Whats up with "MMO" players saying ESO has Trash combat?

WiseSky

Do they just not understand the depts of it all ? Or do they just preferer flashy combat that goes BOOM and starts epileptic seizures ?

colossalvoids

It has nothing to do with depth or lack of thereof, it's a different combat system with some heavy action RPG inspiration plus a lot of dynamic components, it's just not what most considering an mmo one.

The "hate" for it comes from misinformation people are getting, like you always hearing about animation cancelling etc, people are huge on words and not really looking at a substance, but that's not a big problem tbh. To have decent understanding of what's actually going on you would need to sink hundreds or thousands of hours first and that's not how people are generally getting their impression, easier to go for some 1-2h in reviewer to form one for you.

Sylosi

Some reasons people consider the combat in this game as bad:

1 - The combat is floaty and lacks impact.

2 - The light attack weaving is just tedious for many people.

3 - It is supposedly action combat with aiming, but really the aiming is largely a joke. Take ranged skills for example, like a fire staff heavy attack, you look vaguely in the direction of your target and you will hit (barring dodges). This is due to the hit boxes being the size of a small planet and that once you've fired your ranged skill it has a soft lock so it will magically track your target to wherever they move. No need to actually aim and anticipate the movement of the target, the game plays for you. (one of the many reasons the combat in this game is significantly lower skilled than some like to think it is)

4 - The animation cancelling is absolutely low skill garbage, because firstly you generally have a massive window that you can cancel in, rather than a small window at the end of the animation. Secondly because you have that massive window you can often cancel nearly immediately, which means no meaningful skill animation for your opponent to react to in PvP, which is laughable. Literally the worst implementation of animation cancelling I've ever seen.

5 - The lack of variety. Every class uses the same mechanics (stam, magicka, etc), has access to every weapon, every armour type, most skills are available to every class (world, guild, weapon, armour, alliance war, etc), which gets dull.

6 - The vast majority of the PvE content is so trivial it makes the combat trivial and sends people to sleep. I mean if I can solo a veteran dungeon as someone who only plays this game sporadically, am quite lazy about weaving in PvE, etc, that in itself tells you how laughable the content is and don't even start me on alleged "world bosses" most of which can be done in your sleep.

7 - Somewhat related to the above is healer and tank are basically surplus to requirements for much of the content, so the combat in regards to supposedly being an MMORPG trinity system is busted in many peoples eyes. Also not helped by how high heals scale off basically the same stats you need for damage, why bother with healer most of the time, when you can take one heal skill on a DPS and survive fine with that. There is a reason games have a heal stat.

and so on...

phaneub17_ESO

Most of it feels less like you're trying to hit the target and more like you're attacking the air in front of you like you're showing off the move even if something is right in front of you. It's both in its strength allowing you to mix match abilities from multiple skill lines letting you build anyway you want. The other hand it doesn't look fluid the way other MMOs keep class abilities with a similar theme and motion that appears to go together when you move from one action to the next. ESO doesn't have that follow up from one action to the next, instead they drop off suddenly.

aurelius_fx

Sylosi wrote: »

snip

this entire reply, simply
you can close the thread now

i introduced a friend to ESO once and they immediately noticed how floaty and easy combat was
i'm also really tired of pretending that light attack weaving is meant to be the epitome of skill and engagement. it looks as clunky as it is to play, especially in high ping

WiseSky

colossalvoids wrote: »

It has nothing to do with depth or lack of thereof, it's a different combat system with some heavy action RPG inspiration plus a lot of dynamic components, it's just not what most considering an mmo one.

The "hate" for it comes from misinformation people are getting, like you always hearing about animation cancelling etc, people are huge on words and not really looking at a substance, but that's not a big problem tbh. To have decent understanding of what's actually going on you would need to sink hundreds or thousands of hours first and that's not how people are generally getting their impression, easier to go for some 1-2h in reviewer to form one for you.

I think I agree with this the most, a beginning I did not care about combat, but only a long time did I start to enjoy it once I started to get into it.

The light attack weave, heavy attack weave goes into such complexity that is becomes fun to use it with all weaving skills such as blocking, roll dodging, bar swapping jump, bash … etc
Took me such a long time to get an appreciating for just that.

MEBengalsFan2001

Having come from other action based MMO games and playing ESO since it launch on console, ESO combat is more cumbersome than other action based MMO games.

Light attack weaving / animation cancelling in ESO is even cumbersome compared to other games that have a similar feature. Some games simply allow you to use base attacks and weave in your abilities without letting go of your base attack, making combat in those games more fluid and less cumbersome.

Bar swapping in this game isn't really fluid either and the delay between swapping the bar makes combat again cumbersome. Having played other games with similar mechanics, bar swapping needs to be more fluid and allows players easier access to the 2nd bar skills.

Buffing is also cumbersome where you spend about 10-25% of a fight ensuring your self buffs are up; usually self buffs are easier in other games due to the fact they come from gear, an ultimate, passive skills, or from your support roles. Making players go back and forth between bars to self buff every 10+ seconds isn't fluid.

Oakensoul IMO has removed the buffing issue and IMO has improved combat for solo content. Even dungeons I find playing my character with oakensoul has improved my enjoyment of the game as I can focus on dealing damage and not worry about my buffs.

Jaimeh

WiseSky wrote: »

Do they just not understand the depts of it all ? Or do they just preferer flashy combat that goes BOOM and starts epileptic seizures ?

