups) because you wouldn't be able to manage resources and still be able to block enough to avoid the big one-shot or high damage mechanics.

SirAndy

Kraynic wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

They just can't do it

Easy fix that even ZOS could do in a weekend, simply make the global cooldown unique to each skill and have it match the length of the animation for the skill.
Voila, no more animation canceling and best of all, no need to redo any of the animations!
Of course, that would also give half the player population a heart attack on release day ...

Oh yeah and if you wanted to block or dodge roll AFTER having cast the skill, what would you do? You'd be locked in your skill's animation of course! And you'd get killed by that boss mechanics or that empowered Crystal Frag.

Again simple, if you block or dodge roll before an attack/skill animation has finished, you would actually cancel the attack.

Imagine a Nirn where you had "attack canceling" instead of "animation canceling" ...

I can't imagine trying to tank that way.
Want to cast a shield? You now aren't shielded and cannot block for 1 second while casting the shield leaving you open to any incoming heavy damage.
Want to taunt (melee or range)? You now aren't blocking while doing so leaving you open to any incoming heavy damage.
If something like that was done, there would have to be a LOT of adjustment to how fights go in general in the game. The way things are now, you would be seeing a lot of dead tanks (and groups) because you wouldn't be able to manage resources and still be able to block enough to avoid the big one-shot or high damage mechanics.

You got that all backwards. I never said anything about not being able to use a skill while you are already blocking.

- Block first, then cast skill immediately, no problem.
- Cast skill first, you'll have to wait for the animation/cooldown before blocking, otherwise your cast would be canceled.

idk

Kraynic wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

They just can't do it

Easy fix that even ZOS could do in a weekend, simply make the global cooldown unique to each skill and have it match the length of the animation for the skill.
Voila, no more animation canceling and best of all, no need to redo any of the animations!
Of course, that would also give half the player population a heart attack on release day ...

Oh yeah and if you wanted to block or dodge roll AFTER having cast the skill, what would you do? You'd be locked in your skill's animation of course! And you'd get killed by that boss mechanics or that empowered Crystal Frag.

Again simple, if you block or dodge roll before an attack/skill animation has finished, you would actually cancel the attack.

Imagine a Nirn where you had "attack canceling" instead of "animation canceling" ...

I can't imagine trying to tank that way.

Want to cast a shield? You now aren't shielded and cannot block for 1 second while casting the shield leaving you open to any incoming heavy damage.

Want to taunt (melee or range)? You now aren't blocking while doing so leaving you open to any incoming heavy damage.

If something like that was done, there would have to be a LOT of adjustment to how fights go in general in the game. The way things are now, you would be seeing a lot of dead tanks (and groups) because you wouldn't be able to manage resources and still be able to block enough to avoid the big one-shot or high damage mechanics.

Great points. Unfortunately the players who suggest ideas like OP seem to not understand basic aspects of the combat system in ESO.

Kraynic

SirAndy wrote: »

You got that all backwards. I never said anything about not being able to use a skill while you are already blocking.

- Block first, then cast skill immediately, no problem.
- Cast skill first, you'll have to wait for the animation/cooldown before blocking, otherwise your cast would be canceled.

If you are fighting one thing, sure. What if you are juggling the boss and a clone (or both if things are not going how they should) in Bloodroot? You now have more than one target that can do the same mechanics including one-shot attacks. What you are saying might work with only one enemy, but I don't see it being viable with multiples.

Outside of boss fights, you can end up with quite a knot of mobs in some places. Having to sacrifice block for 1 full second to shield, taunt a specific mob, or use a crowd control ability is not going to be viable due to having too much incoming damage to be open to it for that long at a time.

exeeter702

Kessra wrote: »

I do understand both sides of the fence. Animation canceling and weaving adds a skilled based component to the game which make the combat much more interesting and fun to play. On the other side, using macros can allow you to quickly increase your damage by a (way to) large margin. Think of someone who litterally has problems to weave light attacks between his abilities. In case of a NB i.e. this is an essential part of the rotation and messing up your light attacks can yield significant damage losses, as certain procs or buffs depend on propper LA weaving. Sure, this might be something of the past if the 3.3.2 changes go life as they are, but I'm more talking about the general case.

It shouldn't be too difficult to setup some MMO mice or keyboards to perform weaving attacks on button or key-press and thus take out an essential part of the skill-component and thus allow the player to focus on the abilities in his rotation (if this is not already fully covered by the marco) or reduce the stress-level in certain situations. Maybe also peer-preasure might be a reason some players use macros as they want to be competitive more quickly, are just lazy or just have not enough time to learn weaving/animation canceling/rotations on each of their toons.

Experienced players (especially in PvP) might expect certain abilities to be used in certain situations (in case of almost perfectly canceled animations) and thus avoid big damage spikes preemptively, not all abilities can be avoided with forboding though. Especially hard hitting abilities should have prominent visual clues that shouldn't be easily canceble to give the opponent a chance to react to or even counter them.

