ESO's pvp is the most frustrating pvp I ever experienced in a mmo.

Tessitura

( Edited it a bit to try and make the post a bit more clear )
( To be clear, this will be long and have no small amount of opinions based on experience. A TL;DR is at the bottom as well. )

As the title says, one of the most frustration experiences I have ever had with pvp in a mmo, and that includes Black Desert. Now why is this? Well I sat down and thought about it, my first instinct was to blame animation canceling. Its obvious to me it was not a intended feature, as its not a smooth process and the canceling doesn't mesh with the games animations like it does in other games where that is a intended feature. I also believe that the half baked animation canceling is a large part of why Cyrodiil's servers have so many issues. It makes it harder on peoples computers as well, which might account for a lot of the frame rate loss people experience. But when I put a little more thought into it, I think the real issues lay in core game design and animations in general.

Lets look at it, the stamina, magicka, health build system was flawed from the start, with no warrior type class in the game and what felt like a lack of direction on launch, it made thing s little messy from day one. But the idea behind became clear over time, they wanted warriors to grow naturally from the weapon skills and the godly ability to dodge roll, break free of crowd control, and block/bash people. Once they added a handful of utility to class abilities for stam, the power of stamina became clear.

Now lets look at how pvp evolved after that.As gear sets started to get introduced and monster helmets with strong passive procs, things started getting messy, very messy. Balance was flying out the window quickly, and ZoS refused to accept they should start balancing pve and pvp separately. Who knows? maybe they truly feel that's part of the game's identity, even if it hurts it some. Regardless, things started to get hard, and lets not forget, the Champion system came and blew things out of the water in terms of balance, or what was the standard balance at the time. We are all used to it now, but the dynamic that system brought to the game rocked the pvp world for a moment when it first appeared.

Later down the line, a new class showed up, and people got excited. Now this class was Warden and a new game mode would come with it. Battlegrounds, if this never came to the game I would not have minded in the least. BGs, or battlegrounds made the weaknesses of this games pvp glaring to me. Without a bunch of people to back you certain builds and class just could not cut it. The lack of responsive controls and weird targeting system that sometime just out right refused to work really showed the lack of polish on the game. Add this to the growing disparity if Magicka and stam in pvp and you got a huge steaming pile of ****. Before when fights were more dynamic and open, such as it was in Cyrodiil's world pvp. These issues did not shine as much and more fun was to be had. But now its all I can see thanks to BG's. The biggest thing that became clear to me was this. Animation canceling ruins broadcasting, and cuts into people's already limited ability to respond to things. Often times, with the game the way it is, you look like you are getting shield bashed but are actually getting hit with three attacks at once. You cant respond to all of that. Even BDO had animations the broadcast what was coming when canceled and you could respond. The issue this creates is beyond the animations though. You see, animation canceling is not bad on it's own, its can be good for creating a faster experience. However, from my experience, animation canceling causes a small amount of desync that only get worse the more people you have on screen doing it. The MMO's that I have played with animation canceling often suffer from serious desync and server issues.

TL;DR

So I do have certain biases and concerns with the balance between classes, magicka, and stamina. But thats not what this is about. This is about why the experience it's self is so frustrating. Lack of responsive controls and targeting, animation canceling and the desync/server issues I believe it causes, then followed by the Magicka/Stamina issues I have.

Unlike WoW and GW2 where class identity is strong, and combat is smooth with cooldowns for pacing and animations are clear and broadcast well so people can react. This games approach to combat and half baked animations are not conductive to dynamic and intuitive play, or to adaptive play. It makes it a annoying and even toxic experience.

Gilvoth

i dont think fair to compare eso to other mmo's
i can agree with you though that eso combat is annoying especially in pvp it is very disturbing with the lagg and high ping and i can agree with alot of things you said.

TumlinTheJolly

Animation canceling, dodge rolling, manual aiming, block, bash and break free are all things that provide ESO with a far higher skill ceiling than older MMOs. This is what makes it so fun. If you want to go back to boring old tab targeting and casting simple timed rotations on CD then feel free to go and play something else. Implementing a more complex and challenging combat system in an MMO was always going to be a challenge due to ping etc, and it is by no means perfect, but this combat system is why many of us love the game. The issue with having a higher skill ceiling is that the gap between the better and worse players is more noticeable... You can't just stand there casting skills mindlessly and expect to still perform OK.

Concerning class identity... one of ESOs main draws is that you're not restricted to having to build exactly the same as everybody else. Yes, there are metas... but you don't HAVE to run exactly the same skills and gear as other people who play your class. It's a good thing.