I'm so glad ESO doesn't have those kind of flashy moves--you can't even see what your character is doing in some other MMOS, and I think the flashier, the less satisfying and the less involved the skills feel in terms of playing, and in these games I think they are designed like this just to make turn-based combat feel dynamic even though it isn't. ESO combat is heaps better in comparison, the visuals of most skills are clean and smooth and work with the dynamic nature of combat, to me casting feels very smooth and fast, and it's what I prefer, and weaving LAs is perfect to make things even more fluid. I think if you get used to proper ESO combat, it's difficult to enjoy combat in other games, because nothing offers the same experience.

amonengelb16_ESO

A lot of what @Sylosi says:

1. Combat lacks impact – No matter if you're using a controler or mouse+keyboard, won't feel good/natural on skill execution. Its more like "slicing through butter" and "fire-and-forget" sort of feeling. To justify more impactful/harder-hitting/distinct skills, the game would need to justify them by implementing skill-activation times and make interrupting skills meaningful in PvP. But its not, while its "core gameplay". Combat lacks consequences.

2. Combat lacks consistency (Line of Sight can be broken and abused incredibly easy, tons of dungeon NPCs shoot projectiles right through walls or around the corner.)

3. PvP is a mostly a scammy kind of experience. Tower-rushing chimps just hunting for their next 70-viewer-peak on their next YouTube video? No thanks! You can get better and more flawless PvP-experiences in Elden Ring colosseums or even in GuildWars 2 (which I left for ESO). Back in Dark Age of Camelot (released 2001) solo-players tended to move their windowed-client to provoke lag-spikes on their character in order to evade auto-attacks. ESO's Line of Sight abuse is exactly and 100% like this. Ask yourself: Is this solid PvP? Do you think Line of Sight should work like this?

3.1 The only "good" thing is how much tactical meaning a simple AoE crowd control as Dark Convergence and Bombing added to group-based PvP. And yet: Hard Crowd Control was already Dark Age of Camelot's core gameplay in PvP. In 2001.

4. The presented action- and twitch-based combat is rather generic and systematic MMO combat if you totally break it down. Its more about numbers, buffs, debuffs, effect stacking, procs (Sets, Monster Sets, Mythic Gear) and crowd control. Its not about the facade of crosshair – This implementation even takes a lot of total character-control away as in healing other players. This is why tons of things are just about stacking AoE-skills in this game. Stacking as a group on one pixel should make everyone susceptible to AoE effects – Leading to splitting and acting more individual as a group member. But its state is the opposite, making it easier to stack on one pixel and fire and forget all AoE heals. Its a sloppy solution that can not be fixed anymore due to ESO's core gameplay.

5. Most combat-facetes feel clunky and like MMO childhood illness, as light attack weaving and animation-canceling feel purely unnatural for an "action-driven" gameplay.

6. Classes and animations lack a lot of identity to "blur" the Holy Trinity system. Nothing new here, in a less special way. Good thing is, there is no "solo stealther"-archetype class that gets systematically excluded from groups! Still, there is a good reason why PvE Tanks are too scarce and unpopular role to play.

7. Most content for solo-players is trivially easy and offers neither challenge nor good rewards. Good and cool fights are really rare to non-existent for solo-players. Same counts for normal dungeons and trials, where players tend to rush and skip everything between bosses. This is daily gameplay-reality that let's new players avoid this content. Or the whole game.

7.1. In group-based PvP (yes, the one with voice-over lol) it totally is about flashy AoE effects. Yes, GuildWars 2 and Black Desert: Online is much flashier! But a "Bomb" IS rather flashy once a Surpression Field already lands the ground. You won't see any of your skills on the ground under these effects.

I could go on, but this is the main salt that comes up for years now that match my experience since 2014. Whenever any popular livestreamers in my country speaks about ESO or get invited to do a promotion livestream – most of these points sadly come up because they expect a "refreshing solo-player experience" with an immersive and action-driven gameplay. Its hard to promote and market a game like this in times of Elden Ring, God of War: Ragnarök or Black Desert: Online (No, I don't like the flashy anime-combat myself.)

WiseSky

Jaimeh wrote: »

WiseSky wrote: »

Do they just not understand the depts of it all ? Or do they just preferer flashy combat that goes BOOM and starts epileptic seizures ?

I'm so glad ESO doesn't have those kind of flashy moves--you can't even see what your character is doing in some other MMOS, and I think the flashier, the less satisfying and the less involved the skills feel in terms of playing, and in these games I think they are designed like this just to make turn-based combat feel dynamic even though it isn't. ESO combat is heaps better in comparison, the visuals of most skills are clean and smooth and work with the dynamic nature of combat, to me casting feels very smooth and fast, and it's what I prefer, and weaving LAs is perfect to make things even more fluid. I think if you get used to proper ESO combat, it's difficult to enjoy combat in other games, because nothing offers the same experience.

yeah it's something I noticed when playing other games.. I want to light attack weave... Why shouldn't I ... it seams so natural.

I wonder how much it has to about having the right set up of a good mmo mouse and left hand gamepad

I play with

And I swear that this was made perfectly for the bar swap... like perfectly.

and my other hand is the g600 and combat feels so like no other when it come to bar switching and weaving or whatever

Klingenlied

Hmm .. Well, it is roughly one or two weeks now since I deleted ESO.
Combat was one of the main reasons.

I am a vet ESO and a vet MMO player. However, most MMO's - ESO including - kinda don't live up to my expectations in regards to the gameplay I am expecting nowadadys. I mean are there modern shooters where characters move worse then they do in ESO? Character animation quality is soo subpar.

So yea .. I think ESO combat is deep enough from a system standpoint, but it feels wonky and looks real bad. I repeat: ESO combat is looking freakin' bad, especially when you focus on melee combat. Melee feels real bad and looks even worse.
Magic combat is ok, I'd say if you are going for stuff like a frost mage, it is even nice somewhat, all the shattering ice and the crunchiness of the sound when stuff shatters. But anything else? I don't like it.

