What important combat changes need to happen IMO***

michaelarryn

I come and go to ESO once a year it seems like for a couple months and see myself always leaving for the same reason. I love the game, I love the dungeons, I love the community, and although my gripes with combat are the reason I am here today I love it as well.

I've had mixed feelings with each big update, as to me the updates are F'N great as far as the dungeons, the new areas, the new classes, you guys really did some of the best work with this. But the big underlying issue that I've always had with this game always turns me away. But, enough of my reminiscing, really can bring tears to a young mans eye.

Let me actually get to it:
\Light-Heavy attacks for almost all weapons are some of the wimpiest stuff in a video game, they carry no weight and even though people say even the main series TES games combat isn't that great, at least there a light/heavy attack actually FELT like something.
\Animation cancelling wasn't an intended feature, but you guys embrace it, but now it really is time to actually fix it and make it more consistent- Forgive me for not being able to 100% pinpoint the issue I have here, maybe someone can elaborate, but I feel like the skill gap here is too high (or it could be Cyrodiil lag who knows) but even a guy like me who has been here from the beginning can't even imagine of keeping up with some of these guys because they are able to click (or Macro, who knows?) X Y and Z all at the right millisecond where as I did my cute animation cancel thing and only got the one ability off. That is so ridiculous to me.
\Make Medium Armor Great Again! The nimble fighter, who is oh so quick on his feet is no more! In PvP its be the unbreakable wall that can outheal himself in an ocean of slaughterfish or the mage that does the same thing, but at range. Medium armor used to be so fun a while back, but now its hell no to dodge roll, just block block block in heavy, that's pretty disappointing to me as well.
\I'm sure many people may chime in and also mention server performance, but one would think with Microsoft at somewhat of the helm Game leads would definitely be wise enough to utilize this opportunity and get that under control.
\And last thing, not combat related, unless I'm in like the darker areas of the map, ESO really is starting to look a bit dull. It's been out 6 years now, maybe add some photo filters (like BDO, which other than looks and lifeskilling, you all most definetly have beat). I was considering a reshade, but it would be awesome if you all spruced things up yourself. Seriously though, I don't have the best vision, the world looks great, some textures are kinda ugly, but my overall impression when I'm in some of these bright zones (Wayrest comes to mind) is what colorblind artist did they hire to do the color scheme? No harm intended to anyone though, seriously!

I really love this game, but the culmination of what I just listed keeps pushing me away. Its like having the best looking girl with the greatest personality, but her breath stinks 90% of the time. Guys please. If you agree please upvote. I'd love to hear everyone else's opinion as well. This is the only MMO I have ever gotten a character to max level (CP as well), but not just one character, 7 of them.

Jman100582

Some things:

1). medium armor IS viable. it is BiS for stamina pve dps, and many stamina based builds in pvp run medium armor. Heavy armor is good on specific classes/playstyles. For example heavy is far more effective on a stamden than a stamplar.
2). Animation canceling isn't difficult (unless you have some sort of disability like arthritis) and is now a staple in this games combat system. Yes it might not have been intentional, but many players like it as well as the combat team itself. Your complaint about macros isn't valid since im pretty sure that those against the teso rules.
3). The main thing this game needs, no HAVES to improve on is performance. The reason animation cancelling is wonky sometimes ISNT the animation cancel itself, it is game latency and lag. When the game is functioning well you can feel just how smooth the combat and animation canceling is. Admittedly this is like at 4am my time when nobody is on the internet and the game population is asleep for the most part with the exception of Australians just waking up



I too love this game, and it's the only MMO I've played for the past 3 years now. Its combat system is unique and fast paced, theres no ridiculous button combos that are simply impossible to pull off unless you have macros (looking at you BDO, combat is actually terrible on console with the lack of buttons/keys). Yes animation canceling takes some time to learn, but doing so feels rewarding. And theres a global cooldown between abilities anyway, animation canceling doesn't bypass this. No matter how much and how fast you can animation cancel you CANNOT activate more then one ability per second. the reason people light attack weave is because light attacks are not on the global cooldown, and thus you can still activate abilities within the global cooldown and get a bit more dps output.

Taking away animation canceling would be a step in the wrong direction, it would take out one of the fun and unique mechanics in this game that makes it worth playing to so many players such as myself

michaelarryn

Jman100582 wrote: »

Some things:

1). medium armor IS viable. it is BiS for stamina pve dps, and many stamina based builds in pvp run medium armor. Heavy armor is good on specific classes/playstyles. For example heavy is far more effective on a stamden than a stamplar.
2). Animation canceling isn't difficult (unless you have some sort of disability like arthritis) and is now a staple in this games combat system. Yes it might not have been intentional, but many players like it as well as the combat team itself. Your complaint about macros isn't valid since im pretty sure that those against the teso rules.
3). The main thing this game needs, no HAVES to improve on is performance. The reason animation cancelling is wonky sometimes ISNT the animation cancel itself, it is game latency and lag. When the game is functioning well you can feel just how smooth the combat and animation canceling is. Admittedly this is like at 4am my time when nobody is on the internet and the game population is asleep for the most part with the exception of Australians just waking up



I too love this game, and it's the only MMO I've played for the past 3 years now. Its combat system is unique and fast paced, theres no ridiculous button combos that are simply impossible to pull off unless you have macros (looking at you BDO, combat is actually terrible on console with the lack of buttons/keys). Yes animation canceling takes some time to learn, but doing so feels rewarding. And theres a global cooldown between abilities anyway, animation canceling doesn't bypass this. No matter how much and how fast you can animation cancel you CANNOT activate more then one ability per second. the reason people light attack weave is because light attacks are not on the global cooldown, and thus you can still activate abilities within the global cooldown and get a bit more dps output.

