Is LA Weaving really a bug?

CE_Nex

I keep seeing people reiterating this supposed fact: that light attack weaving is a bug. Is there any actual evidence that it's a bug? Is there any developer confirmation or patch note that says it is a bug? And if it is a bug, does that mean dodge roll, barswap and blocking being off the GCD and being able to cancel animations are also bugs? Does anyone have any actual evidence that this is not an intended feature of the game?

Or is this just another thing in the ESO community that gained traction with no factual backing?

merpins

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

carlos424

Well, there are a couple of instances where zos explicitly says something to the effect of “light attack between each skill for the most damage”. You can see this statement while leveling a new character (not sure which level it shows up), as well occasionally during load screens. Now, there is a difference between light attack weaving and animation cancelling. Animation cancelling might not have been intended. The funny thing about people complaining about animation cancelling is that if they were actually following the tips, and light attacking between each skill, they would probably be doing some animation cancelling.

CE_Nex

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So players assumed it to be a bug, but it was never actually confirmed to be a bug?

VaranisArano

Light Attack weaving is a form of Animation Canceling.

At one point, Jessica Folsom said it wasn't intended, but it's not an exploit. There's a picture on the chat on page 2 of this thread: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/293475/animation-canceling-is-not-an-intended-feature-zos-why-lie/p2

Edit: did a little more googling, and found this thread discussing more context for her quote. Unfortunately, the links to Tamriel Foundry no longer work, so this is secondhand. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/134719/animation-canceling-attack-weaving-is-it-cheating

So the idea that light attack weaving was unintended has been a thing since 2014.

However

Eric Wrobel later made comments on ESO Live saying:
"Animation canceling is a part of the game and we want people to be doing it."
(I had a link to the show at one point, but it's since broken. Sorry.)

ZOS has even added a tip in game to teach players to do light attack weaving at level 41.

https://m.imgur.com/iJy2v9G

They've repeatedly balanced for light attack weaving.

So even if it started as unintended, or it's impact on combat wasn't fully known, it's definitely something the Devs have leaned into.

CE_Nex

VaranisArano wrote: »

Light Attack weaving is a form of Animation Canceling.

At one point, Jessica Folsom said it wasn't intended, but it's not an exploit. There's a picture on the chat on page 2 of this thread: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/293475/animation-canceling-is-not-an-intended-feature-zos-why-lie/p2

However

Eric Wrobel later made comments on ESO Live saying:
"Animation canceling is a part of the game and we want people to be doing it."
(I had a link to the show at one point, but it's since broken. Sorry.)

ZOS has even added a tip in game to teach players to do light attack weaving at level 41.

https://m.imgur.com/iJy2v9G

Ah, this is what I was looking for. Ty ty, much appreciated.

Holycannoli

It's a bug in a way, if you consider that animations weren't intended to be cancellable. It was never fixed so they just made it a feature.

I think this change might have more to do with the insane HA damage we have now than LA weaving damage, but they don't want to nerf just one of the two.

irswat

Elemental weapon is specifically to teach people to weave iirc

LordRukia

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

I've seen a loading screen tooltip about weaving for ages. Animation cancelling has been a thing in games for a long time so I don't believe it was an accident regardless of who said what it would be literally impossible for the combat team not to notice it and that is a fact.

spartaxoxo

VaranisArano wrote: »

Light Attack weaving is a form of Animation Canceling.

At one point, Jessica Folsom said it wasn't intended, but it's not an exploit. There's a picture on the chat on page 2 of this thread: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/293475/animation-canceling-is-not-an-intended-feature-zos-why-lie/p2

Edit: did a little more googling, and found this thread discussing more context for her quote. Unfortunately, the links to Tamriel Foundry no longer work, so this is secondhand. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/134719/animation-canceling-attack-weaving-is-it-cheating

So the idea that light attack weaving was unintended has been a thing since 2014.

However

Eric Wrobel later made comments on ESO Live saying:
"Animation canceling is a part of the game and we want people to be doing it."
(I had a link to the show at one point, but it's since broken. Sorry.)

ZOS has even added a tip in game to teach players to do light attack weaving at level 41.

https://m.imgur.com/iJy2v9G

They've repeatedly balanced for light attack weaving.

So even if it started as unintended, or it's impact on combat wasn't fully known, it's definitely something the Devs have leaned into.