If I got options like Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, Horizon, Overwatch, Destiny - why should I spend any time in ESO? Playtime isn't rewarded anyway, its rewards for money spend only. Without combat being fun and nice to watch, you could say there is still a nice world to be explored. But in all honesty? For the money you spend on the ESO expansion and possibly some ESO+, you get a lot more "nice world" combined with better combat systems and animations.

And don't tell me to not compare ESO with those games because it is older or anything - doesn't count. Your product will always be measured against the best at any given time as long as it is a live service game. That is just the way it is.

Dr_Con

being limited to 5 combat abilities and an ultimate is prohibitive to an mmo mindset where you can have as many abilities as you have keys. ESO goes against the grain in that respect and many mmo players can't seamlessly transition to this game due to it. Not all games are without limits to the amount of spells or combat abilities one can have at any time, but none to my knowledge are limited to as few as 5 skills (this includes spells+combat abilities) other than ESO.

in regard to buffing
ESO also has people using 2 weapons, and the backbar is the player's "prebuff" (unless they have dedicated a slot on their frontbar to a slotted passive). In most other MMOs they don't usually have to worry about buffing mid-fight, the buffs are usually done ahead of any encounter and last longer. They made the most boring part of a fight not occur during that fight. ESO has the most boring part of a fight occur during the fight or as a side effect of other abilities and armor/weapon set procs- and if you don't do that "boring part" you are punished for it with lower DPS or lower survivability.

In reality skill in ESO has to do with preparation, planning, timing, and minmaxing your abilities/passives/proc sets.

WiseSky

Dr_Con wrote: »

being limited to 5 combat abilities and an ultimate is prohibitive to an mmo mindset where you can have as many abilities as you have keys. ESO goes against the grain in that respect and many mmo players can't seamlessly transition to this game due to it. Not all games are without limits to the amount of spells or combat abilities one can have at any time, but none to my knowledge are limited to as few as 5 skills (this includes spells+combat abilities) other than ESO.

in regard to buffing
ESO also has people using 2 weapons, and the backbar is the player's "prebuff" (unless they have dedicated a slot on their frontbar to a slotted passive). In most other MMOs they don't usually have to worry about buffing mid-fight, the buffs are usually done ahead of any encounter and last longer. They made the most boring part of a fight not occur during that fight. ESO has the most boring part of a fight occur during the fight or as a side effect of other abilities and armor/weapon set procs- and if you don't do that "boring part" you are punished for it with lower DPS or lower survivability.

In reality skill in ESO has to do with preparation, planning, timing, and minmaxing your abilities/passives/proc sets.

Sylosi wrote: »

Some reasons people consider the combat in this game as bad:

1 - The combat is floaty and lacks impact.

2 - The light attack weaving is just tedious for many people.

3 - It is supposedly action combat with aiming, but really the aiming is largely a joke. Take ranged skills for example, like a fire staff heavy attack you look vaguely in the direction of your target and you will hit (barring dodges, blocks, etc). This is due to the hit boxes being the size of a small planet, plus once you've aimed and fired your ranged skill it has a soft lock so it will magically track your target to wherever they move. No need to actually aim and anticipate the movement of the target, the game plays for you. (one of the many reasons the combat in this game is significantly lower skilled than some like to think it is)

4 - The animation cancelling is absolutely low skill garbage, because firstly you generally have a massive window that you can cancel in, rather than a small window at the end of the animation. Secondly because you have that massive window you can often cancel nearly immediately, which means no meaningful skill animation for your opponent to react to in PvP, which is laughable. Literally the worst implementation of animation cancelling I've ever seen.

5 - The lack of variety. Every class uses the same mechanics (stam, magicka, etc), has access to every weapon, every armour type, most skills are available to every class (world, guild, weapon, armour, alliance war, etc), which gets dull.

6 - The vast majority of the PvE content is so trivial it makes the combat trivial and sends people to sleep. I mean if I can solo a veteran dungeon as someone who only plays this game sporadically, am quite lazy about weaving in PvE, etc, that in itself tells you how laughable the content is and don't even start me on alleged "world bosses" most of which can be done in your sleep.

7 - Somewhat related to the above is healer and tank are basically surplus to requirements for much of the content, so the combat is busted in many peoples eyes. Also not helped by how high heals scale off basically the same stats you need for damage, why bother with healer most of the time, when you can take one heal skill on a DPS and survive fine with that. There is a reason games have a heal stat.

and so on...

No offense but any profile that is "private" I just don't read what they have to say "This time"

Klingenlied wrote: »

Hmm .. Well, it is roughly one or two weeks now since I deleted ESO.
Combat was one of the main reasons.

I am a vet ESO and a vet MMO player. However, most MMO's - ESO including - kinda don't live up to my expectations in regards to the gameplay I am expecting nowadadys. I mean are there modern shooters where characters move worse then they do in ESO? Character animation quality is soo subpar.

So yea .. I think ESO combat is deep enough from a system standpoint, but it feels wonky and looks real bad. I repeat: ESO combat is looking freakin' bad, especially when you focus on melee combat. Melee feels real bad and looks even worse.
Magic combat is ok, I'd say if you are going for stuff like a frost mage, it is even nice somewhat, all the shattering ice and the crunchiness of the sound when stuff shatters. But anything else? I don't like it.

