On Animation Canceling, Yes, Again

NupidStoob

The biggest problem with "animation cancelling" is that most people have no clue what it's all about and just keep blaming it for their bad performance at the game.

Weaving is not animation cancelling and quite honestly it's not difficult unless the game is being laggy. It's simply filling the void of the 1 second global cooldown with a lightattack. If you play with basic settings on keyboard and mouse it simply means you left click follow by click on skill in a very short interval. Once you have the hang for the rhythm of your skill it's incredibly simple. The problem here is that different skills feel like they have different intervals. I.E. weaving ele weapon feels different than weaving force pulse. If ZoS could streamline this I think a lot more people would have an easier time to get used to it.

Then you have a bunch of different animation cancels for skills: Block, Bash, Roll dodge and barswap. In PvE 99% of the time the only relevant animation cancel is barswap which again really isn't difficult to learn. Simply press skill immediately followed by barswap key. There is no timing at all as long as barswap is pressed after the skill. If you have trouble doing it with the same hand rebind barswap to a mouse button.

In PvP all the different cancels can become a lot more relevant. Bash cancels for a little more burst, block cancels for some more defense and roll dodge cancels to avoid hard hitting stuff while still making sure you fire your skill. The biggest issue with those are the standard keybindings. Roll dodging with double tap or bashing with both mouse buttons is just terrible to animation cancel with. I would suggest anyone who plays this game to rebind these actions to actual keys and disable these gimmick controls (you will also love this for break free).

Overall weaving and animation canceling adds a lot of depth to an otherwise unimpressive combat system and I share the opinion of many others here that it would be utterly boring without.

Elwendryll

KoultouraS wrote: »

P.S.
(As for how quickly one can cast One skill, or One LA, or One bash etc that would be ~0.100+ ms everything below that is probably a macro)

I think that if you use a spammable like Wrecking Blow, which is channeled, you can queue your next light attack+skill. You just have to press your inputs during the channeling and they go off together after your Wrecking Blow connects, so that would not necessarily be dependent on human speed. I may be wrong, but it felt like this when I was practicing during this PTS cycle. Maybe it was the 200 ping, who knows?

Undefwun

One thing in these threads that really annoys me: "hur dur, I paid real money, I should be able to see/complete all content in the game"

WRONG!!!

You paid for a user license to legally get access to and play the game, as it was created by the developers.

The conditions for getting to see certain content and obtain certain items are set out in the game. The condition was NOT just paying for the game, so stop using that as an argument.

What is with all this entitlement?

When we went to the arcade to play Street Fighter 2 when it came out. No one I know said "Oh man I put a coin in, I should be able to just see the last round, I paid for it", no you stuck more coins in till you learned the combos and you learned to fight till you beat it.

----

I have ping issues that disadvantage me in pvp. I lose to ppl I shouldn't, because sometimes, by bar swap gets lost or skills go off late or not at all. And it lessens my chances against higher end pvpers. People that know me in game/discord see me raging sometimes because of this, but in the end I know that's just the way it is.

I will NEVER be on the same footing at 350-400 than someone of equal or greater skill playing at sub 100. Should I start a thread and ask they should artificially inflate everyone's latency to 250-300 just so I can compete?

It is what it is, just play the damn game and quit trying to screw it up for other ppl. If you don't have fun, don't play. When it stops being fun for me, that's what I'll do and move onto something else.

Look at the Paralympic Games, those people have guts, determination and a inner strength at levels beyond my comprehension, but they can't compete with the Olympic Games competitors results due to whatever hand life dealt them.
It sucks, but it is what it is.

Or going back to Street Figther, some of my friends picked it up super fast, were kicking butt, while some like me took longer to learn and some guys just never got good. And that is playing on the same machine. No lag, no better net connection, no better pc specs. Same arcade, same machine. Some ppl are just better at things. It is what it is.

probabkyravi

SF2 was an amazing game for its time and still is but the thing with AC in ESO is the combos don't really make sense and were only half intended by the devs.