FearlessOne_2014

Tessitura wrote: »

( To be clear, this will be long and have no small amount of opinions based on experience. A TL;DR is at the bottom as well. )

As the title says, one of the most frustration experiences I have ever had with pvp in a mmo, and that includes Black Desert. Now why is this? Well I sat down and thought about it, my first instinct was to blame animation canceling. Its obvious to me it was not a intended feature, as its not a smooth process and the canceling doesn't mesh with the games animations like it does in other games where that is a intended feature. I also believe that the half baked animation canceling is a large part of why Cyrodiil's servers have so many issues. It makes it harder on peoples computers as well, which might account for a lot of the frame rate loss people experience. But when i think about it more, I think its just the over all combat design for the game.

Lets look at it, the stamina, magicka, health build system was flawed from the start, with no warrior type class in the game and what felt like a lack of direction on launch, it made thing s little messy from day one. But the idea behind became clear over time, they wanted warriors to grow naturally from the weapon skills and the godly ability to dodge roll, break free of crowd control, and block/bash people. Once they added a handful of utility to class abilities for stam, the power of stamina became clear.

Now lets look at how pvp evolved after that.As gear sets started to get introduced and monster helmets with strong passive procs, things started getting messy, very messy. Balance was flying out the window quickly, and ZoS refused to accept they should start balancing pve and pvp separately. Who knows? maybe they truly feel that's part of the game's identity, even if it hurts it some. Regardless, things started to get hard, and lets not forget, the Champion system came and blew things out of the water in terms of balance, or what was the standard balance at the time. We are all used to it now, but the dynamic that system brought to the game rocked the pvp world for a moment when it first appeared.

Later down the line, a new class showed up, and people got excited. Now this class was Warden and a new game mode would come with it. Battlegrounds, if this never came to the game I would not have minded in the least. BGs, or battlegrounds made the weaknesses of this games pvp glaring to me. Without a bunch of people to back you certain builds and class just could not cut it. The lack of responsive controls and weird targeting system that sometime just out right refused to work really showed the lack of polish on the game. Add this to the growing disparity if Magicka and stam in pvp and you got a huge steaming pile of ****. Before when fights were more dynamic and open, such as it was in Cyrodiil's world pvp. These issues did not shine as much and more fun was to be had. But now its all I can see thanks to BG's. The biggest thing that became clear to me was this. Animation canceling ruins broadcasting, and cuts into people's already limited ability to respond to things. Often times, with the game the way it is, you look like you are getting shield bashed but are actually getting hit with three attacks at once. You cant respond to all of that. Even BDO had animations the broadcast what was coming when canceled and you could respond.

TL;DR

So I do have certain biases and concerns with the balance between classes, magicka, and stamina. But thats not what this is about. This is about why the experience it's self is so frustrating. Lack of responsive controls and targeting being the biggest issue, animation canceling and server issues being the second biggest, then followed by the Magicka/Stamina issues I have.

Unlike WoW and GW2 where class identity is strong, and combat is smooth with cooldowns for pacing and animations are clear and broadcast well so people can react. This games approach to combat and half baked animations are not conductive to dynamic and intuitive play, or to adaptive play. It makes it a annoying and even toxic experience.

I agree!

Sadly ZOS rathers us quietly quit ESO and move on. Than to fix balance in this game. The Performance issues I can deal with. But having the Dev patch after patch basically telling me that I have to go stamina to be competitive for now nearly 2 years is enough. I got fed up and uninstalled ESO now rotates between GW2 and BDO. Two MMOs that don't absolute gimp players for playing Magic Casters, like ESO does more and more patch after patch.

yodased

Every system is exploitable to a certain degree. ESO combat systems you can drive a dump truck full of exploits through.

Animation cancelling belongs in 1v1 fighting games and evem the there are latency issues with online play and there is a reason all competative exports are played on a lan.

You are describing as bugs what a lot of players enjoy as features unfortunately. PVP in this game is who can learn what's broken first before they fix and vreak something else.

It's almost like we have had long term volendrung this entire time just smashing things

coj901

This combat system is great. I play mag mostly and do not think stam is overpowered. I think maybe you just don't have the skill for a game like this and should play traditional mmos

shaielzafine

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Animation canceling, dodge rolling, manual aiming, block, bash and break free are all things that provide ESO with a far higher skill ceiling than older MMOs. This is what makes it so fun. If you want to go back to boring old tab targeting and casting simple timed rotations on CD then feel free to go and play something else. Implementing a more complex and challenging combat system in an MMO was always going to be a challenge due to ping etc, and it is by no means perfect, but this combat system is why many of us love the game.

Concerning class identity... one of ESOs main draws is that you're not restricted to having to build exactly the same as everybody else. Yes, there are metas... but you don't HAVE to run exactly the same skills and gear as other people who play your class. It's a good thing.