If I got options like Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, Horizon, Overwatch, Destiny - why should I spend any time in ESO? Playtime isn't rewarded anyway, its rewards for money spend only. Without combat being fun and nice to watch, you could say there is still a nice world to be explored. But in all honesty? For the money you spend on the ESO expansion and possibly some ESO+, you get a lot more "nice world" combined with better combat systems and animations.

And don't tell me to not compare ESO with those games because it is older or anything - doesn't count. Your product will always be measured against the best at any given time as long as it is a live service game. That is just the way it is.

No offense but any profile that is "private" I just don't read what they have to say "This time"

WiseSky

Dr_Con wrote: »

being limited to 5 combat abilities and an ultimate is prohibitive to an mmo mindset where you can have as many abilities as you have keys. ESO goes against the grain in that respect and many mmo players can't seamlessly transition to this game due to it. Not all games are without limits to the amount of spells or combat abilities one can have at any time, but none to my knowledge are limited to as few as 5 skills (this includes spells+combat abilities) other than ESO.

in regard to buffing
ESO also has people using 2 weapons, and the backbar is the player's "prebuff" (unless they have dedicated a slot on their frontbar to a slotted passive). In most other MMOs they don't usually have to worry about buffing mid-fight, the buffs are usually done ahead of any encounter and last longer. They made the most boring part of a fight not occur during that fight. ESO has the most boring part of a fight occur during the fight or as a side effect of other abilities and armor/weapon set procs- and if you don't do that "boring part" you are punished for it with lower DPS or lower survivability.

In reality skill in ESO has to do with preparation, planning, timing, and minmaxing your abilities/passives/proc sets.

I honestly see it as a person seeing chess for the first time.. and says wow it's so boarding all you have to do is check mate.

There is so many complicated layers to ESO that sad as it is... flys over peoples head, the number of people who can maintain a high DPS compared to any other MMO really shows the skills gap of players.

You make a good point how, fast and on the ball you have to be with buff and debufs and have the skill to strike when it matters where as other mmos it's a 1 min cooldown for a buff and you are golden...

The gap really starts to show when newer players don't even understand how really the game goes when they hit their first vet content.

amonengelb16_ESO

Klingenlied wrote: »

[...]
So yea .. I think ESO combat is deep enough from a system standpoint, but it feels wonky and looks real bad. I repeat: ESO combat is looking freakin' bad, especially when you focus on melee combat. Melee feels real bad and looks even worse.
Magic combat is ok, I'd say if you are going for stuff like a frost mage, it is even nice somewhat, all the shattering ice and the crunchiness of the sound when stuff shatters. But anything else? I don't like it.

If I got options like Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, Horizon, Overwatch, Destiny - why should I spend any time in ESO? Playtime isn't rewarded anyway, its rewards for money spend only. Without combat being fun and nice to watch, you could say there is still a nice world to be explored. But in all honesty? For the money you spend on the ESO expansion and possibly some ESO+, you get a lot more "nice world" combined with better combat systems and animations.

And don't tell me to not compare ESO with those games because it is older or anything - doesn't count. Your product will always be measured against the best at any given time as long as it is a live service game. That is just the way it is.

I also tried to show ESO to some friends that are exactly always hooked for action-driven combat games as you have listed. THESE are action games. Games where you can actually see and feel how the blade crushes your enemy with it's weight and your character's strenght. But there is not even one single moment – not even when activating Dawnbreaker Ultimate – where the game reaches this kind of basic action feeling. This is important because its natural and intuitive to learn games like that when they respond to your action properly.

Entering a group dungeons for the first time or doing PvP is one of Non MMO-players number 1 reason to drop the game. Not because its about grouping. Because of how the game responds to your activated skills and core gameplay. And yes, even childhood illness like "NPC magicians shooting projectiles around a 90°-angled corner at you!" or how your melee weapon feels like having no weight at all are things that work against the "3rd person crosshair"-perspective gameplay.

Agenericname

Its not my favorite, when looked at as a whole, but its pretty high up there.

The combat is fast paced and reactive, which I like. Its not super flashy, which I also like. In fact, certain classes are a little too much for me. Core combat abilities like block, dodge, bash, are all nice.

Numerous times my friends and I have left ESO to play other games. The number 1 reason any of us ever come back is because of the combat. I can without any hesitation at all, say that if they took that away or diminished it in any significant way, it would end ESO for us.

The downsides, to me anyway, except in certain content; vet DLC dungeons/trials, arenas, and PvP, it doesnt matter. Builds are basically irrelvant in older content. Builds for speed, stealth, etc exist and do have some utility. Theyre a bit of an exception, albeit a non-combat related one.

I do like that we are limited in how many abilities we can have at a given time. I played WoW for years, now I tend to lean more toward games that have fewer but more impactful skills/abilities. I wouldnt go back. I wouldnt say that ESO has the most impactful combat, but I still prefer it over older MMOs by a wide margin.

If small group/solo pvp were my goal, then Id agree, ER is a good experience. And I do like that. I remember Cyrodiil when I first started. Siege warfare was fun. Groups were larger, there was more going on, and the experience was great.

For stories, immersion, and sometimes combat (typically solo)I prefer other games. For group I prefer ESO.

Troodon80

WiseSky wrote: »

Do they just not understand the depts of it all ? Or do they just preferer flashy combat that goes BOOM and starts epileptic seizures ?

It's a curious thing, really. I've played ESO the longest of any MMO I've touched but I've played others as well, including Neverwinter Online, D&D Online, DCU Online, SWTOR, etc. I'm currently playing more FFXIV than ESO at the moment due to various things not related specifically to ESO. Almost every ability in FFXIV will flashbang you.

Don't even get me started on Red Mage's Limit Break if an important mechanic is coming up.

