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

Ksariyu

Amottica wrote: »

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.

[snip]

I DO know that I've played this game since launch, and I DO like the combat, well enough at least. Even so, I more or less agree with every common reason why this game's combat is considered poor. Coming from other MMOs that aren't just tab-targeting (BDO, BnS, Tera), I get why people find ESO floaty, unresponsive, "twitchy," or just flat out dull, because it is. Those other games did way better at making skills feel impactful, smooth, unique, and just fun. In BnS for example, I could have fun literally just farming mobs, chaining combos and utilizing each class's unique toolkit and just feeling the flow of all my skills. ESO is more like playing a spreadsheet though, watching buff timers and the floor while clicking buttons at the exact same speed over and over again. Despite the crosshair and the manual basic attacks, I feel very much like I'm playing Perfect World or something during most encounters.

To be honest, the big issue I think a lot of people run into is that they never get to see where this game's combat excels. It's like that show where everyone says, "Just get to season 3 then it's good." That's combat in ESO. Arena, trials, or soloing dungeons, that stuff is fun and engaging. Story content though? Running dungeons with pugs? Dead boring. The former involves literally zero brain power and the latter is mostly sprinting after the people who already ran the content a few hundred times. Even at endgame, if you don't enjoy highly choreographed fights and copying builds down to the trait, you'll find little to enjoy here (And if you do like those things you'd probably like FFXIV more anyway).

And that's PvE. Meanwhile PvP, where this game's combat REALLY shines, is a disaster both in game performance and game modes. As much as I'd like to dive into PvP more in this game, I'm not going to waste my time on the 3-team BG BS or the laggy zerg-fest of Cyrodiil, and I can say from experience I'm not the only one.

There's also the big argument people make about ESO being "fast-paced" (which relative to other actions games, not at all) and therefore skillful. The thing they miss though is that in a game with zero consequences for performing actions, you require LESS skill to execute everything. You don't need to consider your situation before just spamming that LA+Skill, because you can activate both of them, get the damage/buff from both, and then still block or dodge roll instantly. That's not to say I don't appreciate weaving or animation cancelling for what they are here, but let's not pretend that such features increase the base skill required.

[edited for baiting]

AweBiTr

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 ?

TESO has bright and brilliant special effects! Have you played 30 man dungeons? Teso has epileptic seizures...

fred4

Ksariyu wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

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.

[snip]

I DO know that I've played this game since launch, and I DO like the combat, well enough at least. Even so, I more or less agree with every common reason why this game's combat is considered poor. Coming from other MMOs that aren't just tab-targeting (BDO, BnS, Tera), I get why people find ESO floaty, unresponsive, "twitchy," or just flat out dull, because it is. Those other games did way better at making skills feel impactful, smooth, unique, and just fun. In BnS for example, I could have fun literally just farming mobs, chaining combos and utilizing each class's unique toolkit and just feeling the flow of all my skills. ESO is more like playing a spreadsheet though, watching buff timers and the floor while clicking buttons at the exact same speed over and over again. Despite the crosshair and the manual basic attacks, I feel very much like I'm playing Perfect World or something during most encounters.

To be honest, the big issue I think a lot of people run into is that they never get to see where this game's combat excels. It's like that show where everyone says, "Just get to season 3 then it's good." That's combat in ESO. Arena, trials, or soloing dungeons, that stuff is fun and engaging. Story content though? Running dungeons with pugs? Dead boring. The former involves literally zero brain power and the latter is mostly sprinting after the people who already ran the content a few hundred times. Even at endgame, if you don't enjoy highly choreographed fights and copying builds down to the trait, you'll find little to enjoy here (And if you do like those things you'd probably like FFXIV more anyway).

And that's PvE. Meanwhile PvP, where this game's combat REALLY shines, is a disaster both in game performance and game modes. As much as I'd like to dive into PvP more in this game, I'm not going to waste my time on the 3-team BG BS or the laggy zerg-fest of Cyrodiil, and I can say from experience I'm not the only one.

There's also the big argument people make about ESO being "fast-paced" (which relative to other actions games, not at all) and therefore skillful. The thing they miss though is that in a game with zero consequences for performing actions, you require LESS skill to execute everything. You don't need to consider your situation before just spamming that LA+Skill, because you can activate both of them, get the damage/buff from both, and then still block or dodge roll instantly. That's not to say I don't appreciate weaving or animation cancelling for what they are here, but let's not pretend that such features increase the base skill required.