Lol the combat is ruined by not having separate PvP from pve abilities and builds. I remember cheesy proc builds that have come and gone in PvP. Everything from stacked earthgore ball groups, sload's, torug's cheese, etc where you don't even need to do anything just wait for proc during combat. They've patched some of these but we keep having flavors of the month for PvP like stamnecro bash which is toxic. And it will keep happening until they do something about PvP. ESO's combat is supposed to be faster paced with the animation canceling bug - which is now a feature btw but this doesn't work properly in PvP especially with lag and when the game crashes as zerg comes in. In pve it's not too bad, you can maximize DPS because of this, even if your character ends up twitchy you still output more damage. Oh and the timed cooldowns on other MMOs prevent things like snipe spam into an execute / ulti in PvP, or root spam, or healbotting. Where you literally just press 1 button in a group to win, like in ESO. Changing abilities for PvP isn't the worst idea, it doesn't have to be a cooldown, but they should fix potency of attacks or proc sets.

Jeremy

Tessitura wrote: »

( To be clear, this will be long and have no small amount of opinions based on experience. A TL;DR is at the bottom as well. )

As the title says, one of the most frustration experiences I have ever had with pvp in a mmo, and that includes Black Desert. Now why is this? Well I sat down and thought about it, my first instinct was to blame animation canceling. Its obvious to me it was not a intended feature, as its not a smooth process and the canceling doesn't mesh with the games animations like it does in other games where that is a intended feature. I also believe that the half baked animation canceling is a large part of why Cyrodiil's servers have so many issues. It makes it harder on peoples computers as well, which might account for a lot of the frame rate loss people experience. But when i think about it more, I think its just the over all combat design for the game.

Lets look at it, the stamina, magicka, health build system was flawed from the start, with no warrior type class in the game and what felt like a lack of direction on launch, it made thing s little messy from day one. But the idea behind became clear over time, they wanted warriors to grow naturally from the weapon skills and the godly ability to dodge roll, break free of crowd control, and block/bash people. Once they added a handful of utility to class abilities for stam, the power of stamina became clear.

Now lets look at how pvp evolved after that.As gear sets started to get introduced and monster helmets with strong passive procs, things started getting messy, very messy. Balance was flying out the window quickly, and ZoS refused to accept they should start balancing pve and pvp separately. Who knows? maybe they truly feel that's part of the game's identity, even if it hurts it some. Regardless, things started to get hard, and lets not forget, the Champion system came and blew things out of the water in terms of balance, or what was the standard balance at the time. We are all used to it now, but the dynamic that system brought to the game rocked the pvp world for a moment when it first appeared.

Later down the line, a new class showed up, and people got excited. Now this class was Warden and a new game mode would come with it. Battlegrounds, if this never came to the game I would not have minded in the least. BGs, or battlegrounds made the weaknesses of this games pvp glaring to me. Without a bunch of people to back you certain builds and class just could not cut it. The lack of responsive controls and weird targeting system that sometime just out right refused to work really showed the lack of polish on the game. Add this to the growing disparity if Magicka and stam in pvp and you got a huge steaming pile of ****. Before when fights were more dynamic and open, such as it was in Cyrodiil's world pvp. These issues did not shine as much and more fun was to be had. But now its all I can see thanks to BG's. The biggest thing that became clear to me was this. Animation canceling ruins broadcasting, and cuts into people's already limited ability to respond to things. Often times, with the game the way it is, you look like you are getting shield bashed but are actually getting hit with three attacks at once. You cant respond to all of that. Even BDO had animations the broadcast what was coming when canceled and you could respond.

TL;DR

So I do have certain biases and concerns with the balance between classes, magicka, and stamina. But thats not what this is about. This is about why the experience it's self is so frustrating. Lack of responsive controls and targeting being the biggest issue, animation canceling and server issues being the second biggest, then followed by the Magicka/Stamina issues I have.

Unlike WoW and GW2 where class identity is strong, and combat is smooth with cooldowns for pacing and animations are clear and broadcast well so people can react. This games approach to combat and half baked animations are not conductive to dynamic and intuitive play, or to adaptive play. It makes it a annoying and even toxic experience.

Yeah the performance problems hit the hardest in PvP on this game. It can very frustrating. I was no fan of BDO's PvP either - though I didn't have a whole lot experience with it. Mostly just getting ganked while trying to farm...

Despite all the problems though, I still do manage to have some silly fun in battlegrounds. Zergodil is a different matter with its zerg warfare. That's about as fun as watching paint dry.

TumlinTheJolly

coj901 wrote: »

This combat system is great. I play mag mostly and do not think stam is overpowered. I think maybe you just don't have the skill for a game like this and should play traditional mmos

This. It's pretty easy to stay alive if you actually use the defensive mechanics available to all players. I feel like this could end up being a whining zergling thread...