Yup. It may have started as a bug but it's full feature now.

fossildawg

Animation canceling is exploiting the combat mechanics. It wasn't easily removed, so they instead eventually adopted it as an "intended mechanic" and not it's the meta combat mechanic. I'll be glad to see the exploit importance be lowered, it seemed really cheesy to me anyways. Causing animation cancelling/glitching to add an extra attack should not me meta in a game with tons of diff usable skills. The cooldowns and timing of skill usage should matter more than people sweating over their heartbeat skill-LA clicking.

zaria

So many sets demand LA weave to work.
https://eso-sets.com/set/perfected-arms-of-relequen
Random from eso sets.
This would not exist if weaving was an bug.
HA is mostly used to get resources if low but its HA builds.

Sluggy

CE_Nex wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So players assumed it to be a bug, but it was never actually confirmed to be a bug?

Doesn't really matter does it? As a gamedev myself I can say that many things that initially start as unintended effects end up become features of the game. And not in an ironic 'I'm too lazy to fix this' sort of way. As in 'I like this and I'm going to focus on integrating it more into the core gameplay itself' kind of way.

VaranisArano

Sluggy wrote: »

CE_Nex wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So players assumed it to be a bug, but it was never actually confirmed to be a bug?

Doesn't really matter does it? As a gamedev myself I can say that many things that initially start as unintended effects end up become features of the game. And not in an ironic 'I'm too lazy to fix this' sort of way. As in 'I like this and I'm going to focus on integrating it more into the core gameplay itself' kind of way.

I think it matters in the sense of "Was this actually a bug/unintended thing at all, or is that something the ESO community made up and passed along via hearsay over the years?" Which I think is where the OP was going with this thread.

That's a legitimate question, and honestly it's one of the reasons I have the thread with that screenshot of the chat conversation in my bookmarks. There's a lot of stuff that just gets repeated until it's like a game of telephone, and sometimes its helpful to go "Wait, can we get a source here?"

Turns out we do have a source that, yeah, light attack weaving is one of those unintended things that the Devs ran with.

It's also kind of fun for pointing out that even the Dev quote saying it was unintended clearly states its not exploiting, for all the people who go "it's a bug = using it is an exploit!"

Artim_X

kieso

It was never intended from what i recall but ZOS was like we can't fix it so its now a feature. Lol

spartaxoxo

kieso wrote: »

It was never intended from what i recall but ZOS was like we can't fix it so its now a feature. Lol

More like they liked the depth it added to the game.

Paralyse

I don't have a problem with LA weaving

I do have a problem with ZOS refusing to teach players how to use it.

There are no tutorials in game on weaving, the concept is never really explained (apart from one tip)

In addition, LA weaving is unique to ESO among MMO's so for those of us that came from other MMO's it is counterintuitive at first.

The functionality provided by addons to help you manage light attack weaving could be integrated into the game by ZOS -- that would help a ton with teaching people the basics by giving them the option to not allow a skill to be cast until a LA has been performed.

fastolfv_ESO

If it was said its part of the game at release and its in atooltip on the loading screen its clearly part of the game, now if employees at zos say its a bug they are clearly out of the loop with the combat team or just have little actual knowledge about the game they work on

CaptainVenom

To be brutally honest, yes. It is a bug. We should not be able to cancel animation or double-attack with both weapon and a skill. However, they decided to keep it as an "advanced combat feature" of sorts.

Lapin_Logic

CE_Nex wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the player base of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So players assumed it to be a bug, but it was never actually confirmed to be a bug?

If you were playing Online Chess and in your turn on the clock (Your Global Cooldown) you noticed that you can move both a large piece and a Pawn if you clicked them fast enough, you would rightfully report that as a Bug/Exploit.

ESO beta players were informed the game ran on a Global Cooldown system, so getting off 2 attacks during one GCD was rightly acknowledged as a bug.

Anyway it academic now seeing as from Update 35 Light and heavy attacks are going to be a flat damage attack and logically from their (seeing as accessibility issues is cited as the reason) the damage will gradually get phased out leaving Light attacks and heavy attacks to only be used for resource return and possibly triggering status attacks thus only needing to be hit once every 20 seconds or so.

No one will leave the game over it, case in point is everyone championing "High APM" and interesting complex combat are now all wearing Oakensoul and running about with one bar "Ultimates go Brrrrrrrrrrr"

Sluggy

VaranisArano wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

CE_Nex wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So players assumed it to be a bug, but it was never actually confirmed to be a bug?