I think this pretty much nails it. When I hear "fast-paced" I automatically think of PvP. Since PvP has been the most important thing to me over the years, I think of ESO as fast-paced in general . I don't play shooters or Fortnite or anything like that, though. I've certainly never felt competitively constrained by a 60Hz refresh rate in ESO. The fact that other PvP games apparently benefit from a higher rate gives you a clue that ESO isn't the fastest-paced game.

I also agree that PvE combat is only enjoyable at the higher levels, e.g. vet arenas, DLC dungeons and trials, at least for a long term player, although I do get a kick out of optimising builds for PUGs and stickerbook farming. Isn't this just a function of the longevity of MMOs, though? My character in Skyrim was completely OP after a while too. I know Skyrim has / had a long shelf-life, esp. if you are / were into modding, but I for one didn't play it as long as ESO.

[edited to remove quote]

ESO_Nightingale

the problem with them is they don't like animation canceling which is sad because they're playing the wrong game. same people who think that it's cheating. it's not the game for them and they refuse to see that.

Elsonso

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

the problem with them is they don't like animation canceling which is sad because they're playing the wrong game. same people who think that it's cheating. it's not the game for them and they refuse to see that.

Animation canceling, or if preferred, weaving, is counter intuitive. The natural tendency is to allow the animation to play out, and then the next action follows it. I am sure that a lot of players actually play that way.

WiseSky

Elsonso wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

the problem with them is they don't like animation canceling which is sad because they're playing the wrong game. same people who think that it's cheating. it's not the game for them and they refuse to see that.

Animation canceling, or if preferred, weaving, is counter intuitive. The natural tendency is to allow the animation to play out, and then the next action follows it. I am sure that a lot of players actually play that way.

Nothing counter intuitive about it for me, if you ever were in the ring or sparing or training for real fights.

Weaving feels like throwing a quick jab to set up your combo.

Or the feeling of doing a feint just to to another way.

Or that slight movement to get a better positioning.

I think of it as each Weave being one of those, each one is slightly different.

Ultimately if someone dislikes weaving... and it's a game mechanic you can find a way to enjoy it as many people have.

Elsonso

WiseSky wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

the problem with them is they don't like animation canceling which is sad because they're playing the wrong game. same people who think that it's cheating. it's not the game for them and they refuse to see that.

Animation canceling, or if preferred, weaving, is counter intuitive. The natural tendency is to allow the animation to play out, and then the next action follows it. I am sure that a lot of players actually play that way.

Nothing counter intuitive about it for me, if you ever were in the ring or sparing or training for real fights.

Weaving feels like throwing a quick jab to set up your combo.

Or the feeling of doing a feint just to to another way.

Or that slight movement to get a better positioning.

I think of it as each Weave being one of those, each one is slightly different.

Ultimately if someone dislikes weaving... and it's a game mechanic you can find a way to enjoy it as many people have.

It is counter intuitive because it does not happen in real life like it happens in ESO. It is necessary to learn that ESO is different than one would expect. If it were intuitive, players would not need to be trained and this behavior would not need to be explained. There would be no debate about whether it was a bug or intentional because it would be intuitive and obvious.

Using your sparring example, no one punches, immediately pulls the punch and kicks, and then expects both a powerful punch and a powerful kick. The expectation is that the kick replaced the punch and the punch did not happen. In ESO, both happen. Counter intuitive.

ZOS did work trying to make the animations so that portions of it always happens before the animation is allowed to be canceled, but it is still canceled before it is completed.

The only way to make it intuitive is if both animations play out simultaneously, which is not possible with the animation framework that is available. Until then, the intuitive use of combat will have the player wait for the light attack to happen, visually, before engaging in the second attack. I expect that this is how a large percentage of players play this game.

MEBengalsFan2001

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.

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.

I played DCUO when it was like ESO and there was a bigger skill gap in DCUO than ESO. Devs made changes and there was still a skill gap, made further changes and still a skill gap. Finally after 8+ years the game got a full over haul and there was still a skill gap. That game even with it having animation cancelling didn't have the clunky combat that ESO has. That game even if you were a top DPS you had to pay attention to mechanics because instead of just burning a boss down and avoiding mechanics certain boss had mechanics trigger at certain health spots or if you killed too fast you wipe, etc... I left DCUO because it became a pay to win game.