The racial changes we are about to see are a great step forward in taking the game back to more hybrid and less min/max but certain fundamental mechanics need to be adressed that have never been touched. No need for extreme changes, just tweaks.

mairwen85

KoultouraS wrote: »

(As for how quickly one can cast One skill, or One LA, or One bash etc that would be ~0.100+ ms everything below that is probably a macro)

Hmmm, I dunno.

mairwen85 wrote: »

I can blind type -- I type approx 80 wpm (words per minute), that's ~1.3 words per second; average word length in the English language is 5.1 letters; 5.1 x 1.3 = 6.63 key presses per second. 1000/6.63 = ~150ms time between presses -- keys are spread out across a wider scope than game controls. It is perfectly possible to have one hand poised above the skill button on the keyboard, and have the other hand perform mouse clicks in order to achieve 3 separate actions within 1 second.

Ping will distort the actions somewhat, but the time between actions will be roughly the same on execution, it would affect the time to react, not the time between presses. You send information upstream slower, but ping doesn't affect the speed you press / click -- you send request on action, time to reach server is delayed. If you have 300ms ping, but press the keys @ .1s intervals, you send request upstream @ .1s intervals -- but you receive confirmation after .3s; the issue ping affects as a side-affect is if you wait for visual feedback as confirmation, you will as a natural consequence press slower. But you can still just as easily press 3 buttons within 1s, even @ 300ms intervals (1000 / 3 = 333.333...).

The problem in PvP with ping is more relative to player reaction to incoming actions rather than actions outgoing. That's where being able to fend off, or notice an animation becomes important -- and animation cancelling may provide an advantage in the sense of 'didn't see it coming'. There are other things to notice instead (psjic barrier, the passive shield you get from CP for example).

TheInfernalRage

Inasmuch as I hate animation canceling, it's either what we have in ESO now or stupid tab targeting (WoW, etc) and combo-based animations (BDO, etc.). I still prefer the combat here no matter how "clunky" it feels like to others. With those two, either you watch your cooldown timers or you watch the animation lined up. It just feels like you're being turned into a spectator.

CyrusArya

The only thing that needs to be “changed” about cancelling is for there to be better tutorials installed to help new players learn what it is and how to do it.

The types of people who are so opposed to the concept and go on misinformed, misguided witch hunts against it (“it’s an exploit” “zos didn’t already address it” “muh animations aren’t visible” “every single action must be block canceled” “you must master cancelling to complete content”) don’t even understand the game well enough to be able to comprehend what the removal of cancelling would look like, or how it would completely ruin the flow of combat in ESO.

Elwendryll

probabkyravi wrote: »

SF2 was an amazing game for its time and still is but the thing with AC in ESO is the combos don't really make sense and were only half intended by the devs.

You know what was intended by the devs? Cast time on shields

Sevn

Nice read but a waste of your time I'm afraid TC. There's no way so many dedicated pvpers would willingly give up a part of their combat they consider skillful. Why do you think they chose to pvp in ESO over the many other dedicated pvp games?

probabkyravi

All PvE content is designed to be achievable without animation-cancel.

In PvP it causes lag.

To be able to break free from casting is a must. The DPS gain and bad server performance is not. It is able to be fixed without too much grief to macro users and button bots.

SugaComa

I'm going g to put this very simply so forgive me but I think this explains the problem best


Animation cancelling is bad for two reasons ... One it inflates DPS, Two it makes seeing damage skill in PvP much harder and trickier to counter

The issue is is simple ... Damage "trigger" is calculated at the start of an animation, so canceling the animation allows the damage to still be done.

Move the damage "trigger" to the end of the animation and you can still animation cancel to be able to block, roll dodge and everything else you may need to do in an emergency but it will not let the skill "trigger" the damage

DPS will be reduced and the game becomes more skill orientated rather than speed burns

PvP has real counters to everything as you can see the skills, now this has a potential to slow down the time to kill in PvP, but this can be adjusted by tweaking battle spirit

Truth is to rewrite the code to move the trigger is simple too time consuming expensive and ultimately not worth investing in so we are stick with it

mairwen85

two things:

1. animation cancelling does not 'inflate' dps (please, read what has been said many, many times -- this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the subject of your own complaint)

2. animation cancelling does make it harder to counter a skill when the cast of said skill cannot be seen (there are other cues, but that's another discussion)

To resolve the misconception of your first point, cast animations can be fixed @ .9s -- this makes animation cancelling redundant for rotations in PvE. Animation cancelling already voids any skill that is not instant cast.