Jeremy

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

coj901 wrote: »

This combat system is great. I play mag mostly and do not think stam is overpowered. I think maybe you just don't have the skill for a game like this and should play traditional mmos

This. It's pretty easy to stay alive if you actually use the defensive mechanics available to all players. I feel like this could end up being a whining zergling thread...

I would say it depends. Against average disorganized players, sure. But that first time you meet up with a skilled premade it might change your mind about how easy it is to stay alive.

TumlinTheJolly

Jeremy wrote: »

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

coj901 wrote: »

This combat system is great. I play mag mostly and do not think stam is overpowered. I think maybe you just don't have the skill for a game like this and should play traditional mmos

This. It's pretty easy to stay alive if you actually use the defensive mechanics available to all players. I feel like this could end up being a whining zergling thread...

I would say it depends. Against average disorganized players, sure. But that first time you meet up with a skilled premade it might change your mind about how easy it is to stay alive.

Provided this is premade vs premade or GvG in Cyro or IC, then great, this is some of the best PvP in the game. If you're getting rolled by premades in BGs as a pug though, then yeah... the problem here is the queue system, not the combat system.

Jeremy

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

coj901 wrote: »

This combat system is great. I play mag mostly and do not think stam is overpowered. I think maybe you just don't have the skill for a game like this and should play traditional mmos

This. It's pretty easy to stay alive if you actually use the defensive mechanics available to all players. I feel like this could end up being a whining zergling thread...

I would say it depends. Against average disorganized players, sure. But that first time you meet up with a skilled premade it might change your mind about how easy it is to stay alive.

Provided this is premade vs premade or GvG in Cyro or IC, then great, this is some of the best PvP in the game. If you're getting rolled by premades in BGs as a pug though, then yeah... the problem here is the queue system, not the combat system.

That's a fair point.

Tessitura

coj901 wrote: »

This combat system is great. I play mag mostly and do not think stam is overpowered. I think maybe you just don't have the skill for a game like this and should play traditional mmos

I actually crush in this game, most of my characters do very well, aside from Mag Necro. I am speaking from my experience, I have been playing this game for a loooong time and even when i am doing very good I find a lot of frustrating nonsense that to be frank, I don't think should be there.

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

coj901 wrote: »

This combat system is great. I play mag mostly and do not think stam is overpowered. I think maybe you just don't have the skill for a game like this and should play traditional mmos

This. It's pretty easy to stay alive if you actually use the defensive mechanics available to all players. I feel like this could end up being a whining zergling thread...

People are entitled to opinions, including you, As I said, I actually do pretty well in this games pvp. That doesn't mean I can't take a critical look at what I find frustrating, which is a lot. A whole lot. More then most other games I have played. Also, I am not a part of any zerg guilds.

Anyron

Animation cancelling was mistake. Many players wanted to fix it, and they even tried it on pts but majority of players said combat feels slower.

Animation cancelling is source of all pvp related problems right now ( gankers, unkillable tanks - blockcast is also anim. cancelling - and insane burst builds). You cannot stop what you cannot see.

With it combat feels faster, sure, but it also started to be like lottery - hold block in right moment to mitigate bursts

Vasoka

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Animation canceling, dodge rolling, manual aiming, block, bash and break free are all things that provide ESO with a far higher skill ceiling than older MMOs.

You've no idea what a skill ceiling entails, that much is clear.

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Concerning class identity... one of ESOs main draws is that you're not restricted to having to build exactly the same as everybody else. Yes, there are metas... but you don't HAVE to run exactly the same skills and gear as other people who play your class. It's a good thing.

Sure you don't. Enjoy being kicked from every vet dungeon and from every trial if you don't run the EXACT SAME cancer build that everyone else does. DUAL WIELD / BOW WOOOO. Or STAFF / STAFF. So interesting. And don't forget your bear trap and caltrops - gotta have those everywhere.

All in all, PVP and build diversity in this game are a big joke. There is no diversity whatsoever. WoW has how many classes now? All have 3 specs which are ALL COMPLETELY VIABLE and play differently. Same for GW2. Same for FF XIV.

Stop defending this trash.

TumlinTheJolly

Anyron wrote: »

combat feels faster, sure, but it also started to be like lottery - hold block in right moment to mitigate bursts

Again, this... except it's not really a lottery. Hold block at the right moment to mitigate burst is mostly about awareness, game sense, experience and reaction speed (I play on 215 ping FYI and yet I still say reaction speed).

jcm2606

Anybody who says that animation cancelling was unintended or was a mistake doesn't know what they're talking about. Simple as that. Animation cancelling is necessary for a responsive combat system with actions needing to be actively performed, such as ESO. Look at how PoE just implemented animation cancelling for melee skills, since players need to be able to respond immediately to certain actions or mechanics.

Animation cancelling is what allows you to block or dodge one shots immediately as they come up, rather than being stuck in a clunky animation or channel and just taking the full blow. No, players can't just choose their actions more carefully, because most one shots in ESO don't give you enough time to react. Just look at Scalecaller's one-third-of-the-map-is-now-a-one-shot-that-can-kill-the-tank mechanic. Good luck dodging out of that if you're stuck in a clunky animation (Caltrops, Blockade, numerous other skills) or a channel (Channeled Acceleration, Jabs/Sweeps, Radiant Oppression, Uppercut, Snipe, Flurry), and are currently sitting in the middle of the AOE since it gives you at most a second to react.

Removing animation cancelling will make every single player more prone to one shots and attacks they could previously handle, because ESO requires active input from players to perform defensive actions. To properly remove animation cancelling, Zenimax would need to go back over all content in the game and extend all telegraphs to give players enough time to react, or move to a more traditional passive system for defensive actions, where players build into dodge and block chance, and the game/RNG does both for them (which they removed the last system like that when they reworked Major/Minor Evasion to grant AOE damage reduction). The first requires a lot more effort than Zenimax is willing to put in (consider how buggy old content is), the second removes a unique aspect of this game's combat system.

I also think anybody who says that animation cancelling is an exploit doesn't know what they're talking about, either, because at the least it just allows you to chain a light attack and a bash together with a skill (which can be done regardless), and at the most it may make the skill's effect happen slightly faster (damage appears to occur slighty earlier when you bash/block cancel, but that may just be a visual thing). That's it. It doesn't allow you to use multiple skills at once, it doesn't allow you to use multiple skills in a shorter period of time, because there's a little thing called the global cooldown in place.

Skills are on the global cooldown (GCD), such that when you cast a skill, a cooldown of about 1 second (it's around 0.9 seconds, IIRC) starts, and you are unable to cast another skill until the cooldown ends. This effectively limits you to casting 1 skill per second, and no amount of animation cancelling will change that. All animation cancelling allows you to do is use other actions that are off the GCD, such as light attacks or bash or even block, between skills, without slowing your skill casts (ideally, anyways). By animation cancelling, you can effectively chain a light attack and a bash with a skill like 'Light Attack -> Skill -> Bash', in the same GCD window, giving you the extra effects of the light attack and bash (extra damage, ultimate generation period, possible interrupt).

It's not like you're magically breaking the game, allowing you to cast 5 skills in a single second. No, all you're doing is performing a light attack and a bash together with the skill, and anybody can do it. Hell, a lot of players find it out on their own when they're just messing around, randomly casting skills and light attacking mobs to death. The animation system could use a bit of work to look a bit better while animation cancelling, I agree, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and it requires far more effort to fix, than it does to embrace.

Jeremy

jcm2606 wrote: »

Anybody who says that animation cancelling was unintended or was a mistake doesn't know what they're talking about. Simple as that. Animation cancelling is necessary for a responsive combat system with actions needing to be actively performed, such as ESO. Look at how PoE just implemented animation cancelling for melee skills, since players need to be able to respond immediately to certain actions or mechanics.

Animation cancelling is what allows you to block or dodge one shots immediately as they come up, rather than being stuck in a clunky animation or channel and just taking the full blow. No, players can't just choose their actions more carefully, because most one shots in ESO don't give you enough time to react. Just look at Scalecaller's one-third-of-the-map-is-now-a-one-shot-that-can-kill-the-tank mechanic. Good luck dodging out of that if you're stuck in a clunky animation (Caltrops, Blockade, numerous other skills) or a channel (Channeled Acceleration, Jabs/Sweeps, Radiant Oppression, Uppercut, Snipe, Flurry), and are currently sitting in the middle of the AOE since it gives you at most a second to react.

Removing animation cancelling will make every single player more prone to one shots and attacks they could previously handle, because ESO requires active input from players to perform defensive actions. To properly remove animation cancelling, Zenimax would need to go back over all content in the game and extend all telegraphs to give players enough time to react, or move to a more traditional passive system for defensive actions, where players build into dodge and block chance, and the game/RNG does both for them (which they removed the last system like that when they reworked Major/Minor Evasion to grant AOE damage reduction). The first requires a lot more effort than Zenimax is willing to put in (consider how buggy old content is), the second removes a unique aspect of this game's combat system.