ESO is nothing special as a MMO. It is fairly generic and has copied some of the better MMO games for both combat, housing, exploring etc... but it does it without being really unique or outstanding. It is a good game but not top quality in regards to the game. I never seen such imbalance in a mmo game and this is coming from someone that prefers playing inferior classes in games. Templars, Sorc and Necro are so bad that you could delete them from the game and it won't change the game one bit and many players probably won't care as well because those three classes are so bad.

ESO devs really need to baseline this game and fix every class because right now the game is far from balance and fun at the moment. Add to this, there are many new MMO games coming to PC and console this year and quite a few of them look really promising.

WiseSky

Elsonso wrote: »

WiseSky wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

the problem with them is they don't like animation canceling which is sad because they're playing the wrong game. same people who think that it's cheating. it's not the game for them and they refuse to see that.

Animation canceling, or if preferred, weaving, is counter intuitive. The natural tendency is to allow the animation to play out, and then the next action follows it. I am sure that a lot of players actually play that way.

Nothing counter intuitive about it for me, if you ever were in the ring or sparing or training for real fights.

Weaving feels like throwing a quick jab to set up your combo.

Or the feeling of doing a feint just to to another way.

Or that slight movement to get a better positioning.

I think of it as each Weave being one of those, each one is slightly different.

Ultimately if someone dislikes weaving... and it's a game mechanic you can find a way to enjoy it as many people have.

It is counter intuitive because it does not happen in real life like it happens in ESO. It is necessary to learn that ESO is different than one would expect. If it were intuitive, players would not need to be trained and this behavior would not need to be explained. There would be no debate about whether it was a bug or intentional because it would be intuitive and obvious.

Using your sparring example, no one punches, immediately pulls the punch and kicks, and then expects both a powerful punch and a powerful kick. The expectation is that the kick replaced the punch and the punch did not happen. In ESO, both happen. Counter intuitive.

ZOS did work trying to make the animations so that portions of it always happens before the animation is allowed to be canceled, but it is still canceled before it is completed.

The only way to make it intuitive is if both animations play out simultaneously, which is not possible with the animation framework that is available. Until then, the intuitive use of combat will have the player wait for the light attack to happen, visually, before engaging in the second attack. I expect that this is how a large percentage of players play this game.

I agree with you that the weaving is not representative of what happens in Real Life ofc.

Not saying it looks like it, I am saying that the feeling to have to weave feels like it, which is the gem here.

In my opinion the pace is way more enjoyable having to weave with each skill.

So just that we are on the same page: I love the FEEL of the combat even though the animations could be better, even the mechanics could be better.

Agenericname

Many of the people that I played with early on tended to smash their keys furiously. They werent waiting for the animation to finish. It happened despite what they were doing.

I would agree that weaving light attacks isnt intuitive. Thats a small slice of the animation canceling pie though, and the rest is fairly intuitive. Its not realistic, but neither is fighting a dragon with a wooden stick that magically turns into a spear briefly.

Most people I would guess would dodge roll or block when they saw a growing circle/cone regardless of the action they had just used or was playing out. That assume that the content had significant consequences for not doing so. I would call that aspect of animation canceling intuitive. A lot of people dont even realize that theyre doing it.

Castagere

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 ?

Be careful my friend. You could start a war.

Papasears1982

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 ?

most people just want to hit 1 button and let it do all the work for them XD

Paramedicus

I think that worst thing about ESO combat is fact that marketing tells that you can play however you want, but when you actually do that, you make your (but mostly others) experience trash.

Your averange pug DD does 15k dps. There should be more in-game guides on how damage works in this game. There should be pop-ups when you do something wrong or even some fool-proof mechanics, like DOT skill cooldown per target (soooo many "newbs" with xxx-xxxx CP spamming their DOTs lol). INB4 "but that wud ruin mah game" - those mechanics could be turned off in settings, because why not? Concept of interrupting mob/boss is also pretty exotic to way too many players.. And I don't even blame newbs. I also reached my Veteran Ranks not knowing know how important nterrupting is. And there is light attack weaving on top of that. It arificaly makes the game harder, so it is good because you can feel like there is some progression (?). I guess I'm ok with that if weaving doesnt add too much to overall DPS. Skilled ppl need their little mechs to keep game interesting .

