Blizzard devs comment on class balance & animation cancelling

Caligamy_ESO

When I read this I couldn't help but think of ESO and I wonder if the devs here have the same thoughts on it..

How many of the awful class changes we've seen over the years have been a result of not addressing it here?

Edit: This post really isn't about comparing ESO with Diablo 3 or even WoW but recognizing that game balance, gear stats, and all of our classes inadvertently takes a hit with animation cancelling present.

Royaji

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

Edit: Please see post #13 in this thread for a little clarification of this comment.

Stebarnz

No, the ZOS devs do not think like this as they know removing A/C would turn this game into a dead landscape of rp'ers and low dps potatoes.
If every class and everyone can A/C then balancing is the same as if no one can.

Caligamy_ESO

Royaji wrote: »

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

Except nobody was talking about WoW in the first place so I should hope not..?

Skwor

Stebarnz wrote: »

No, the ZOS devs do not think like this as they know removing A/C would turn this game into a dead landscape of rp'ers and low dps potatoes.
If every class and everyone can A/C then balancing is the same as if no one can.

Not accurate at all, the benefit to different classes is much greater to some than others, animation cancelling is not even across the board for classes and their skills.

It is a problem that should have been fixed along time ago. When this game first published it was acknowledged as a problem but the Devs were unable to solve it so instead it has been tolerated and now it has become a de-facto style of game-play.

Given your account goes back to 2014 you know this.

Stebarnz

Skwor wrote: »

Stebarnz wrote: »

No, the ZOS devs do not think like this as they know removing A/C would turn this game into a dead landscape of rp'ers and low dps potatoes.
If every class and everyone can A/C then balancing is the same as if no one can.

Not accurate at all, the benefit to different classes is much greater to some than others, animation cancelling is not even across the board for classes and their skills.

It is a problem that should have been fixed along time ago. When this game first published it was acknowledged as a problem but the Devs were unable to solve it so instead it has been tolerated and now it has become a de-facto style of game-play.

Just stating random things with no back up or reasoning means nothing, 44% of all people know this!

Give me an example of which class benefits A/C and which doesn't and ill explain to you why you are wrong.

starkerealm

Stating the obvious here, but in ESO, animation canceling is a universal system that applies to all (non-channeled) abilities, as opposed to a certain other MMO where only certain abilities can be canceled.

KillsAllElves

Love my bazooka wizard on D3, 10 times better of a class than all the magic classses on eso.

starkerealm

Stebarnz wrote: »

Give me an example of which class benefits A/C and which doesn't and ill explain to you why you are wrong.

Going off the top of my head, as of 2020, only the Nightblade, Sorc, Templar, DK, Warden, and Necromancer benefit from animation canceling.

starkerealm

KillsAllElves wrote: »

Love my bazooka wizard on D3, 10 times better of a class than all the magic classses on eso.

*Hides all his stam characters.*

phermitgb

I've always been of the opinion that the very concept of animation cancelling is inherently breaking code. My logic goes something like this...
programmers created the animations for a REASON
under normal play, I hit a button or command, the results of that command goes hand in hand with the animation I watch on screen
the ability to bypass the visual animation part of the is bypassing one of the two fundamental features of code associated with using that action

now, some games, the animations for certain skills or abilities are excessively long, or lock you into an action while still exposing you to the environment. Alien vs Predator by Sega (2010) was a really egregious example of this, allowing players to do these wildly gruesome execution animations, in a fast first person shooter. The animation were pretty cool, but you could very easily be shot to death while locked into the kill animation, unable to cancel out if you started to take fire.

Middle Earth : Shadow of War is a moderately good example of the other side - there were quite a few exotic animations for certain attacks, but most would be cancelled out by certain actions (like dodge) so that your defensive skills could override your offensive skills to allow you to get out of an offensive animation that might get you killed. And it is, in fact, under very narrow circumstances, possible to still get off your offensive skill and then effectively cancel the animation (the context-sensitive BLOCK skill does this pretty frequently)

This is, as far as I can tell, the reason that animation cancelling might have a valid reason to exist - some animations are excessively complicated, locking you into an animation that might get you killed. Especially in an MMO with at least some boss mechanics that are instant kills, maybe animation cancelling is a necessity. BUT...using it as a technique to enhance your outgoing DPS is inherently bypassing what was "supposed" to be a limitation.