Thankfully, there's a decent amount of configuration in FFXIV compared to ESO:


But the thing that gets me in ESO is the combat. It's one of the reasons why I stayed for ~8 years. Compared to FFXIV, for example, where the global cooldown is, at base, 2.5s. If you've got all your oGCDs on cooldown, you're just sitting waiting for 2.4s+ so you can use the next ability. ESO's combat works to a metronome. Compared to ESO's 1s GCD, 2.5s feels almost like an eternity. Or if you're a masochist who likes channels, there's also Black Mage, so not only do you have time for a cuppa while waiting for the skill to be ready again... you also can't move (unless you use Triplecast/Swiftcast).

You might remember that we have a thing about this in ESO some time back and it was categorically rejected by the community and ZOS pulled back on it.



I like FFXIV and there's plenty of stuff that I make comparisons to in some of my other posts (such as the Hall of the Novice and Party Finder) where I think ESO could do better than it is. However, for me... nothing compares to ESO's combat. People can say it's trash all they want, but at the end of the day that's entirely subjective. If one does not like it, there are plenty of other games out there. Which isn't isn't to say that the combat is perfect. It's not. I like most of the encounters in FFXIV more than I do ESO, but part of that is going to be an engine limitation and it has nothing to do with the abilities/light weaving that people bring up as an issue.

It is my hope that ZOS never change the core functionality of the combat in ESO (1s GCD, light weaving, heavy attacks, etc.). For a lot of people, it is the key selling point and the only real thing that sets it apart from other games. Things like buffs/debuffs could probably do with a rework, but the core functionality is absolutely fine and generally better than any other MMO or game in general, in my opinion.

Dr_Con

WiseSky wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

being limited to 5 combat abilities and an ultimate is prohibitive to an mmo mindset where you can have as many abilities as you have keys. ESO goes against the grain in that respect and many mmo players can't seamlessly transition to this game due to it. Not all games are without limits to the amount of spells or combat abilities one can have at any time, but none to my knowledge are limited to as few as 5 skills (this includes spells+combat abilities) other than ESO.

in regard to buffing
ESO also has people using 2 weapons, and the backbar is the player's "prebuff" (unless they have dedicated a slot on their frontbar to a slotted passive). In most other MMOs they don't usually have to worry about buffing mid-fight, the buffs are usually done ahead of any encounter and last longer. They made the most boring part of a fight not occur during that fight. ESO has the most boring part of a fight occur during the fight or as a side effect of other abilities and armor/weapon set procs- and if you don't do that "boring part" you are punished for it with lower DPS or lower survivability.

In reality skill in ESO has to do with preparation, planning, timing, and minmaxing your abilities/passives/proc sets.

Sylosi wrote: »

Some reasons people consider the combat in this game as bad:

1 - The combat is floaty and lacks impact.

2 - The light attack weaving is just tedious for many people.

3 - It is supposedly action combat with aiming, but really the aiming is largely a joke. Take ranged skills for example, like a fire staff heavy attack you look vaguely in the direction of your target and you will hit (barring dodges, blocks, etc). This is due to the hit boxes being the size of a small planet, plus once you've aimed and fired your ranged skill it has a soft lock so it will magically track your target to wherever they move. No need to actually aim and anticipate the movement of the target, the game plays for you. (one of the many reasons the combat in this game is significantly lower skilled than some like to think it is)

4 - The animation cancelling is absolutely low skill garbage, because firstly you generally have a massive window that you can cancel in, rather than a small window at the end of the animation. Secondly because you have that massive window you can often cancel nearly immediately, which means no meaningful skill animation for your opponent to react to in PvP, which is laughable. Literally the worst implementation of animation cancelling I've ever seen.

5 - The lack of variety. Every class uses the same mechanics (stam, magicka, etc), has access to every weapon, every armour type, most skills are available to every class (world, guild, weapon, armour, alliance war, etc), which gets dull.

6 - The vast majority of the PvE content is so trivial it makes the combat trivial and sends people to sleep. I mean if I can solo a veteran dungeon as someone who only plays this game sporadically, am quite lazy about weaving in PvE, etc, that in itself tells you how laughable the content is and don't even start me on alleged "world bosses" most of which can be done in your sleep.

7 - Somewhat related to the above is healer and tank are basically surplus to requirements for much of the content, so the combat is busted in many peoples eyes. Also not helped by how high heals scale off basically the same stats you need for damage, why bother with healer most of the time, when you can take one heal skill on a DPS and survive fine with that. There is a reason games have a heal stat.

and so on...

No offense but any profile that is "private" I just don't read what they have to say "This time"

Klingenlied wrote: »

Hmm .. Well, it is roughly one or two weeks now since I deleted ESO.
Combat was one of the main reasons.

I am a vet ESO and a vet MMO player. However, most MMO's - ESO including - kinda don't live up to my expectations in regards to the gameplay I am expecting nowadadys. I mean are there modern shooters where characters move worse then they do in ESO? Character animation quality is soo subpar.

So yea .. I think ESO combat is deep enough from a system standpoint, but it feels wonky and looks real bad. I repeat: ESO combat is looking freakin' bad, especially when you focus on melee combat. Melee feels real bad and looks even worse.
Magic combat is ok, I'd say if you are going for stuff like a frost mage, it is even nice somewhat, all the shattering ice and the crunchiness of the sound when stuff shatters. But anything else? I don't like it.

If I got options like Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, Horizon, Overwatch, Destiny - why should I spend any time in ESO? Playtime isn't rewarded anyway, its rewards for money spend only. Without combat being fun and nice to watch, you could say there is still a nice world to be explored. But in all honesty? For the money you spend on the ESO expansion and possibly some ESO+, you get a lot more "nice world" combined with better combat systems and animations.