Taking away animation canceling would be a step in the wrong direction, it would take out one of the fun and unique mechanics in this game that makes it worth playing to so many players such as myself

Medium armor used to be viable in PvP. Sorry for not making that distinction. And it actually was at one point, now you get shredded. Taking the dodge chance out, so its almost worthless in PvP. You have to build heavy in most setups. That change took a huge hit on build diversity.

And yeah, maybe I'm doing the cancelling wrong, that's something I've considered, but my biggest push especially for 1H and DW is make the animation for light and heavy attacks more impactful on the screen. The overall effect seems wet noodle-y.

JayKwellen

michaelarryn wrote: »

\Animation cancelling wasn't an intended feature, but you guys embrace it, but now it really is time to actually fix it and make it more consistent- Forgive me for not being able to 100% pinpoint the issue I have here, maybe someone can elaborate, but I feel like the skill gap here is too high (or it could be Cyrodiil lag who knows) but even a guy like me who has been here from the beginning can't even imagine of keeping up with some of these guys because they are able to click (or Macro, who knows?) X Y and Z all at the right millisecond where as I did my cute animation cancel thing and only got the one ability off. That is so ridiculous to me.

*For reference, this is from a purely PvP perspective*

While I understand it may feel like someone is activating multiple abilities at the same second, I can guarantee you they aren't.

ESO has a global cooldown of 1 second, which means that you can't activate more than one ability per second. That's it. There's literally no way to make it go faster than that.

What you're likely experiencing is delayed activation abilities and multiple abilities landing at the same time (i.e. combos), but that doesn't mean they were activated at the same time.

For example, a warden will activate sub assault, this takes 3 seconds to go off. While the beetles are charging up they move in and cast a dizzy swing, which takes 0.8 seconds. As soon as the dizzy swing goes off they use a dawnbreaker. This means that the beetles, the dizzy swing, and the dawnbreaker all hit you at the same time, but again they weren't activated at the same time. You could honestly do this entire combo without even light attack weaving or animation cancelling at all. Pretty much every class can stack burst in similar ways, even classes that don't have proper delayed burst like NB's and DK's.

Besides, proper ani-canceling is pretty screwed up after the changes ZOS made to block anyway. There are a lot of skills now that can't really be cancelled at all unless you barswap. As a NB I can animation cancel race against time and shade, but I can't really cancel the animation of cloak, grim focus, siphoning strikes, or rapid regen. Can't cancel soul harvest either since it will literally just cancel the ability all together.

The only thing, in PvP at least, that's truly worth practicing is light attack weaving. And I mean, it's not some super complicated subject either, it's literally just "do a light attack before activating an ability". That's it. That's all there is to it.

michaelarryn wrote: »

\Make Medium Armor Great Again! The nimble fighter, who is oh so quick on his feet is no more! In PvP its be the unbreakable wall that can outheal himself in an ocean of slaughterfish or the mage that does the same thing, but at range. Medium armor used to be so fun a while back, but now its hell no to dodge roll, just block block block in heavy, that's pretty disappointing to me as well.

I mean, medium armor is still BiS for many builds, and not just glass cannons either. Like @Jman100582 said, heavy works better on certain classes and playstyles, but medium is still very popular and highly used. While heavy armor is definitely becoming more popular thanks to the procpocalypse meta we're currently in (both proc wearers using heavy and stacking health and other people just trying to survive), it's by no means the default. I'd wager to bet that a lot of those "unbreakable wall that can outheal himself in an ocean of slaughterfish" people are probably wearing medium armor. I actually wore medium armor on my stamden. I still had about 80% overall mitigation and over 5k weapon damage plus major mending when my health dipped low -- so long as I kept my vigor rolling throughout a fight, which was easy to do with stamden sustain, I was pretty damn tanky with no heavy armor being needed. Wore medium on my DK too without issue. In each case it was the healing and modifiers (vitality/mending) that brought the tankiness, not the physical and spell resistance number.

Also dodge rolling is still super popular. I only play magblades now so trust me when I tell you that I'm much more prone to noticing it. Well-fitted was buffed and full impen is no longer necessary, so if anything I'd say it's even more viable now. Hell even more mag classes are using it these days. Erybody out here dodge rolling 24/7. I'll send you a montage of all the hundreds of dodged spectral bows and soul swallows and soul harvests I have to deal with if you'd like some video evidence lol

michaelarryn wrote: »

\I'm sure many people may chime in and also mention server performance, but one would think with Microsoft at somewhat of the helm Game leads would definitely be wise enough to utilize this opportunity and get that under control.

No argument here. I don't think they'll interfere with the game direction at all, but in a way I kind of wish they would. [snip]

Server performance does need to be mentioned and addressed though. 6 years in and they're still not able to get the game to work. If it's just a matter of resources/server allocation, well, Microsoft has more of that than they know what to do with. I think ESO is hosted on AWS which I've heard is better than Microsoft's Azure (I know nothing of IT/servers/all that, so I may be wrong), but if part of the issue truly is Zenimax refusing to increase server space then, well, I'd rather have an appropriate amount of good servers than an inadequate amount of great ones.

michaelarryn wrote: »

\And last thing, not combat related, unless I'm in like the darker areas of the map, ESO really is starting to look a bit dull. It's been out 6 years now, maybe add some photo filters (like BDO, which other than looks and lifeskilling, you all most definetly have beat). I was considering a reshade, but it would be awesome if you all spruced things up yourself.

No argument here either. I play on console and I'd love for the graphics to get touched up, especially in the original areas. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible for us as I doubt the original Xbox/PS4 could handle it. Plus they're having trouble even getting the game to be functional, so I don't know how high graphical improvements would be on their to do list. Here's to hoping though.

[edited for bashing]