And while the advocates of animation cancelling continue to point out that they should be allowed to exploit every advantage they can find and train themselves to use, the blizzard point above is perfectly reasonable. Game balance is, at least at some level, designed around animations as part of the limits of how far and fast players can damage targets, for the general population. Not every member of the general population can use, or wants to use, or even knows to use, animation cancelling, a bypassing of the intended purpose of the code, as a way to compete with the content. So, now devs are forced to either adjust coding for the potentials of animation cancelling for only a portion of the population, or listen to the overly tuned segment of the population *** about wanting harder content to cope with their animation cancelling adjustments to outgoing damage.

in short (too late!) - animation cancelling as a feature of any code essentially acts as an "out" for players, allowing them to get out of a animation that might get them killed. However, when it's exploited as a way of increasing outgoing damage in games that are mostly centered around killing, it becomes a technique that warps game balance in general, actually ultimately harming both those that don't use it AND those that use it, driving a wider gap between 2 mindsets of players and forcing devs to either create a multitude of solutions for different segments of the population, or creating a frankenstein's monster of code trying to appease all.

Stebarnz

starkerealm wrote: »

Stebarnz wrote: »

Give me an example of which class benefits A/C and which doesn't and ill explain to you why you are wrong.

Going off the top of my head, as of 2020, only the Nightblade, Sorc, Templar, DK, Warden, and Necromancer benefit from animation canceling.

IKR, I play every class and A/C on every class.

Royaji

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

Except nobody was talking about WoW in the first place so I should hope not..?

Oh, my apologies. I will have to put the blame on the author who has provided no context to his inital post.

Is,

"Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "D3 is a tab-target game of an entirely different genre and network architecture with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns MMO combat"."

better?

KillsAllElves

Royaji wrote: »

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

This article is about diablo3 not wow.

Some players using animation cancelling can do so to help their seasonal leaderboards.

If you need to crutch on animation cancelling, youre bad! No way around it.

mustangmorgan31

Do people actually want A/C to not exist? For the love of god why?? The combat would be slow and atrocious. Why would anyone want that?

Varana

The devs would probably be thinking "Last time I checked, WoW and ESO were really quite different letters, so why would people think they had much to do with each other?"

Royaji

KillsAllElves wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

This article is about diablo3 not wow.

Some players using animation cancelling can do so to help their seasonal leaderboards.

If you need to crutch on animation cancelling, youre bad! No way around it.

Please see my post just above yours.

And I've participated in AC threads so many times at this point that I have no interest in presenting the exact same arguments one more time. They are going to hit the same exact wall anyway.

Stebarnz

KillsAllElves wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

This article is about diablo3 not wow.

Some players using animation cancelling can do so to help their seasonal leaderboards.

If you need to crutch on animation cancelling, youre bad! No way around it.

I want to get through content as quickly and efficiently as possible and with my skills of A/C and rotation I can pull around 50k non trial and around 80k trial setup single target consistently on most of my characters.

I don't care about leaderboards I care about efficient use of my time.

Why would I want to delay myself and my team by watching my character go through the same animations over and over and how does me completing the content how I want to complete it make me bad?

To call animation cancelling a crutch is like calling sprinters using spikes a crutch.

Siohwenoeht

Again? A/C is integral to the reactive DEFENSE in ESO just as much as offense. You can't take one away without also taking the other.

If you want that sort of combat, there are emulators for the og regular Nintendo version of Final Fantasy. You can find turn based combat there.

KillsAllElves

starkerealm wrote: »

KillsAllElves wrote: »

Love my bazooka wizard on D3, 10 times better of a class than all the magic classses on eso.

*Hides all his stam characters.*

Dont worry, i enjoy my stam sorc more than my other classes!

I dont need to hide anything.

Nemesis7884

mustangmorgan31 wrote: »

Do people actually want A/C to not exist? For the love of god why?? The combat would be slow and atrocious. Why would anyone want that?

its a bug...i rather want to have it replaced by something intended, thought after and better...

phermitgb

mustangmorgan31 wrote: »

Do people actually want A/C to not exist? For the love of god why?? The combat would be slow and atrocious. Why would anyone want that?

I want A/C to not exist. I have a rather lengthy post explaining why. I'm perfectly fine with combat taking as long as the current animations support. I can say this with honesty, because while I do animation cancel, I only use it imperfectly and rarely, as I'm not very good at it, and don't care to be, and I still enjoy the combat in ESO more than I have in any other MMO.

Obviously, that's not saying much - I actually wish combat was totally different, not tied to hot-bars and weapon vs skill classlines, and whatnot, but none of THOSE complaints are directly related to animation cancelling.

Stebarnz

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

mustangmorgan31 wrote: »

Do people actually want A/C to not exist? For the love of god why?? The combat would be slow and atrocious. Why would anyone want that?

its a bug...i rather want to have it replaced by something intended, thought after and better...