And don't tell me to not compare ESO with those games because it is older or anything - doesn't count. Your product will always be measured against the best at any given time as long as it is a live service game. That is just the way it is.

No offense but any profile that is "private" I just don't read what they have to say "This time"

Darkstorne

WiseSky wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

It has nothing to do with depth or lack of thereof, it's a different combat system with some heavy action RPG inspiration plus a lot of dynamic components, it's just not what most considering an mmo one.

The "hate" for it comes from misinformation people are getting, like you always hearing about animation cancelling etc, people are huge on words and not really looking at a substance, but that's not a big problem tbh. To have decent understanding of what's actually going on you would need to sink hundreds or thousands of hours first and that's not how people are generally getting their impression, easier to go for some 1-2h in reviewer to form one for you.

I think I agree with this the most, a beginning I did not care about combat, but only a long time did I start to enjoy it once I started to get into it.

The light attack weave, heavy attack weave goes into such complexity that is becomes fun to use it with all weaving skills such as blocking, roll dodging, bar swapping jump, bash … etc
Took me such a long time to get an appreciating for just that.

@WiseSky I think a lot of the confusion here, for why players hate ESO's version of animation cancelling specifically, can be better understood by looking at some other games that handle it well.

For Honor and New World both have animation cancelling, but they also include animation frame data which ESO unfortunately lacks for instant-cast attacks. That means in ESO you can cancel an instant-cast action such as a light attack before the animation has even had a chance to begin playing, and it will still deal damage as though it connected when visually it clearly didn't. That robs this game of a lot of the skill element in animation cancelling, both for the player executing the attack (where timing the cancellation is where the skill should lie) and for the player on the receiving end (where being able to read and react to animations should be important). ESO lacks both of those elements that animation cancelling with frame data should be able to enrich a game with. End result - ESO is button mashing for the attacker, and guesswork for the defender.

New World rewards skill and timing by letting you weave multiple light attacks, heavy attacks, and skills together when animation cancelled effectively, increasing DPS as a result. There is no GCD between skills thanks to frame data existing. If you cancel one attack into another into another before the animations have a chance to play out into connecting with an enemy, then no damage is dealt. It's a really nice system (just a shame about the rest of the game )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxAkD-KGjkM

For Honor's animation cancelling system is critical to opening up baiting and feinting playstyles, tricking your opponent into raising their guard or preparing to parry in one direction, before cancelling that attack and executing a quicker animated attack in a direction your opponent has now left exposed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP5pSlemdak

tl;dr - a lot of players dislike ESO's flavour of animation cancelling because it is objectively a poorly implemented version of animation cancelling (hence being labelled a bug for so long before ZOS just decided to roll with it). It's perfectly possible to like animation cancelling in general, but dislike ESO's implementation of it. And being so critical to end-game DPS progression, that can indeed sour a player's impression of this game's combat as a whole.

Elsonso

WiseSky wrote: »

And I swear that this was made perfectly for the bar swap... like perfectly.

I used a G13 with ESO (last game that uses it) but my bar swap is on my mouse as part of my combat split between both hands.

Bar swap in this game is not reliable, and it is a tragedy that combat has developed where rotations use a bar swap. Bar swapping can be interrupted, or just not happen. I use an add on to notify me when the bar swap happens so I can hit it again if necessary. That only works on PC, so on XBox, I just use one bar.

Other observations...

I don't think of ESO combat as "floaty", but then I can compare ESO combat to New World and no one would think ESO is "floaty" after playing New World for a bit. (disclaimer: have not played new world in months, so might be different now)

I like the dynamic combat that ESO offers where position is important and always changing. I like that combat isn't just me standing to the side pressing number keys in a set rotation. I tried to do rotations in ESO, but bar swap or the dynamic nature of the combat will eventually break them. Now I assess what needs to be done and do it rather than trying to follow some rotation.

Attack weaving is annoying. I get why ZOS is not changing it, as it does eliminate the "a few moments later", but it is still annoying. I'd like to see if they can find something better than animation canceling that still makes combat feel good. I doubt that they are even thinking about it.

fred4

I've heard ESO labelled as floaty and have no idea what that means, but am going to guess it has something to do with how in control of your character you are. Being able to animation cancel into a dodge roll or block, not being locked into any animation, not having any momentum when you run, it plays a big part in how in control you feel.

IMO there is nothing objectively right or wrong about that. Is it realistic? No. Does it feel good to play. Yes, a thousand times! I loathe games that so much as try to add weight and momentum to, for example, your running animation. I loathe games that require all or part of your animations to play out, locking you into something that you cannot correct. I know ESO has a GCD, but that's relatively short and predictable. This leaves you feeling in control.

Skills with cooldowns, as in New World, are a menace. It turns your gameplay from immersive - your skills just work when you need them - into strategic. ESO keeps that to a minimum, i.e. we have ultimates and only some micro-management skills, such as Grim Focus. In short, I think ESO's core combat style is a valid option. There isn't much of an objective discussion to be had, because it's mostly down to personal preference.

Stx

ESO combat is fun but it lacks in a few areas.

First, the lack of cooldowns isn’t really a good thing. It severely limits spell design and balance. That’s why literally every class in this game is the same. Spammable, dots, delayed burst, ultimate. That’s it.

Secondly, the combat is unresponsive. In games like wow, the global cooldown is so easy to keep track of, and feels consistent with every button push. Spells and spell animations are also very responsive. For example, if you get stunned in PvP, you can break the stun with your trinket and instantly CC them back. In ESO, break free often just doesn’t work, the global cooldown has no easy to see indicator on abilities, and sometimes your character gets stuck in animations or inexplicably frozen. The whole weaving light attacks is just isn’t as smooth as combat in other games.