Doesn't really matter does it? As a gamedev myself I can say that many things that initially start as unintended effects end up become features of the game. And not in an ironic 'I'm too lazy to fix this' sort of way. As in 'I like this and I'm going to focus on integrating it more into the core gameplay itself' kind of way.

I think it matters in the sense of "Was this actually a bug/unintended thing at all, or is that something the ESO community made up and passed along via hearsay over the years?" Which I think is where the OP was going with this thread.

That's a legitimate question, and honestly it's one of the reasons I have the thread with that screenshot of the chat conversation in my bookmarks. There's a lot of stuff that just gets repeated until it's like a game of telephone, and sometimes its helpful to go "Wait, can we get a source here?"

Turns out we do have a source that, yeah, light attack weaving is one of those unintended things that the Devs ran with.

It's also kind of fun for pointing out that even the Dev quote saying it was unintended clearly states its not exploiting, for all the people who go "it's a bug = using it is an exploit!"

But at the end of the day they did leave it in because THEy decided they liked it. And did in fact build many aspects of the game around it including sets, effects such as ulti generation, strengthen its effect with stat-based scaling (i.e. the exact opposite of what they are doing now) and allowing hybridized stats to work with it. So yes. It's an intentional aspect of the game. There's no bug so highly ingrained in a program that it simply can't be removed no matter what.

As another example - Bash damage is not a bug. It was always intended to be in the game. Recently they decided to make it useless for literally anyone EXCEPT a shield-bearing bash build only. Before it was an interesting little thing that players could use in tight situations to squeeze out just a little bit more damage when it really counted. Now it's just a vestigial aspect of a part of the game that might as well no even exist. I can see things heading this way for light attacks. A thing that exists because it always has but no longer serves a purpose.

Riptide

But at the end of the day they did leave it in because THEy decided they liked it.

Well, back in the beginning I certainly never got the impression they particularly liked it. I think more with the rise of streamers and such using it ubiquitously they never could figure out how to disentangle themselves from it without causing heartburn.

I mean judging by how much of a pushover overland content is, it isn’t like the creative direction team personally make use of it in their playthroughs

You can just envision them dragging the one server guy/gal onsite moderately capable of it to test their changes to get the % reduction they mentioned before Alcast et al post up the serious numbers

But shrug, I’ve been doing it before it was called “weaving” (some of us early on called it twisting, from EQ bard yesteryear), but love it? Eh. I like the extra dps and feeling like I’m pulling everything out of the toon, but mechanically it is goofy. I can’t think of another game where you have to click so much at endgame in anything like a comparable way.

The only thing it has going for it is that it is actually something you can physically practice and see improvement, and there is something to be said for that in and of itself. But is it actually fun? Not to me, and never has been. Necessary, if I want to be the best help to my team, but a dog of an instrument. I platted Elden Ring in the first month it was out, and if it had such a clunky system I’d probably have shelved it.

Maybe they can replace weaving with a midfight card game lol /s

chessalavakia_ESO

Riptide wrote: »

But at the end of the day they did leave it in because THEy decided they liked it.

Well, back in the beginning I certainly never got the impression they particularly liked it. I think more with the rise of streamers and such using it ubiquitously they never could figure out how to disentangle themselves from it without causing heartburn.

I mean judging by how much of a pushover overland content is, it isn’t like the creative direction team personally make use of it in their playthroughs

You can just envision them dragging the one server guy/gal onsite moderately capable of it to test their changes to get the % reduction they mentioned before Alcast et al post up the serious numbers

But shrug, I’ve been doing it before it was called “weaving” (some of us early on called it twisting, from EQ bard yesteryear), but love it? Eh. I like the extra dps and feeling like I’m pulling everything out of the toon, but mechanically it is goofy. I can’t think of another game where you have to click so much at endgame in anything like a comparable way.

The only thing it has going for it is that it is actually something you can physically practice and see improvement, and there is something to be said for that in and of itself. But is it actually fun? Not to me, and never has been. Necessary, if I want to be the best help to my team, but a dog of an instrument. I platted Elden Ring in the first month it was out, and if it had such a clunky system I’d probably have shelved it.

Maybe they can replace weaving with a midfight card game lol /s

Personally, I think the difficulty issue content has stems not from the developers being bad at the game but instead the developers being good at it and designing for someone worse than they are tosses them out of their element and leads to poor results.

If the developers were actually bad, the game would have decent tutorials and explanations because the developers would care about that sort of things if they needed it themselves.

Uvi_AUT

CE_Nex wrote: »

I keep seeing people reiterating this supposed fact: that light attack weaving is a bug. Is there any actual evidence that it's a bug? Is there any developer confirmation or patch note that says it is a bug? And if it is a bug, does that mean dodge roll, barswap and blocking being off the GCD and being able to cancel animations are also bugs? Does anyone have any actual evidence that this is not an intended feature of the game?

Or is this just another thing in the ESO community that gained traction with no factual backing?

The way it looks not enough evidence to you.
Hint: If your character looks like he is punching air while on Retalininfused cocaine, its probably a bug.

tomfant

No.

There is even a tooltip on loading screens saying that you can use an ability immediately after an attack. Weaving is exactly this.

Vhozek

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So you're saying the people who think it's too hard for certain players also didn't add a way for those players to learn it? They could just make it easier instead of nerfing it. They could make it so that at any point during a skill cast you can left click and it will register your light attack damage, so noobs can just press 1 and then randomly press left click at any point before, during, or after the skill cast to add their light attack damage. No matter which way they do it, the better players will always take advantage of anything better than new players so you might as well just make it easier while keeping whatever cooldown is behind it. This way the timing from one LA weave to the other doesn't change but the timing in which you do it does because well... it's just easier.

zaria

Sluggy wrote: »

CE_Nex wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So players assumed it to be a bug, but it was never actually confirmed to be a bug?

Doesn't really matter does it? As a gamedev myself I can say that many things that initially start as unintended effects end up become features of the game. And not in an ironic 'I'm too lazy to fix this' sort of way. As in 'I like this and I'm going to focus on integrating it more into the core gameplay itself' kind of way.

This, Age of Wonder 1 had an very amusing bug, you could cast hover spell on an unit to let it pass over water, lava and swamps without penalties. Some smart players found you could cast this on ships, they could carry other units and even got movement bonuses on roads so in short they invented the armored personnel carrier. Later versions in the game got land transport units but boats got nerfed and was restricted to water.

jtm1018

Its a game mechanic they didnt intend to happen, but great players do it, and rules tamriel with their awesome weaving of light attacks.

Fyi, I can only do 40k dps on the iron attraunacs trials test dummy.
Cp1900 btw.
Khajit stamblade.
Medusa mothers sorrow stormfist.

Troodon80

Paralyse wrote: »

In addition, LA weaving is unique to ESO among MMO's so for those of us that came from other MMO's it is counterintuitive at first.

While light attack weaving is unique to ESO, so is doing light attacks in general. However, the concept of weaving is not unique to ESO. Akin to being an ability which is not on the global cooldown -- this concept of weaving a off-global cooldowns with global cooldowns exists in a number of MMOs; FFXIV being my go-to example of this.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with light attack weaving and is very similar to other MMOs in the concept of weaving, and, like those other MMOs, there's no intuitive tutorial in the game which teaches players this and they must rely on external sources if they wish to better themselves within the game. ESO is not unique to this.

WrathOfInnos

Vhozek wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Way back in the before times, in the beta, people noticed that you could animation cancel your light attacks, and weave it in the global cool down with any skill in the game. This was before people knew what the global cool down was exactly, since it was the beta. It was reported as a bug, but people noted that they thought it was really fun and cool. ZoS had a hard time patching it out of the game, and with the feedback from the playerbase of this bug being positive, ZoS decided to adopt it as a feature rather than a bug, but never made any tutorials on the thing (which is a mistake imo).

So you're saying the people who think it's too hard for certain players also didn't add a way for those players to learn it? They could just make it easier instead of nerfing it. They could make it so that at any point during a skill cast you can left click and it will register your light attack damage, so noobs can just press 1 and then randomly press left click at any point before, during, or after the skill cast to add their light attack damage. No matter which way they do it, the better players will always take advantage of anything better than new players so you might as well just make it easier while keeping whatever cooldown is behind it. This way the timing from one LA weave to the other doesn't change but the timing in which you do it does because well... it's just easier.

I think the window to register light attacks was actually larger a few years ago. There have been a few changes that made them feel clunky and less responsive. I agree completely that making the system more forgiving in timing will raise the floor without affecting the ceiling.