If you mean to resolve point 2 by saying that damage is calculated on impact, or animation end, animation duration would mean damage is calculated after GCD. Long running animations would have damage collide with short running animations within a single cool down -- this could lead to much more exploitation than the evils of simply pressing block once per second; there would be some pretty nasty combinations dreamt up. Also, what if I throw a projectile, then cancel? What happens to the projectile?

Having damage boxed into cool down segments is more manageable and relative to the actual actions carried out.

Witar

If you will remove animation cancelling overall dps will go down and makes it harder to complete new stuff (even for a people that can't use animation cancelling now). Sawing your leg off just because people with disabilities have a hard time is kinda stupid.

barney2525

Kulvar wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

wow that was long.

The debate is : If you cancel an action animation, should it still deal damage or be cancelled too ?

OK, if that's the crux of the issue: Yes it should deal damage

Sebar80

Dragneel1207 wrote: »

Ani cancelling is an interesting post.
I myself get 300+ ping and with occasional spikes to 999+ and in pvp and bg i die even before i press the button xD

Yah the problem with ani cancelling is its dependance on ping and ppl on higher ping never know what hit them before they die.
and this leads to frustration and doubting or accusing the other person for cheating.

and the other problem with it is the constant mashing of the buttons and due to fast combat system of the eso the buttom mashes increases. As mentioned by the OP many ppl cant press the buttons.
But only top guilds ask for ppl +50 dps and if u r a casual player u dont need that much to complete the content and enjoy the game.

So I have a suggestion for ppl who cant mash buttons or cant do animation cancelling due to other matters and want to top the leaderboards. JUST PLAY AS A TANK as I do. As a tank u dont need ani cancelling and no need to abuse keyboard and even with higher ping u can play and enjoy and a good tank gets a lot of respect than a dps.

In PVP u cant escape ani cancelling as u need to kill the guy fast and need to damage as much as possible in a short interval of contact with other player. For example consider a ranged and melee, here ranged gets the advantage and melee needs to cover the gap and attack and without ani cancelling u cant kill the ranged (built tanky and heals) and that makes the game broken.

Yah ani cancelling is a good concept until it becomes broken i.e.depends heavily on ping. If u want to have animation cancelling in eso just make it independent of ping and give all the ppl same freedom to use it. If it is not possible then just remove ani cancelling

It should depend on skill and not on ppl with good ping (like fps games)

Play as tank to avoid light attack weaving? Wrong!
I light attack or heavy attack before skills on my tank every time I am not blocking, which is probably 90% of time and I am in range. It helps a lot with debuf uptimes. You don't have to proc your enchants from skills as often and this way you end up with better sustain.
Also it does not cost any resources to do so and it is just more fun.

VaranisArano

Sharee wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

And since it Has been evaluated in the past, I would not hold my breath waiting for change.

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Just wanted to update everyone on where we are at with the animation prioritization efforts going on right now. At its core, the goal for the change was to make it clear which attacks players were using, while preserving the responsiveness of combat. We’ve made great strides towards this, but there are still a number of cases where things just don’t look or feel right (blocking as an example). As such, we’re going to be rolling back this change in next week's PTS patch (2.3.4) and will not be taking it to the Live megaservers.

We will continue to iterate on the system internally and will roll out the changes when they are ready.

That Dev quote?

"ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »
Just wanted to update everyone on where we are at with the animation prioritization efforts going on right now. At its core, the goal for the change was to make it clear which attacks players were using, while preserving the responsiveness of combat. We’ve made great strides towards this, but there are still a number of cases where things just don’t look or feel right (blocking as an example). As such, we’re going to be rolling back this change in next week's PTS patch (2.3.4) and will not be taking it to the Live megaservers.

We will continue to iterate on the system internally and will roll out the changes when they are ready."

Just want to note that was in February 2016.

So if they are working on something to change the animation prioritization that's going to remove animation canceling, we're still waiting, 3 years later.

And in the meantime, they added this. I'd say Light Attack Weaving, at least, is here to stay.

YOB

I didn't bother reading the post, but just the comments. If you really want the animation cancels to go away, then you just better off playing LEGO Minifigures Online ... ESO has a very fast-paced gameplay, and that's what makes it really enjoyable and unique

DyingIsEasy

@NupidStoob

You are claiming that weaving is not a form of animation cancelling.