I only play Guild Wars 2, WoW, and this game, and ESOs combat to me is easily the worst. The animations are the worst, and the responsiveness is the worst.

WiseSky

Darkstorne wrote: »

WiseSky wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

It has nothing to do with depth or lack of thereof, it's a different combat system with some heavy action RPG inspiration plus a lot of dynamic components, it's just not what most considering an mmo one.

The "hate" for it comes from misinformation people are getting, like you always hearing about animation cancelling etc, people are huge on words and not really looking at a substance, but that's not a big problem tbh. To have decent understanding of what's actually going on you would need to sink hundreds or thousands of hours first and that's not how people are generally getting their impression, easier to go for some 1-2h in reviewer to form one for you.

I think I agree with this the most, a beginning I did not care about combat, but only a long time did I start to enjoy it once I started to get into it.

The light attack weave, heavy attack weave goes into such complexity that is becomes fun to use it with all weaving skills such as blocking, roll dodging, bar swapping jump, bash … etc
Took me such a long time to get an appreciating for just that.

@WiseSky I think a lot of the confusion here, for why players hate ESO's version of animation cancelling specifically, can be better understood by looking at some other games that handle it well.

For Honor and New World both have animation cancelling, but they also include animation frame data which ESO unfortunately lacks for instant-cast attacks. That means in ESO you can cancel an instant-cast action such as a light attack before the animation has even had a chance to begin playing, and it will still deal damage as though it connected when visually it clearly didn't. That robs this game of a lot of the skill element in animation cancelling, both for the player executing the attack (where timing the cancellation is where the skill should lie) and for the player on the receiving end (where being able to read and react to animations should be important). ESO lacks both of those elements that animation cancelling with frame data should be able to enrich a game with. End result - ESO is button mashing for the attacker, and guesswork for the defender.

New World rewards skill and timing by letting you weave multiple light attacks, heavy attacks, and skills together when animation cancelled effectively, increasing DPS as a result. There is no GCD between skills thanks to frame data existing. If you cancel one attack into another into another before the animations have a chance to play out into connecting with an enemy, then no damage is dealt. It's a really nice system (just a shame about the rest of the game )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxAkD-KGjkM

For Honor's animation cancelling system is critical to opening up baiting and feinting playstyles, tricking your opponent into raising their guard or preparing to parry in one direction, before cancelling that attack and executing a quicker animated attack in a direction your opponent has now left exposed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP5pSlemdak

tl;dr - a lot of players dislike ESO's flavour of animation cancelling because it is objectively a poorly implemented version of animation cancelling (hence being labelled a bug for so long before ZOS just decided to roll with it). It's perfectly possible to like animation cancelling in general, but dislike ESO's implementation of it. And being so critical to end-game DPS progression, that can indeed sour a player's impression of this game's combat as a whole.

Thanks for explaining the upper level of animation canceling and how in ESO it could have been done better.

Those points you made make sense on paper, as I have had no prior experience with those game.

Elsonso wrote: »

WiseSky wrote: »

And I swear that this was made perfectly for the bar swap... like perfectly.

I used a G13 with ESO (last game that uses it) but my bar swap is on my mouse as part of my combat split between both hands.

Bar swap in this game is not reliable, and it is a tragedy that combat has developed where rotations use a bar swap. Bar swapping can be interrupted, or just not happen. I use an add on to notify me when the bar swap happens so I can hit it again if necessary. That only works on PC, so on XBox, I just use one bar.

Other observations...

I don't think of ESO combat as "floaty", but then I can compare ESO combat to New World and no one would think ESO is "floaty" after playing New World for a bit. (disclaimer: have not played new world in months, so might be different now)

I like the dynamic combat that ESO offers where position is important and always changing. I like that combat isn't just me standing to the side pressing number keys in a set rotation. I tried to do rotations in ESO, but bar swap or the dynamic nature of the combat will eventually break them. Now I assess what needs to be done and do it rather than trying to follow some rotation.

Attack weaving is annoying. I get why ZOS is not changing it, as it does eliminate the "a few moments later", but it is still annoying. I'd like to see if they can find something better than animation canceling that still makes combat feel good. I doubt that they are even thinking about it.

I really saddens me, like a lot, that you had the g13 and did not get to set the back bar and front bar on the keyboard like this:




I don't know if I am being bias or inexperienced in other methods, but no other placement I can think of would be better...
Short of maybe ... using your feet lol

I think it's something that has to be experienced to truly enjoy.

The front bar being the thumbs upper button, the back bar being the thumbs bottom button you can never confuse yourself about on which bar you are at or want to be on.

Having the left hand being in charge of wasd movement and the thumb of bar swamping
and the mouse thumb of skills & Roll on the side of the mouse and the other fingers for LA block bash/ jump

Gives me the feeling of using a HOSAS setup but for ESO


I never ever felt that the bar swap was unresponsive, unless, the global cooldown delay for bar swap is not supposed to be there.

But one thing is for sure...

ESOs combat would suck, if I had a keyboard and was using the the keys above wasd "1-6" keys as skills and had no mmo mouse.

I would never play the game and would be crying.

Elsonso

WiseSky wrote: »

I really saddens me, like a lot, that you had the g13 and did not get to set the back bar and front bar on the keyboard like this:

The reason I did not do that is because the mouse button is a more reliable button than those two button on the G13. I use them for map and inventory, instead. I always use a mouse with buttons under the thumb, either an MMO mouse or something like the Logitech G500.