So on one hand you have majority of players, which play "how they want", doing unique builds and making no damage and unwittingly taunting mobs with S+B or ice staff skill. And on the other hand you have minority, which uses same sets and same skills on different classes, but does 5x more dmg.

pelle412

ESO's combat has a higher learning curve than other similar genre games out there. I played WoW and similar games quite a bit and they do have a lot of abilities but in the end to do well you press the abilities that lights up usually. ESO doesn't tell you any of that. You have to figure out how your combat abilities flow together based on their cooldowns and so forth. It's not as simple as other common games. Once you have taken the time to really learn ESO combat, going back to other games combat will likely feel dull to you.

Paramedicus

pelle412 wrote: »

ESO doesn't tell you any of that. You have to figure out how your combat abilities flow together based on their cooldowns and so forth. It's not as simple as other common games. Once you have taken the time to really learn ESO combat, going back to other games combat will likely feel dull to you.

I think that is more of a UI/UX flaw than design that makes anything deeper. Game doesn't teach you about stacking DMG properly. You shouldn't need to have PhD in ESO tooltip reading to make somewhat decent damage.

Most likely this omission is done on purpose, becase of 'play however you want' mantra.

Tessitura

Its objective how good the combat may or may not feel at the end of the day. I'll tell you what isn't objective though and that is how bad the animation canceling works in this game. Whether you think it should be there or not, it is a very bad implementation of it. In fact, I can tell you it was never designed for it. Animation canceling with light attack weaving was a bug that got reported a lot back in the alpha and beta days. Instead of fixing it they tried to wrok it into a feature of the game and it's been hee-honked ever since. The only hard animation canceling the game should have is defensive cancels for blocking and rolling. The damage from canceling should not fire off on button press and should only fire off after a certain point in the animation.

As far as cast times and stuff go, they don't really work for this game but part of why they exist in all other mmos is for information processing purposes which makes the gameplay FEEL better. On top of that it helps with broadcasting. ESO does not communicate information to the player well and requires third party software to get half the info you need. When animations get canceled before they can even start you as the player start to lose what is happening on the field. ESO is built on esoteric game play and it takes time for players to build that knowledge base so when someone new shows up it looks like clown town USA because nothing is taught to them by the game and the game doesnt communicate with the player well. (I mostly mean pvp when I talk about this as the boss fights tend to be pretty good.)

Last thing but not the least and something I dont think I see many people talk about is class design. ESO has the worst class design I have ever seen and the devs never state what the goals are for their classes in terms of design. Necromancer is the best class they have made and only because it has a class system it has to interact with to perform. This sort of thing is important when it comes to building and balancing gameplay. Things like this slow the process of combat down and help enforce not just class fantasy but also skill, rotation, and flow. I think this spam heavy game more then any other needs this for their classes and I think the devs agree which is why we are seeing the new classes come out with such interactions. Now we just need to redesign the old classes with such mechanics in mind. Anyway, more then anything I think this effects the opinion on combat to the new comer of ESO and why so many walk away with a bad taste and impression.

Triplesixtyson

I think for alot of people its the fact that animation canceling when weaving just feels and looks clunky. I love ESO but i tend to agree, its not ideal MMO combat for me personally.

Pelanora

Klingenlied wrote: »

why should I spend any time in ESO? Playtime isn't rewarded anyway, its rewards for money spend only.

I know it's slightly off the OP topic, but this comment is so devastating- and true- it's breathtaking really.

Chase0351

Hi, I’ve been playing ESO off and on since 2015. It used to be my main for many years. I have completed most vet content in the game and have also spent much time in cyrodil and bg’s.

That being said:

Go play a game like Elden Ring for 100 hours and then come back to ESO and tell us how it feels. I will even dare to say that outside of a fixed camera angle, Diablo 4 has smoother combat mechanics compared to ESO. Combat mechanics in ESO are outdated. Basically, for majority of the player base, combat in eso boils down to not moving much outside of avoiding aoe attacks, you sit in one spot “stacked” doing a “rotation” which revolves around a “spammable” skill while most players rely on someone else (or pets) to heal them and tank all of the damage too. And don’t get me started on how uneventful trials and dungeons are or how meaningless PvP and solo arena leaderboards have become thanks to “boosting”.

Also, concepts like “slotable” skills that you don’t actually have to use but they take up bar space and buff your build in some regard are pretty cheap and uninspiring. Proc sets are another distraction away from the fact that eso combat mechanics in and of itself are not very involved. Bunny hopping as a means of evasion in combat is pretty lame from a game design standpoint.