Of course, lag spikes are also a thing on its own. Just today in PvE (vAS), Olms killed me with a single visual hit that effectively resulted in two hits simultaneously. Before the hit I was almost at full health when one single (visual) swing hit me with 18.315 + 19.262. I wasn't sure if others witnessed the same, hence I asked the healers and other members what they might have seen. And everyone noted that this was a single hit, though two hits in the death recap. This was an instance with just 12 players in it and some server-managed bots and this lag-spike occurred. In PvP this might even be more of an issue I guess. I usually only witness that in PvP if too many players are in the same area that some (usually the others) players seem to be able to keep doing their abilities when others (usually the group I'm in) are stuck in the lag and not being able to fire off even a single ability. I haven't witnessed a queue that fills up and gets played back once the lag reduces though, but I'm not that keen on PvPing either.

In the sense of risk vs. reward animation canceling could be changed to bind the damage towards the end of the respective ability which still allows the order of the priority system we currently have by prioritizing block/dodge over abilities over L/HA just with the difference that if you block an ongoing animation no ability is performed as you decided to cancel it with the block. Only if the full animation was performed the actual damage would go off. A player here has to decide wether to still fire off an ability or block in order to avoid/reduce damage. They might also introduce an (almost) linear equation that decides how much damage you do with your ability based on the percent of the animation that was executed before it was blocked. I.e. if you performed 50% of the animation, your ability deals roughly 50% of its damage. This for sure would take out some speed of the current combat system though also give new players a chance to actually take part in the game.

I know you mean well with your comment amd put alot of thought into it, but unfortunately it doesnt work that way. You ideas about damage tied to the end of animations demonstrates like with the OP that you do not fullu understand the combat system here.

Binding the resolve point of abilities to the end of there animations makes no sense. Instant cast abilities are instant for a reason. They are desgined to be instant. Abilities like suprise attack fire instantly, meaning the resolve point at which damage is applied, dodged, blocked etc is reached at the moment you use the skill. At this same point, the GCD is triggered for which you can not use any other abilites. Every instant cast ability (ie non cast time or channeled abilites) has their follow through/recovery animation play out during the GCD refresh. Tying the resolution point to the end of recovery animations is entirely incompatible with a traditional 1sec GCD in place not to mention how ridiculous combat would look or how disjointed it would feel. There is no risk vs reward as you suggested, that makes zero sense since as long as you meet the criteria to connect an ability (in range, have the resource, not stunned), the moment you press the skill, the game does it job, calculates the odds and damage, and the player has no more commitment or obligation to the action, they have met the games criteria to use the skill and thats that. Any recovery animation that plays afterwards is purely cosmetic.

Risk vs reward is intrinsically tied to hard cast time abilities. These abilities by design have a higher payout because in this timed limitation. The second you use a cast time ability, the GCD is triggered and the cast time begins and generally the ability resolves right around the same time the GCD refreshes. If a player cacnels the hard cast at any point before it completes, they arent rewarded anything. Look at uppercut for example. Uppercut has a very deliberate back sway follow through recovery animation where the weight of the 2her is clealry portrayed. The point of which damage is applied is at the very end of the cast time right at the apex of when the weapon makes contact and flys upwards. Visually this makes complete sense. Also at that moment where damage is dealt, by specific design, so has the GCD refreshed and you are allowed to input another ability. This is why it looks a little jarring when you cast uppercut back to back and your character just kind of jack hammers it without every having any sort of backsway. So how do you change that? Do you speed up the entire animation, including the follow through, to still fit within the cast time and apply the damage point at the tail end of the recovery animation? That would be ridiculous while looking and feeling awful. Do you force the player to endure the follow through animation thus punishing them by rooting them in place or unable to take a defensive action even though they successfully met the criteria for landing the cast time skill?

Its important to understand that this is why reactionary actions like block, dodge roll and bar swap are off the GCD exclusivley. At no point when you are free to take action, are you arbitrarily locked out of defending yourself. You maintain required range, stay in LOS and connect your uppercut and afterwards you notice a snipe is flying your way, should you be disallowed to put up block because you have to wait for your character to finishing reeling back from the skill you just successfully completed?

This is where the illusion of animation canceling is given birth. Zos has chosen to omit visual indicators of GCD and channeld hard cast time bars for the sake of pushing the game as an "action oriented combat mmo! Not like those crappy wow clone hotbar mmos!" When the truth is this game very much operates on many of the same rules. Animation canceling is not a bug, it is not an exploint, you can not cheat by breaking the games timing rules and restrictions. It is simply a result of the necessity placed upon this games combat system to reinforce player agency to react to the environment all whilst making sure combat animations are not disjointed and turboed.

Erraln

Ah, so this thread is what happens when someone mainlines unadulterated Dunning-Kruger.