I don't understand. You are technically cancelling the animation of the light/heavy attack, right?

probabkyravi

https://youtu.be/ThZtwhYkKSs

mairwen85

probabkyravi wrote: »

https://youtu.be/ThZtwhYkKSs

Last comment on that video:

Mr. Grey
10 months ago
Pretty much, and whenever someone complains or says it wasn't intended they'll link us to this video.

probabkyravi

Its the comms, if you are a native English speaker the voice comms there are very spooky.

kylewwefan

Again? #triggered

Look. In PvE, who cares. Simple as that. Ani cancelling well might get you another 3k~5k DPS. It’s not the reason you’re only doing 17k DPS and you should be at 48k.

In PvP, your dealing with button mashing monsters that are likely going to wreck you with or without it.

Wow. 7 pages full! I can’t keep up with it. Even the OP’s first long winded post. Uhm. Yeah.

likecats

SugaComa wrote: »

I'm going g to put this very simply so forgive me but I think this explains the problem best


Animation cancelling is bad for two reasons ... One it inflates DPS, Two it makes seeing damage skill in PvP much harder and trickier to counter

The issue is is simple ... Damage "trigger" is calculated at the start of an animation, so canceling the animation allows the damage to still be done.

Move the damage "trigger" to the end of the animation and you can still animation cancel to be able to block, roll dodge and everything else you may need to do in an emergency but it will not let the skill "trigger" the damage

DPS will be reduced and the game becomes more skill orientated rather than speed burns

PvP has real counters to everything as you can see the skills, now this has a potential to slow down the time to kill in PvP, but this can be adjusted by tweaking battle spirit

Truth is to rewrite the code to move the trigger is simple too time consuming expensive and ultimately not worth investing in so we are stick with it

Sharee wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

wow that was long.

Just my 2 cents. Your computer and the server are Not going to sit and analyze every action and skill used in a combat - and then determine "This was Routine - No canceling here " or "This was an emergency" so you can cancel here".

I believe the idea was not that computer would analyze what is an emergency and what is not. Rather, it would simply make a cancelled attack do no damage, everytime. That makes both emergencies possible, and routing cancelling impossible(well, possible but no point doing it).

You guys are essentially advocating for cast times for each and every skill.

Without cast-times, your implementation will be a clunky mess best avoided.
Take swallow soul for example, the GCD is 1 second, the projectile leaves your character's hand at like 0.2 seconds. If you dodgeroll at say 0.5 seconds what happens to the projectile?
Does it disappear?
Does it hit but do no damage? How is the player on the receiving end supposed to know whether a projectile will do damage or not?
With your change, counterplay will become a lottery, you see a projectile coming, you dodge, but wait, the guy animation cancelled so it wouldn't have hurt you anyway, so you basically lost a bunch of stamina.

So as you can see, without cast times your "trigger" at the end will simply break combat. If you think it's clunky now, your implementation will make it x10 worse.

Whereas if you make all skills work like cast times, the combat will be so boring majority of players will simply quit.

Both of these solutions will also worsen the game for high latency players, with 100+ ping. Accidentally pressed a key before the GCD finished due to lag, sorry broski you do no damage. With animation cancelling, you aren't punished as severely for these lag issues.


At the end of the day, the current implementation is best of all given options. They can modify animations so that they are faster and look neater, but that is it.

probabkyravi

AC needs to be fixed the same way that NB cloak needs to be fixed fully.

Its cool but its mechanically broken. Dev intent should always be fulfilled.

likecats

Sharee wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

wow that was long.

Just my 2 cents. Your computer and the server are Not going to sit and analyze every action and skill used in a combat - and then determine "This was Routine - No canceling here " or "This was an emergency" so you can cancel here".

I believe the idea was not that computer would analyze what is an emergency and what is not. Rather, it would simply make a cancelled attack do no damage, everytime. That makes both emergencies possible, and routing cancelling impossible(well, possible but no point doing it).

probabkyravi wrote: »

AC needs to be fixed the same way that NB cloak needs to be fixed fully.

Its cool but its mechanically broken. Dev intent should always be fulfilled.

The original dev intent was a little contradictory.
They want a fast-paced, smooth and reactive combat system.

The current implementation only performs a little bad on the reactive part, since you can not always see some animations.

The suggestions provided by OP will make it perform bad on fast-paced and/or reactive part, as the target will have no way to know if the projectile will do damage or not.

Why would the devs change when the solution provided is not better than the current implementation?
The best way forward is to improve the animations of every skills so it looks crisp with the combat speed.