ESO is literally a digital theme park (money pit) where groups of players (customers) are just going through the motions so they can get whatever item that they saw on yt being marketed as “op” and/or “broken” by streamers that are in with the devs. (Standby for future nerf…) And there’s nothing they can do to fix it due to the limitations of their current framework, no matter how much they try to hybridize classes its still awkward and clunky combat mechanics with concepts like “light attack weaving”. And why should anyone have to la weave when you can just simply hold down one button and heavy attack every single enemy (works in pvp too). With mythic items like oakensoul and heavy attack builds in general the devs have essentially removed all skill based gameplay in exchange for accessibility (more customers). And without skill based gameplay some of us have chosen to move on to other ventures.

Hope this answers your question. ✌🏻

Chase0351

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

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.

The entire game of ESO revolves around “cooldown-based combat” since every buff and most skills have cooldown timers in the game. If you think ESO is “fast paced” you should really try some other games. It’s borderline turn based to some of the more advanced gamers out there.

Chase0351

Elsonso wrote: »

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.

Buy an elite controller and map bar swap to right thumb stick. Makes bar swapping between dodge rolls or jumps much smoother and in times of “stress” it’s a no brainer.

CameraBeardThePirate

ESO'S combat is fairly deep, and can be tons of fun (imo, it's fantastic), but it suffers from 2 related major problems.

1) An incredibly high skill/knowledge ceiling - there are tons of skills, sets, and passives, and an even higher number of interactions between the three. Add on how in depth things like movement and positioning can become in PvP and learning the system can seem an impossible task, which brings us to the next issue.

2) ZOS does an abysmal job of helping new players learn. This problem isn't really unique to ESO, and is quite natural for a game as old as ESO. However, this doesn't excuse the fact that ZOS hasn't implemented a truly useful tutorial system whatsoever. Many mechanics go completely unexplained, and even more mechanics aren't emphasized to be as important as they should be (e.g., food buffs, potions, etc.). Things like a set browser or skill browser would go a long way in enabling players to learn more. Additionally, a lot of more casual players are never really pushed to learn because of the disparity in difficulty between overland content and group content/PvP.

KlauthWarthog

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

2) ZOS does an abysmal job of helping new players learn. This problem isn't really unique to ESO, and is quite natural for a game as old as ESO. However, this doesn't excuse the fact that ZOS hasn't implemented a truly useful tutorial system whatsoever. Many mechanics go completely unexplained, and even more mechanics aren't emphasized to be as important as they should be (e.g., food buffs, potions, etc.).

The in-game help system does not even explain what the keyword "taunt" means.

AzuraFan

I'm not fond of ESO's combat for the following reasons:

1. bar swapping - seems to be there just for the sake of it. Other games let you have 5, 10, 15, 40, whatever skills without making you artificially swap bars - along with this is that pets (like the warden bear) have to be slotted on both bars. Should only be a toggle on one bar.

2. Rotations, and the fact that you have to buff every X seconds. Boring. I want to buff (using toggles), then pew, pew, pew, healing when necessary. Plus, rotations make combat brain dead to me - just practice your rotation, teach it to your cat, and you're done. You can go read and have a cup of tea while your cat just presses the appropriate buttons at the appropriate times. To be fair, this is true in pretty much every game in some fashion, so not just an ESO thing. But it feels more obvious to me in ESO for some reason.

3. Despite the existence of quite a few skills lines and a gazillion sets, if you're off meta (which is a tiny subset of what's available and constantly changing), your effectiveness in combat will suffer greatly. So you have to use the same rotation and wear the same gear as everyone else in your class, or you can choose to do what you find fun and accept that you'll never do much damage and won't see a lot of grouped content.

The only dynamic thing about the combat is dodging out of AoE areas and blocking/interrupting foes, but they're predictable once you learn them, so not terribly engaging.

I enjoy ESO, but not for the combat, and I understand players who say it's boring, slow-paced, and just not all that engaging.

Twig_Garlicshine

1/ Clunky game play
Manually apply an 'auto attack' is just spamming in time to a metronome.
Unrewarding and mindless.Cancelling itself makes the onscreen visuals/clues meaningless, non-existent, and
"my character and opponents look like they are having seizures."
Not in any way rewarding, or visually enjoyable.

2/ Skills etc are not meaningful in any way, Fire/forget, keep spamming/cancelling.
Eso is more like keep up hots/dots/keep spamming/wait for a proc/keep spamming. = auto play.
I'm more partial to 3-4 part positional chains ( skills that required another skill to succeed), and on the fly decision making and changes to strategies.
Pve - pixel stack in one place, spam a boring rotation, sometimes take a time out to do a mechanic.
The trash is usuall more fun than the Bosses).
Watch hot/buff/debuff bars and/or addons because the screen is just visual flash bang/lights/effects pollution.
Eso- dps, tank/heal debuff/buff bots. Even if you like Holy Trinity, Eso fails in that regard.
Pvp - slightly better (no pixel stacking), yet still same auto play format spam/keep up hots/dots, wait for proc/ulti, keep button mashing.

3/ Remembering 8 mans in Dark Age of Camelot where 8 vs 8 was like being in an every changing, on the fly dance because everything depended on skills that successfully landed or did not due to targeting, positionals etc. All the partners had meaningful roles and targeting mattered. And no I don't mean the 'Holy Trinity', we had heavy dps, medium dps, ranged dps, speeders, peelers, healers, bards/minstrels, and more. Buffers/healers could also dps, or do crowd control. and more.
Another reason it was more meaningful was you relied on the animation of the characters to know what was cast/done/successful, the onscreen fight mattered instead of just being characters having seizures.
Meaningful game play.

Here we have Ball groups, a poor facsimile due to:
6 healbots in group (bots because spamming hots and occasionally toss a heal that auto targets or goes in a general direction of 'over there')
6-10 of some types of hots or buffs stacking and running at same time
1-2 buff/debuff bots for skills or specific proc gear.
4 dps/pullers (these do require slightly more play, still spammy)
Ball groups = mostly auto play pvp in comparison to Daoc..
Small man pvp = less auto play yet still falls victim to Eso clunky game play and reliance on spamming to appear like meaningful game play. No real condition based or positional skill chains, still just hot/dot/buff, spam, wait for ulti/proc.
Meaningless game play.

4/ Visual pollution.
Like other modern games Eso has gone down the route of so many effects happening on screen it no longer provides information on "what exactly is that skill, did it go off, etc". Whether it is another player or a group of boss adds or the bosses themselves. The focus seems to be more "light it up like a Xmas tree, we need more onscreen shinies apocalypse now style!".
And they wonder why so many players focus on their buff/debuff/timers, bars, and pc addons to get valuable information.
Visual pollution.

tldr = both pve and pvp are clunky, spammy, visual pollution.
Disclaimer: Yes I can and do weave/cancelling just fine, that doesn't mean I like it.

SandandStars

One small comparison:

In Call of Duty, you learn to become extremely quick and precise to hit moving opponents. If your crosshairs are off by a fraction, you’re likely to miss.

In ESO, you can spam Whirling Blades and be guaranteed to hit everything in what “looks” like a 30’ radius. Dizzy Swing will hit opponents 20’ away, on the other side of a pillar.

Lag and desync are atypically bad in ESO combat, which contributes to the sloppines/imprecision.

The number of gear sets and theorycrafting is extensive, yet 2 or 3 builds clearly outperform all others, and most sets are outdated and ineffective. One could also argue that a fair amount of skills, and even classes, are outdated and ineffrctive.

What this means for pvp combat is that while there are a considerable amount of sets and skills, an extremely narrow/limited selection gives players a decisive advantage.

propertyOfUndefined

In my experience, other MMOs have pvp that relies heavily on keeping track of enemy cooldowns, knowing what they have left, and at the same time, carefully managing your own. These games require less reflexes since they use tab-targeting systems. I wouldn't call it better. It's apples and oranges, but ESO is the outlier and takes lots of getting used to.

Sylosi

A certain amount of ESO players who love the combat tend to have a bit of a distorted view. Often due to having limited experience of actual PvP games and/or other MMORPGs (you see this with the notion that there aren't other MMORPGs that are fast paced, have animation cancelling, not tab-targeted, etc).

For instance you often see the reasoning that people don't like ESO combat because they don't understand how "skilled" it is, which is amusing to say the least. So let's go through a few examples of why ESO's combat is not highly skilled:

1 - Sustain. If your game does not have cooldowns on skills, then really you need something to balance that (if you want skilled combat). Long ago this was a bit more the case in ESO, where sustain was an actual concern, but for the most part that has not been the case for years, as such ESO combat is very forgiving and rather braindead in this regard.