Anyway, I have had more than one G13. My first G13 failed due to one of those buttons. I don't remember which one. I used it in World of Warcraft for something and the button couldn't handle it. When I designed the key layout for ESO, I removed those buttons from active combat.

I have since moved off of the G13 for everything but ESO. I decided I did not want to get locked into one-off hardware for new games, especially since the G13 has been abandoned and cannot be replaced reasonably.

WiseSky wrote: »

I never ever felt that the bar swap was unresponsive, unless, the global cooldown delay for bar swap is not supposed to be there.

But one thing is for sure...

ESOs combat would suck, if I had a keyboard and was using the the keys above wasd "1-6" keys as skills and had no mmo mouse.

I would never play the game and would be crying.

For me, on PC... Almost no combat that lasts longer than a few seconds completes without at least one time when weapon swap failed to execute. It isn't a button issue, it is a game issue.

I avoid it on XBox because it is unreliable in the game and on the controller, it is a button issue. It is just not in a good place for me to use it so I never bothered. That thumb is often busy when I want to swap and dislikes being distracted.

Seraphayel

Imagine calling ESO combat in depth or complex, lol. It’s neither. It gets complicated and overloaded due to Champion Points and all the different sets, but that doesn’t make combat complex or in depth. ESO has one of the worst combats in any major MMORPG - not because the idea behind it is bad, but because its implementation is. Combat is by far the worst part of this game and usually brought up as the #1 pain point - it’s just unimpactful and boring.

WuffyCerulei

People really seem to forget that ESO combat is just fundamentally different from most other MMOs. Games like WoW and FF14 have cooldown-based combat, while ESO does not. People who prefer cooldown-based combat aren't going to like the fast-paced on the spot combat ESO has. I personally like ESO combat as it really forces one to think, rather than sit there and do a long rotation while occasionally moving out of telegraphs.

nb_rich

WiseSky wrote: »

Do they just not understand the depts of it all ? Or do they just preferer flashy combat that goes BOOM and starts epileptic seizures ?

Lol I be wondering the same thing. The only explanation to why people are bringing this up now is because a lot more people are starting to get into ESO, but came from other mmorpg so are not used to it. It’s just like when I try to play other mmo games and come straight back to ESO because their combat sucks compared to this game.

Amottica

There are a lot of players that are used to WoW & FF14 style combat and struggle to adapt to a different combat design. I’ve seen it with my friends who were good raiders but could or wouldn’t adapt to ESO.

It comes down to if you cannot figure out how to do it talk trash about it. I’ve seen it even in eso where my raiding guild tried to help a member who was not hitting the DPS requirement. Instead of accepting the advice they talked trash about the guild.

It never make sense and doesn’t hold water.

WiseSky

Elsonso wrote: »

WiseSky wrote: »

I really saddens me, like a lot, that you had the g13 and did not get to set the back bar and front bar on the keyboard like this:

The reason I did not do that is because the mouse button is a more reliable button than those two button on the G13. I use them for map and inventory, instead. I always use a mouse with buttons under the thumb, either an MMO mouse or something like the Logitech G500.

Anyway, I have had more than one G13. My first G13 failed due to one of those buttons. I don't remember which one. I used it in World of Warcraft for something and the button couldn't handle it. When I designed the key layout for ESO, I removed those buttons from active combat.

I have since moved off of the G13 for everything but ESO. I decided I did not want to get locked into one-off hardware for new games, especially since the G13 has been abandoned and cannot be replaced reasonably.

WiseSky wrote: »

I never ever felt that the bar swap was unresponsive, unless, the global cooldown delay for bar swap is not supposed to be there.

But one thing is for sure...

ESOs combat would suck, if I had a keyboard and was using the the keys above wasd "1-6" keys as skills and had no mmo mouse.

I would never play the game and would be crying.

For me, on PC... Almost no combat that lasts longer than a few seconds completes without at least one time when weapon swap failed to execute. It isn't a button issue, it is a game issue.

I avoid it on XBox because it is unreliable in the game and on the controller, it is a button issue. It is just not in a good place for me to use it so I never bothered. That thumb is often busy when I want to swap and dislikes being distracted.

I totally understand the G13's 2 buttons as it's its weak spot... they are the main point of failure,

You can 3d prints the bad parts if you ever get in trouble.

But... Did you consider buying like 6 other g13 like me so that they can't ever fail you all

I use the joystick's up, down, left & right for map and inventory stuff.

As for the combat not lasting long comment and me trying to answer, without stealing content from our 158 pages forums feedback post, I truly enjoy enjoy just the slight interaction with LA to skill to Backbar LA Skill, but once again only because of the g13 and g600 set up.

I will have to really check out what you are talking about the buttons not being responsive... as to my knowledge the bar swap has a cooldown, and its not about being non responsive.

I currently have a ps5 controller and cant for the life of me come up with a good set up that feels good.

TheImperfect

My honest opinion having played many MMO is that ESO has the best and most fun combat in any I've tried.

fred4

Seraphayel wrote: »

Imagine calling ESO combat in depth or complex, lol. It’s neither. It gets complicated and overloaded due to Champion Points and all the different sets, but that doesn’t make combat complex or in depth. ESO has one of the worst combats in any major MMORPG - not because the idea behind it is bad, but because its implementation is. Combat is by far the worst part of this game and usually brought up as the #1 pain point - it’s just unimpactful and boring.

If that's what you think, you ought to treat yourself to something like the following video explaining the split-second decisions that go into fighting as a melee nightblade in PvP. It really isn't about the sets. Watch the mechanics from 08:30 onwards. This is one of the best, if not the best video of it's kind I have ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRmoWuvAy0