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

LoreToo

Totaly disagree with 95% of this post.
From the 1st day animation canceling was a bug, but they keep it up cause removing it means kill dynamic combst as fast as you can. This bug is too important to feel combat. And it SHOULD be in game. Its not a problem.
Game-base (about stam/mag/hp and weapon skills): there is an identity for each class(aka NB gank, DK long fighter ect.) and its ok, current system allow you to build whaever you want (do you remember how good was stamdens with dw/resto and lights champion?).
The only downside of pvp in this game: perfomance. Other thing was changed

Anyron

jcm2606 wrote: »

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.

And how you wanna react to melee skills when you can't see which skill was used because animation was cancelled?

Ranged damage is something different - travel distance = animation, and you still can see it. Imagine ranged damage with completely cancelled animations = no travel animation

It is issue in melee combat. I can only react to skills which i can see. If there isnt animation, i can just gess. Then when guessing, countering these attacks with block or dodge IS sort of lottery.

Same with that your example of nightblade

Surprise Attack(stun+100%CRT)+light+incap-or onslaught-(can be also buffed by cloak)+light+surprise+finisher. This can, without animation, be used almost instantly. before you even realize you should CC break and dodge/block rest of damage you are already dead.

Anyron

Rikumaru wrote: »

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.

1. I said about. Thats mean around or something like that number
2. There is reaction time, and like it or not it plays important role along with ping.
3. I am not robot or something superior to humans( like you think you are) i am just human with human reflexes. Go visit your doctor

jcm2606

Anyron wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

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.

And how you wanna react to melee skills when you can't see which skill was used because animation was cancelled?

Ranged damage is something different - travel distance = animation, and you still can see it. Imagine ranged damage with completely cancelled animations = no travel animation

It is issue in melee combat. I can only react to skills which i can see. If there isnt animation, i can just gess. Then when guessing, countering these attacks with block or dodge IS sort of lottery.

Same with that your example of nightblade

Surprise Attack(stun+100%CRT)+light+incap-or onslaught-(can be also buffed by cloak)+light+surprise+finisher. This can, without animation, be used almost instantly. before you even realize you should CC break and dodge/block rest of damage you are already dead.

That's not how it works.

Firstly, cancelling the animation doesn't magically allow you to bypass the GCD, so no, that entire 5 skill combo cannot be used almost instantly, that entire 5 skill combo can be used over a 5 second period. If you can't break a stun within 5 seconds, that's nothing to do with animation cancelling, that's everything to do with lag and break free being buggy, so complain about them.

Secondly, fairly certain that you still see any visual effects of the skills, it's just your character's animation being cancelled. After all, you can still see the effects of light attacks when they're cancelled, and skills would work the exact same way. Sure, it makes it harder to figure out which skills are being used, but skills with obvious effects are easy to notice, and, if you know the common combo for that class and skill, you can assume which skills you'll be hit with over the next few seconds, and react accordingly. How do you think players can counter classes like magDK and magplar? They look for any skills that are used in the combo, and react accordingly.

mocap

im not PvPer, but after few hours of farming Barrier i realize that ESO PvP is:

- when everyone and their grandma use Goliath bash.... except players in your alliance/group
- when your group trying to kill one enemy player and he just like immortal to all your attacks
- when you ride to next target location with a big group. After 30 seconds group size decreases to half. After 1 minute group size decreases to another half. Upon arriving at location you realize that there are only you and maybe 2-3 other players
- when you sure as hell players in other alliances play better than your mates like ten times.
- when your heals do nothing, but that guy just cast Vigor and heal himself to 100% in a few seconds
- when you stuck in combat in the middle of nowhere
- when your group arrive to castle and no one have catapults or ballistas (1-2 minutes)

yodased

jcm2606 wrote: »

Anyron wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

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.

And how you wanna react to melee skills when you can't see which skill was used because animation was cancelled?

Ranged damage is something different - travel distance = animation, and you still can see it. Imagine ranged damage with completely cancelled animations = no travel animation

It is issue in melee combat. I can only react to skills which i can see. If there isnt animation, i can just gess. Then when guessing, countering these attacks with block or dodge IS sort of lottery.

Same with that your example of nightblade

Surprise Attack(stun+100%CRT)+light+incap-or onslaught-(can be also buffed by cloak)+light+surprise+finisher. This can, without animation, be used almost instantly. before you even realize you should CC break and dodge/block rest of damage you are already dead.

That's not how it works.

Firstly, cancelling the animation doesn't magically allow you to bypass the GCD, so no, that entire 5 skill combo cannot be used almost instantly, that entire 5 skill combo can be used over a 5 second period. If you can't break a stun within 5 seconds, that's nothing to do with animation cancelling, that's everything to do with lag and break free being buggy, so complain about them.

Secondly, fairly certain that you still see any visual effects of the skills, it's just your character's animation being cancelled. After all, you can still see the effects of light attacks when they're cancelled, and skills would work the exact same way. Sure, it makes it harder to figure out which skills are being used, but skills with obvious effects are easy to notice, and, if you know the common combo for that class and skill, you can assume which skills you'll be hit with over the next few seconds, and react accordingly. How do you think players can counter classes like magDK and magplar? They look for any skills that are used in the combo, and react accordingly.

And this is where you are wrong and are placing your experience over top others and expecting they are the same.

Combos that are invisible are prevalent in melee combos. Especually if you eat a wrecking blow from stealth or from lag it's over.

If you are defending this its because you like deleting people and you have figured out that offense is better than defense if you can build a team around it.

I get it when you have no worries about anyone and you feel powerful you don't want that taken away from you, but you all are the reason that pvp is dead.

Sure the lag is the main culprit, but even when it works perfectly no one wants to get deleted from someone without knowing, seeing or being able to defend.

Every time you 1bang a new person in pvp and giggle about how elite you are, you are thinning the herd.

Lord-Otto

Lag, targeting issues and the continuous nerfing is what kills ESO's combat for me. Which is a shame, as I used to enjoy playing Cyrodiil ten hours a day.

Gariele

Performance issues are always the main problem. But PvP has such a steep learning curve that a lot of it is a L2P issue. You can always tell the ones that chase a Sorc then type “cheater” into zone chat cause they got turned on and deleted. Animation cancelling is part of the game. When in doubt block

jcm2606

yodased wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Anyron wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

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.

And how you wanna react to melee skills when you can't see which skill was used because animation was cancelled?

Ranged damage is something different - travel distance = animation, and you still can see it. Imagine ranged damage with completely cancelled animations = no travel animation

It is issue in melee combat. I can only react to skills which i can see. If there isnt animation, i can just gess. Then when guessing, countering these attacks with block or dodge IS sort of lottery.

Same with that your example of nightblade

Surprise Attack(stun+100%CRT)+light+incap-or onslaught-(can be also buffed by cloak)+light+surprise+finisher. This can, without animation, be used almost instantly. before you even realize you should CC break and dodge/block rest of damage you are already dead.

That's not how it works.

Firstly, cancelling the animation doesn't magically allow you to bypass the GCD, so no, that entire 5 skill combo cannot be used almost instantly, that entire 5 skill combo can be used over a 5 second period. If you can't break a stun within 5 seconds, that's nothing to do with animation cancelling, that's everything to do with lag and break free being buggy, so complain about them.

Secondly, fairly certain that you still see any visual effects of the skills, it's just your character's animation being cancelled. After all, you can still see the effects of light attacks when they're cancelled, and skills would work the exact same way. Sure, it makes it harder to figure out which skills are being used, but skills with obvious effects are easy to notice, and, if you know the common combo for that class and skill, you can assume which skills you'll be hit with over the next few seconds, and react accordingly. How do you think players can counter classes like magDK and magplar? They look for any skills that are used in the combo, and react accordingly.

And this is where you are wrong and are placing your experience over top others and expecting they are the same.

Combos that are invisible are prevalent in melee combos. Especually if you eat a wrecking blow from stealth or from lag it's over.

If you are defending this its because you like deleting people and you have figured out that offense is better than defense if you can build a team around it.

I get it when you have no worries about anyone and you feel powerful you don't want that taken away from you, but you all are the reason that pvp is dead.

Sure the lag is the main culprit, but even when it works perfectly no one wants to get deleted from someone without knowing, seeing or being able to defend.

Every time you 1bang a new person in pvp and giggle about how elite you are, you are thinning the herd.

1. I'm an Oceanic player, believe me, I know lag. Had to log out of Cyrodiil today because my ping was constantly spiking to 4-6k. Yes, not 400-600, 4000-6000.

2. They're not invisible, you just don't know how to spot them. L2P.

3. I prefer playing solo myself, so no stacked premade cheese.

4. Funny you say something like that, because I'm far from a good player, and more often than not get smashed myself. But, unlike some people in this thread, I don't whine that I have to pay attention to what's happening around me, I just pay attention.

5. PVP is dead both because Zenimax keeps neglecting the performance, and Zenimax keeps catering to potatoes who refuse to L2P. Why do you think zerging is as strong as it is?

yodased

So your learn to play is learn to spot a fraction of an animation that was literally designed to show you combat queues.

I call *** you can see a properly cancelled dawnbreaker. You just assume it's coming and predict what's coming which belongs in Street fighter turbo not a mmo @jcm2606.

You say you are not a good player and get smadhed, probably because you can't see the attacks veing sent to you.

I just don't know how after all this time it's not painfully obvious who wants animation cancelling and exploitable systems to stay anf who doesn't.

We will never agree about what this game conceptually even should be.

TequilaFire

Sad thing is they probably will let PvP die so they don't have to fix the problems.

Drachenfier

Massacre_Wurm wrote: »

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

I agree with them. I find ESO pvp to be far superior to GW2. That crapfest is a serious mess.

Iki

Animation cancelling is one big reason why combat in this game is fun, unique, fluid and engaging when you learn to use it properly. And it would not be a problem in pvp if everything was working as intended, if power-creep would not be too big, if your actions would be responsive, everyone had low ping and time to kill would be high enough, but alas...

Wolfpaw

ESO PvP is one of the best in the mmo genre: skills, bash, dodge, jump, block, weapon swap, LA/HA, etc..

Animation cancelling I could take it or leave it, 1v1 or even bg game modes it seems to be ok since your attention can be better focused on what's incoming, class, & build.

Large-scale pvp with 25-100+ the whole system breaks down, as you can be turned into a pile of dust w/o knowing why til you see death recap. Unfortunately this help create zerg play where you fight the game>player & whatever blob can get the most skills off first...lag surfing.

Personally I would like to see 90% of dmg AOE's removed from PvP. Damage AOE's in PvP should be very expensive, risky, powerful, with long CD's ...not something to spam away, or use because cd is ready.

This could happen by changing AOE skills to work differently in pve & pvp.

Odovacar

The only frustrating thing to me in ESO PvP is the terrible lag during battles or just simply riding your mount from point A to B. Everyone can agree I'm sure.

Aside from that I really enjoy Cyrodiil & BG's...when I can.

k0u

I've only read the original posters first comment, so forgive me if I repeat something someone else wrote.

I don't think that ESOs combat system is bad, it's actually great. I also do think that animation cancelling is intended.
The thing is, it is a very active/reactive combat system - PVP is SO HARD coming from other games and I struggled a lot when I started to PvP.
The combat system is a lot more complex than in other MMOs, as you have to roll dodge, there's no tab targeting, you have to block certain attacks, you have to animation cancel (or bash-cancel), .. there's just so many things in the combat system to which you have to pay attention and I guess this is the reason why many players who don't invest the time to learn to properly animation cancel and properly block/dodge roll/los/res management/.. have a hard time enjoying the awesome PvP you get here.

The other issue though, server performance, I couldn't agree more.
I don't even mind them having performance issues but what really upsets me is their total lack of communication about this topic. I just want to know what needs fixing and how they want to approach it - that's it. Is it the database? Not enough capacity? Memory leaks? etc etc .. Tell us and work on fixing it - please ZOS.

Vlad9425

The problem is the lag and frame rate issues this game has. How do you expect to have an enjoyable PvP experience when all your abilities / bar swap are delayed?

Sylosi

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..

Only to an extent, there are other MMOs that have dodge rolling, some form of ani cancelling, etc (GW2 for example).

I'd also say as ani cancelling goes it is pretty low skill in ESO. If you compare it to games that actually have a high skill ceiling like the better fighting games then in those you usually have proper ani cancelling where you cancel at certain point near the end of the ani to go more quickly into the next skill, often requiring players to learn different, very precise timings for cancelling for different skills. In ESO on the other hand skills can be typically cancelled very early giving a massive window to cancel, much lower skilled.

Also because you can cancel so early some animations become virtually impossible to see, which again is low skill, because the game goes from good players reacting to animations to players having to guesstimate, which is essentially what middling players do in the first place who have trouble spotting animations.

Then probably the biggest problem with ESO when it comes to skill is how bad it is competitively, competition is the basis of skilled PvP, but ESO is terrible in this regard (WoW arenas, GW2 sPvP, etc were way more competitive and skilled in this respect).

To the point in ESO that the culture is the most uncompetitive from alleged "skilled" players I have ever seen, never seen a game where supposed "good" players avoid each other so much, it is laughable.

And of course the last thing is it is no good having things like ani cancelling if the game performance is at times so bad you can't use it.

Waffennacht

ESOs combat in general is hella fast
BDO and NW both are similar but different to ESOs combat - they have cooldowns but by the time you finish a few the codowns reset - so like hardly a cooldowns

Remember us console plebs, it's slim Pickens for MMOs in general. Out of ESO, BDO and NW I'll pick ESO hands down.

I'll slap anyone that mentions anthem... (Slaps self for buying that PoS)

Drachenfier

Personally I prefer WoW and SWTOR pvp, but for the rest of the pvp MMO's and their style of combat, ESO would be better than the rest in my opinion.

Tessitura

k0u wrote: »

I've only read the original posters first comment, so forgive me if I repeat something someone else wrote.

I don't think that ESOs combat system is bad, it's actually great. I also do think that animation cancelling is intended.
The thing is, it is a very active/reactive combat system - PVP is SO HARD coming from other games and I struggled a lot when I started to PvP.
The combat system is a lot more complex than in other MMOs, as you have to roll dodge, there's no tab targeting, you have to block certain attacks, you have to animation cancel (or bash-cancel), .. there's just so many things in the combat system to which you have to pay attention and I guess this is the reason why many players who don't invest the time to learn to properly animation cancel and properly block/dodge roll/los/res management/.. have a hard time enjoying the awesome PvP you get here.

The other issue though, server performance, I couldn't agree more.
I don't even mind them having performance issues but what really upsets me is their total lack of communication about this topic. I just want to know what needs fixing and how they want to approach it - that's it. Is it the database? Not enough capacity? Memory leaks? etc etc .. Tell us and work on fixing it - please ZOS.

Its not actually that hard, it seems like it is when you first show up, but in reality the illusion of challenge comes from not having a build set up yet, once you got that, the the skill ceiling in the game becomes pretty low. All you need to do is time abilities, and learn to weave/manage your resources. The rest is just game sense. My point was that the games combat leads to certain performance issues. Animation canceling often causes a certain ammount of desync in games, its not all that noticeable in small scale stuff, but when you up the scale, like in a mmo that desync becomes more pronounced, and without clearer animations the ability to let a skill carry through after being canceled only compounds that issue.

therift

I wish I had a dollar for every comment that claims animation cancelling is a 'bug' that bypasses GCD.

Stop spreading this nonsense. Stop defending those who do.

CipherNine

Vasoka wrote: »

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.

Exactly there is no diversity in ESO. Its ridiculous you have to PVP to get skills that are required in end game pve or you will just be kicked from every group.
But I put most of the blame for this on the playerbase rather than ZOS.
Because its the player base that has this attitude of "this is how you play game, no other way works. this is the only way to do things"

zaria

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.

If you run into an overwhelming numbered group who is more skilled than you, you loose, very simple mathematics and proven in real life over and over. Yes you can win if very smart and the enemy make plenty of mistakes.
In real life stuff like that tend to also give collectives like the Victorian cross.

The last 20 years we has mostly been fighting overland mobs in RL, yes ISISL was an joke from the start, 2-3 light infantry divisions there less than one was well trained, then pulling more agro than WW2 Germany.
But insanity is an force multiplier for the other side.