2 - Aiming. For an alleged action combat game the aiming in this game is laughable, it may as well be tab-targeted. Take ranged attacks for example, firstly mobs / players have hitboxes the size of a small planet, all you have to do is look vaguely in their direction and you will be on target. Secondly once you've "aimed" and pressed your button, that's it, because in this game your projectile is then locked on to the target like a torpedo, no need to anticipate the movement of your target, no need to account for travel time, etc, that would be too difficult...

3 - Animation cancelling. As far as implementations of animation cancelling go, ESO's is low skill. Because firstly you generally have a massive window that you can cancel in, rather than a small window at the end of the animation, so you get away with being far less precise. Secondly because you have that massive window you can often cancel nearly immediately, which often means no meaningful skill animation for your opponent in PvP to react to, which is laughable (at least when it is the norm rather than the exception). Literally the worst implementation of animation cancelling I've ever seen.

4 - Proc sets. In GW2 they removed fire/air sigils (basically flame/shock weapon glyphs) from sPvP (think BGs), because they considered even that limited amount of passive damage was too low skilled, played the game for you and not good for PvP, the joke that is procs in ESO on the other hand is literally the implementation of low skilled combat.

I could go on.

mmtaniac

1. People new people spam abilties and don't read what they do, i know this perfect from myself if you start play you don't know what abilities do and spam everything. I personally use only jabs when started playing other abilities was bad liked only jabs they look cool(old animation)

2. With all that spamming you don't watch your sustain and game don't have food like in wow you sit and regen.

3. Weawing is problem for new players. They don't know how to do it and forget or just only light attack they don't know how to use it properly (add option for autoweave in options it's active on new accounts you can turn it off)

4. People don't know about dot's because everything is spammable without cooldowns could be added cooldowns for dot's and buffs they can't be casted until it ended. Turn it on or turn off in options.

5. They talk about ,you can play everything but you won't if you build heavy armor ,your damage will be bad. Game should have ingame options for build making ,more advanced players should have possibility to make builds and share them and new player will take this build. Now he will have showed step by step where and what to do to get this particular build.

6. Bar swapping is just bad. I hate it even as veteran but i know this is only way to make game possible for consoles. Add option for pc with 1bar 12 buttons on keyboard. Weapon will change automatically if you use current bar skill.

7. Animation cancelling. It's easy to rid of it but it will enrage 99% of veteran players. Add micro cast times on every skill(animation long) Some Bashable but most not.

Adernath

A lot of good points have been mentioned above. In particular the self-buffing requirement every 6-20 seconds is very annoying, although I adapted. For example as magsorc you constantly need to keep up your (pretty weak) shields preemptively if you don't want to be a victim of a ganker - every 6 seconds. Then you need to cast some dark magic to fill up your magicka because you constantly need to buff etc. So you are busy just to prepare yourself. Its very annoying and the result of years of nerfs to the class which are totally unecessary.

The mediocre performance (yes there is still lag, although it improved a bit) doesn't help with the weaving mechanism. In big fights the clunky combat becomes very visible, with many spells hitting you out of a sudden due to lag without time to react. As someone else already mentioned above, it is often also very hard to preemtively cast some defense if animations are cancelled. For the typically tank build which eats each and everything directed to him this is of no concern, but for low-def builds performance, attention and reaction to enemy abilities is crucial.

Kiting builds like in other games (WoW, Neverwinter, ...) are literally impossible without the heavy use of immovable pots due to the countless use of snares, stuns and gap-closes which can be spammed without any meaningful cooldowns or resource increases (like it was introduced in streak). A magsorc and other ranged classes should be able to kite people around, but no, its hardly possible to run such settings in this game. Heavy armor users are just as fast as cloth users.

The main reasons why I finally stopped PvP is:

1) The tank meta is not adressed, despite countless posts over the years on forums from many people.

2) This is more personal, I understand there are other nerfed classes, but my favorite class magsorc is just nerfed too much over the years. Its no more fun to play anymore.

3) Every expansion/addition is just having too much impact on PvP. Often new gear is introduced which will then show up in builds and there is just too much build-science behind the scenes which I do not want to spend my time with: I have enough rather difficult problems to solve during my work day and when I log into a game, I want to relax and things must work straightforwardly without cheese in the background. Too much cheese in build science.

I am also not eager to repeat these complains again on these forums. Either ZOS wil do something with it, or not. Its their choice. There are many other great titles out there.