Champagne was discovered by accident and it turned out to be a glorious accident that made the world better so they kept it, just like A/C

Varana

phermitgb wrote: »

I've always been of the opinion that the very concept of animation cancelling is inherently breaking code. My logic goes something like this...
programmers created the animations for a REASON
under normal play, I hit a button or command, the results of that command goes hand in hand with the animation I watch on screen
the ability to bypass the visual animation part of the is bypassing one of the two fundamental features of code associated with using that action

The reason being "it looks nice".
In ESO, the animation is not an integral part of the skill. It's eye-candy. Just there for your visual enjoyment.

And the reasons you cite for Shadow of War are exactly the ones why AC was put into ESO. Intentionally.

KillsAllElves

Royaji wrote: »

KillsAllElves wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

This article is about diablo3 not wow.

Some players using animation cancelling can do so to help their seasonal leaderboards.

If you need to crutch on animation cancelling, youre bad! No way around it.

Please see my post just above yours.

And I've participated in AC threads so many times at this point that I have no interest in presenting the exact same arguments one more time. They are going to hit the same exact wall anyway.

My response is in relevance to the OP article which is about diablo3.

Regardless of anygame A/C is a crutch and in eso we dont need to give more advantages to certain classes and or builds i.e. Animational cancelling. Reliance on crutches= doodoo butter.

max_only

I don’t consciously weave but I do appreciate being able to block last minute.

So I have to hope animation cancelling is here to stay.

Maybe dd players are more anxious about this.

Stebarnz

phermitgb wrote: »

mustangmorgan31 wrote: »

Do people actually want A/C to not exist? For the love of god why?? The combat would be slow and atrocious. Why would anyone want that?

I want A/C to not exist. I have a rather lengthy post explaining why. I'm perfectly fine with combat taking as long as the current animations support. I can say this with honesty, because while I do animation cancel, I only use it imperfectly and rarely, as I'm not very good at it, and don't care to be, and I still enjoy the combat in ESO more than I have in any other MMO.

Obviously, that's not saying much - I actually wish combat was totally different, not tied to hot-bars and weapon vs skill classlines, and whatnot, but none of THOSE complaints are directly related to animation cancelling.

Sooooo… you want to play a different game all together? Like Skyrim?

Iccotak

WoW and Diablo combat is very different from ESO combat

oXI_Viper_IXo

KillsAllElves wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

KillsAllElves wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Hopefully they are thinking something along the lines of "WoW is a tab-target MMO with hard cooldowns and solutions which work for them are not applicable to our entirely different philosophy of fast paced action no-cooldowns combat".

This article is about diablo3 not wow.

Some players using animation cancelling can do so to help their seasonal leaderboards.

If you need to crutch on animation cancelling, youre bad! No way around it.

Please see my post just above yours.

And I've participated in AC threads so many times at this point that I have no interest in presenting the exact same arguments one more time. They are going to hit the same exact wall anyway.

My response is in relevance to the OP article which is about diablo3.

Regardless of anygame A/C is a crutch and in eso we dont need to give more advantages to certain classes and or builds i.e. Animational cancelling. Reliance on crutches= doodoo butter.

How is it a crutch when every class can do it?

Kel

Akisohida wrote: »

Honestly? Blizzard can go to hell, IMO.

They banned Blitzchung to appease China's abusive government, then issued the most fake apology followed with 'And since you're all brainless goldfish; WHO WANTS DIABLO 4!? AND OVERWATCH 2!? All right! Completely ignore our actions and give us your money, idiots!'

As far as I'm concerned, Blizzard no longer exists, and anything they say is useless garbage.

Wait until you see how they screwed up Warcraft 3, the RTS game...

https://youtu.be/WiKDyv55zLg

Skwor

Stebarnz wrote: »

Skwor wrote: »

Stebarnz wrote: »

No, the ZOS devs do not think like this as they know removing A/C would turn this game into a dead landscape of rp'ers and low dps potatoes.
If every class and everyone can A/C then balancing is the same as if no one can.

Not accurate at all, the benefit to different classes is much greater to some than others, animation cancelling is not even across the board for classes and their skills.

It is a problem that should have been fixed along time ago. When this game first published it was acknowledged as a problem but the Devs were unable to solve it so instead it has been tolerated and now it has become a de-facto style of game-play.

Just stating random things with no back up or reasoning means nothing, 44% of all people know this!

Give me an example of which class benefits A/C and which doesn't and ill explain to you why you are wrong.

Sorc gets more benefit than a Temp, I never said a class does not benefit I said some benefit more than others, nice strawman you created there in the bolded part.

At least try to discuss in good faith instead of creating false arguments by intentionally mistating what was said.