I also think anybody who says that animation cancelling is an exploit doesn't know what they're talking about, either, because at the least it just allows you to chain a light attack and a bash together with a skill (which can be done regardless), and at the most it may make the skill's effect happen slightly faster (damage appears to occur slight[y/i] earlier when you bash/block cancel, but that may just be a visual thing). That's it. It doesn't allow you to use multiple skills at once, it doesn't allow you to use multiple skills in a shorter period of time, because there's a little thing called the global cooldown in place.

Skills are on the global cooldown (GCD), such that when you cast a skill, a cooldown of about 1 second (it's around 0.9 seconds, IIRC) starts, and you are unable to cast another skill until the cooldown ends. This effectively limits you to casting 1 skill per second, and no amount of animation cancelling will change that. All animation cancelling allows you to do is use other actions that are off the GCD, such as light attacks or bash or even block, between skills, without slowing your skill casts (ideally, anyways). By animation cancelling, you can effectively chain a light attack and a bash with a skill like 'Light Attack -> Skill -> Bash', in the same GCD window, giving you the extra effects of the light attack and bash (extra damage, ultimate generation period, possible interrupt).

It's not like you're magically breaking the game, allowing you to cast 5 skills in a single second. No, all you're doing is performing a light attack and a bash together with the skill, and anybody can do it. Hell, a lot of players find it out on their own when they're just messing around, randomly casting skills and light attacking mobs to death. The animation system could use a bit of work to look a bit better while animation cancelling, I agree, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and it requires far more effort to fix, than it does to embrace.

I believe it was intended in some circumstances - not so much in others.

Anyron

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Anyron wrote: »

combat feels faster, sure, but it also started to be like lottery - hold block in right moment to mitigate bursts

Again, this... except it's not really a lottery. Hold block at the right moment to mitigate burst is mostly about awareness, game sense, experience and reaction speed (I play on 215 ping FYI and yet I still say reaction speed).

Oh so you now see future?

Normal human reaction time, when rested, is about half second. Even with ping 0.2s your reflexes must be really fast to know someone is attacking you. With things like desync and animation cancelling pvp is cancer

Tessitura

jcm2606 wrote: »

Anybody who says that animation cancelling was unintended or was a mistake doesn't know what they're talking about. Simple as that. Animation cancelling is necessary for a responsive combat system with actions needing to be actively performed, such as ESO. Look at how PoE just implemented animation cancelling for melee skills, since players need to be able to respond immediately to certain actions or mechanics.

Animation cancelling is what allows you to block or dodge one shots immediately as they come up, rather than being stuck in a clunky animation or channel and just taking the full blow. No, players can't just choose their actions more carefully, because most one shots in ESO don't give you enough time to react. Just look at Scalecaller's one-third-of-the-map-is-now-a-one-shot-that-can-kill-the-tank mechanic. Good luck dodging out of that if you're stuck in a clunky animation (Caltrops, Blockade, numerous other skills) or a channel (Channeled Acceleration, Jabs/Sweeps, Radiant Oppression, Uppercut, Snipe, Flurry), and are currently sitting in the middle of the AOE since it gives you at most a second to react.

Removing animation cancelling will make every single player more prone to one shots and attacks they could previously handle, because ESO requires active input from players to perform defensive actions. To properly remove animation cancelling, Zenimax would need to go back over all content in the game and extend all telegraphs to give players enough time to react, or move to a more traditional passive system for defensive actions, where players build into dodge and block chance, and the game/RNG does both for them (which they removed the last system like that when they reworked Major/Minor Evasion to grant AOE damage reduction). The first requires a lot more effort than Zenimax is willing to put in (consider how buggy old content is), the second removes a unique aspect of this game's combat system.

I also think anybody who says that animation cancelling is an exploit doesn't know what they're talking about, either, because at the least it just allows you to chain a light attack and a bash together with a skill (which can be done regardless), and at the most it may make the skill's effect happen slightly faster (damage appears to occur slighty earlier when you bash/block cancel, but that may just be a visual thing). That's it. It doesn't allow you to use multiple skills at once, it doesn't allow you to use multiple skills in a shorter period of time, because there's a little thing called the global cooldown in place.

Skills are on the global cooldown (GCD), such that when you cast a skill, a cooldown of about 1 second (it's around 0.9 seconds, IIRC) starts, and you are unable to cast another skill until the cooldown ends. This effectively limits you to casting 1 skill per second, and no amount of animation cancelling will change that. All animation cancelling allows you to do is use other actions that are off the GCD, such as light attacks or bash or even block, between skills, without slowing your skill casts (ideally, anyways). By animation cancelling, you can effectively chain a light attack and a bash with a skill like 'Light Attack -> Skill -> Bash', in the same GCD window, giving you the extra effects of the light attack and bash (extra damage, ultimate generation period, possible interrupt).

It's not like you're magically breaking the game, allowing you to cast 5 skills in a single second. No, all you're doing is performing a light attack and a bash together with the skill, and anybody can do it. Hell, a lot of players find it out on their own when they're just messing around, randomly casting skills and light attacking mobs to death. The animation system could use a bit of work to look a bit better while animation cancelling, I agree, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and it requires far more effort to fix, than it does to embrace.

I don't believe you are correct about it being fully intended. When the game was undergoing it's first Beta, the animation canceling was considered a concern, its original intention was defensive if I recall, and was not meant to be weaved into attack chains. Back then there was no Global Cooldown which had obvious problems. but they changed it. Canceling is fine in smaller scale games, but mmos, every one I played with it has issues with processing them without causing desync. The issue is not the damage caused by this, its the animations failing to fire and the desync that causes. Can it be fixed now? Probably not, it's far too late and too much a part of the game. But it does contribute to what makes the gameplay frustrating in pvp for me.

jcm2606

Anyron wrote: »

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Anyron wrote: »

combat feels faster, sure, but it also started to be like lottery - hold block in right moment to mitigate bursts

Again, this... except it's not really a lottery. Hold block at the right moment to mitigate burst is mostly about awareness, game sense, experience and reaction speed (I play on 215 ping FYI and yet I still say reaction speed).

Oh so you now see future?

Normal human reaction time, when rested, is about half second. Even with ping 0.2s your reflexes must be really fast to know someone is attacking you. With things like desync and animation cancelling pvp is cancer

Except you're forgetting two things.

One, nobody will be using a single attack to kill you, it will always be some sort of combo, so if you know the combo they're going to use (fought them before, or, more likely, it's a common combo used with their class/build/playstyle), you can safely assume when to block which attacks.

Two, if it's a ranged build you're fighting, most attacks within the combo will have a travel time, which gives you more time to react to it, on top of the fact that it's a full combo.

People do it all the time, and not just with block. MagDK will generally Fossilize into Flame Lash into Leap into Power Lash, so break the Fossilize, block, and you cut their entire combo off. A cloaked stamblade who isn't coward will usually open with Surprise Attack or Incap out of cloak, so start blocking, and you cut their entire combo off. A magsorc's entire kit (except Curse and Rune Cage) is dodgeable, so start dodging to LOS, and if you get hit with a Rune Cage, break immediately, and continue dodging, maybe blocking if a Meteor is on you.

Sergykid

Can we stop this "animation cancelling" bullshift? It's part of weaving light attacks and it's part of your skill. Stop using it as a shield for being bad. Cancelled animation or not, it's still a spell per second, no gcd bypass here.

Yes CP pvp sucks, what of it? As long as people play it, it will stay. Let's none of us play cp pvp anymore and watch it being taken down.

And comparing to other mmo pvp, in wow for example u knew who u fight against, u know his defensive cd, u know his burst, etc, u know how to react. This game give no information of what the enemy is using, so u don't know how to react until too late

Massacre_Wurm

Funny thing. GW2 players whine 24x7 about how pvp is bad and unbalanced there.
Looks like grass is always greener on the other side

stritzi

Not animation canceling is the problem, desync is. Yesterday i fought a NB that managed to land Heavy Bow, Ambush, 2h Ult and Executioner in one "GCD" at least it felt so, it was just 100 to 0, in no time to mitgate burst via reactive/anticipating blocking. The only thing you can do is permablocking, at least thats how i got down that *very lovely Player*. My Ping was like 80, but that doesnt matter if the servers are out of wood and process skills wrongly.

Rikumaru

Anyron wrote: »

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Anyron wrote: »

combat feels faster, sure, but it also started to be like lottery - hold block in right moment to mitigate bursts

Again, this... except it's not really a lottery. Hold block at the right moment to mitigate burst is mostly about awareness, game sense, experience and reaction speed (I play on 215 ping FYI and yet I still say reaction speed).

Oh so you now see future?

Normal human reaction time, when rested, is about half second. Even with ping 0.2s your reflexes must be really fast to know someone is attacking you. With things like desync and animation cancelling pvp is cancer

If your reaction time is 0.5 seconds (when rested too) you might want to see a doctor.

As for this games PvP, I dunno about other people but I play ESO because of the fact that the combat is different from other MMO's.

Aznarb

ESO with a far higher skill ceiling than older MMOs.

This made me laugh so hard.
You don't have make lot of pvp on different game it seem.
Stop being just a fanboy and open your eyes, Eso PvP is nothing other than a buggy and unbalanced sh**fest.

Humancentipede2

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Animation canceling, dodge rolling, manual aiming, block, bash and break free are all things that provide ESO with a far higher skill ceiling than older MMOs. This is what makes it so fun. If you want to go back to boring old tab targeting and casting simple timed rotations on CD then feel free to go and play something else. Implementing a more complex and challenging combat system in an MMO was always going to be a challenge due to ping etc, and it is by no means perfect, but this combat system is why many of us love the game. The issue with having a higher skill ceiling is that the gap between the better and worse players is more noticeable... You can't just stand there casting skills mindlessly and expect to still perform OK.

You are acting like ESO is the only MMO with a "complex Combatsystem" but the reality is, every action has features like Block, dodge, manual aiming etc, and has far better mechanics than the clunky ESO combat. The ESO combat has so many problems, things like extreme long CC durations, Stamina bound to sprint, CC Immunity after you were CCed makes CC overall inconsistent, animation canceling, scripts and cheats and the list goes on and on. ESOs combat is just clunky riddleed with many design flaws. You have to start playing other MOOs which have a good combat then you would know how bad ESO system is.

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO

Just so that we are talking about the right thing as that has been talked about again and again and ... you get the idea

The ability to cancel an animation or skill is vital for a responsive gameplay.

However, that canceling the execution of an activity (skill, cast, ...) can be used to actually to increase the overall damage output, is not.

This is where the problem lies: Missing telegraphs, chaining of damage effects (long travel time effect, which is perfectly timed to hit the target at the same time, when the animation canceled light attack and 'fast' instant skill hit), so that at the receiving end it looks like you got hit by 3 damage effects within a single global cooldown.
Add to that multi-effect skills (snare, minor/major buff) plus damage and poison, glyphs, passives, which also could trigger (and will if they are past cooldown) all at that one single burst, too.

In other words, we wouldn't have this discussion, if canceling an animation would instead also actually cancel that action, i.e. cancel all the effects as well or rather: have none of those effects ever happen.

In such a world, you could still cancel e.g. a cast skill, because you needed to dodge or shield or ... which is desirable.
However, you couldn't do these insane burst attacks that are so problematic in PvP.
Just think: Monster set effect, first armor set effect, second armor set effect, glyph effect, poison effect, long travel time effect and light/medium attack plus actual instant cast ability (plus bash and/or ultimate) all happening at the same instant on the receivers end. Not because they are cast simultaneously, but because of poor game design, lag, and missing telegraphs). Add to that snares/stun locks you can't break out and you get a very salty PvP experience.

For PvE, yes, damage output would be lower here, too; making it more difficult to by-pass certain mechanics (which is not really desirable from a game designer's point of view, but often desired by the players, because those mechanics can be 'hard'). However, adjustment of health and/or damage from mobs and bosses could be used to balance this without too much effort.

Play pace would be more measured (you would have to 'wait' for the animation to finish, to ensure damage did go out), but then again, there even once was a trait (and even some skills) that hastened (now 'frenzied') you.

Worthless at that time, as you could this effect already by other means, i.e. animation canceling, for free and because the implementation of that 'animation speed up' was 'clunky' at best. However, it is one of the reasons why many early folks still consider animation canceling an exploit.

Qbiken

The main issue with PvP in this game is performance, rest is irrelevant to discuss imo.

ruff

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO wrote: »

The ability to cancel an animation or skill is vital for a responsive gameplay.

However, that canceling the execution of an activity (skill, cast, ...) can be used to actually to increase the overall damage output, is not.

very much this.

Mitaka211

PvP is a mess. I could tolerate it in the previous state, but after this last expansion you can't really take anyone seriously. It's all about cheese mechanics and the devs pretending they were intended.

1. There is no way in hell you can convince me that in an mmo, where you have combat that is promoted as reactive , animation canceling was intended , anyone who claims otherwise is clearly in denial.
2. Extremely high damage output of certain classes (and people complain the tank meta like it's the players fault they don't want to get deleted in 2 seconds)
3. Terrible balance. Some classes , play styles to be more exact , are completely ignored by the devs (but hey banning reps that understand the game better is a very wise choice)
4. There is no point in playing pvp anymore. Not like you can admire a player if he does well.
5. Combat is not tactical in any way. Even the smallest scale feels like a bunch of ranged magika casters bombarding each other.

I am not playing it anymore, canceled my sub to eso + , and it was my first one mind you.

The devs keep proving time and time again they have 0 understanding of how skills work and are generally used by players.
There is NOT one person who think pummeling goliath should even be a thing , everyone wanted the skill to be removed and completely reworked. And ZOS is like "Let's nerf 1h and shield to fix the issue". And i have a stam necro. The skill was total garbage period.

The devs should be ashamed of themselves , they are complete jokes to me. What is even worse is those issues become a thing if this game decides to work in the first place.