Ultimately, the devs have decided to go with animation cancelling and are even starting to advise it through tutorials.
They can improve the animations, but that is mostly it.

RodneyRegis

Demra wrote: »

Wow its like people cannot read in here..
if you can't improve because you are not in your early twenties any more than no amount of practice is going to help. If you work all day with your hands and they shake a tiny bit at the end of the day than no practice will help. If you have a bit latency than no amount of practice will help...

Also if your opponent animation cancel you cannot react. This also remove "layer of gameplay"... also i miss the animations.

I can do animation cancelling pretty well when i am not lagging and even enjoy it. But after reading your post and hearing so many similar complains from my guild members who are not young anymore i am convinced you're right. Its not a small minority we are talking about. And most of these people do not go to the forum. Its the highly competitive that do. That's why we only hear their opinion here.

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand the argument that the game should be slowed down for the benefit of older players or players who work with their hands. It's a computer game. If you can't move your fingers quickly then you are not going to be as good as a player who can.

I think other people should only be allowed to walk when I play sport against them because I'm old and slow.

Kulvar

Witar wrote: »

If you will remove animation cancelling overall dps will go down and makes it harder to complete new stuff (even for a people that can't use animation cancelling now). Sawing your leg off just because people with disabilities have a hard time is kinda stupid.

PvE Health pools are currently increased because of weaving. If weaving is removed, PvE Health pool will be lowered accordingly. It's not a valid argument.

DjMuscleboy02

Just because you can't do it doesn't mean it should be removed. Sorry, we can't all be winners. Just because not everyone can dunk, doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to. Some people have advantages over you, either deal with it and move on or stop making excuses. If you work all day and come home with shaky hands then maybe you just aren't going to be the very best at computer games, that's how it is sorry.

Sharee

VaranisArano wrote: »

Just want to note that was in February 2016.

So if they are working on something to change the animation prioritization that's going to remove animation canceling, we're still waiting, 3 years later.

Yea. Its not a priority for them, so it has been put on hold. Possibly because there has not been much discussion on the topic until recently.

Still, the fact that they spent so much development time on it means they are not really happy with how animation cancelling works, even if the result did not make it into the live game yet.

Aisle9

SugaComa wrote: »

I'm going g to put this very simply so forgive me but I think this explains the problem best


Animation cancelling is bad for two reasons ... One it inflates DPS, Two it makes seeing damage skill in PvP much harder and trickier to counter

The issue is is simple ... Damage "trigger" is calculated at the start of an animation, so canceling the animation allows the damage to still be done.

Move the damage "trigger" to the end of the animation and you can still animation cancel to be able to block, roll dodge and everything else you may need to do in an emergency but it will not let the skill "trigger" the damage

DPS will be reduced and the game becomes more skill orientated rather than speed burns

PvP has real counters to everything as you can see the skills, now this has a potential to slow down the time to kill in PvP, but this can be adjusted by tweaking battle spirit

Truth is to rewrite the code to move the trigger is simple too time consuming expensive and ultimately not worth investing in so we are stick with it

Try to AC a heavy attack:

You do it too soon, you get a light attack.

You do it before the animation reaches the apex you get a medium attack.

You do it too late and it won't cancel properly.

Meaning that "the damage is calculated at the start of an animation" is simply false. The trigger happens depending on what ability you are using, and what you cancel is always the recovery part of the animation. Light attacking is very quick and most of it is simply recovery.


As for light attack weaving, it's not a requirement.

Light attacks are roughly 10% of the total dps and even if you make the case for parses being conflated, sure, you won't be able to break 50k, but you will sit comfortably at 30k, and 30k dps is plenty for ALL the content in the game.

The problem is that people asking for 40k dps minimum requirements are not ZoS employees, they are players, and players can choose whomever they wish to play with, by putting whatever requirement they desire.

That has absolutely nothing to do with animation canceling.

As for PvP, that's a whole different can of worms. If you're playing on an older rig, you will be disadvantaged compared to someone playing on a gaming rig, with top of the line hardware, same way that Italian players would be disadvantaged compared to German players, and South African players compared to Italian players (and so on).

But as stated already, that's because of the inability to be reactive enough. As Kenshiro famously said: omae wa mou shindeiru.

Nothing to do with animation canceling either.