I love everything about ESO... except the combat.

reddeaddawnb14_ESO

For those who haven't seen his video clip on the topic, his take on why he has trouble sticking with ESO is very similar to mine. I've been playing this game since beta, and by the time Morrowind came out, I just couldn't force myself to play seriously, but I could never really say why. I've been a TES fan for a long time, and even in beta, there was so much I loved about this game, warts and all at the time. I keep coming back to this game every once in a while to see how it is, and see if I can understand why I don't stick with it, and why I keep buying expansion packs that I don't actually play. It's obvious that I want to love the game or I wouldn't keep buying these things. But whether I'm playing on PC or playing on PS5, it's the clunkiness and poorly responsive combat that I finally come to terms with that is the biggest barrier. I play action games on the regular, on PC and console, and with controller and mouse and keyboard. I'm fairly dexterous when it comes to playing action oriented combat games. So you would think that I should have a natural inclination to being successful with ESO. But there is just something about how the controls actually feel to engage with that ends up becoming a barrier for me. Some of it I believe comes from the weapon swap system. To be blunt, I can't stand it. Not because I don't want to be bothered to go to another bar, but because it can often be a crap shoot on how responsive swapping to the next bar, firing ability, then swapping back, will be. I have a great internet connection, but often I'm just spamming a key hoping that it will fire off in a timely manner. In contrast, I played FF XIV on the PS4 for a good while using controller, and having the option to hold a trigger to temporarily swap a bar to use an ability, then releasing it to swap back, actually felt intuitive and flowed very well, even in high-end raid content. Now, I know that those are very different combat systems, in that ESO does not follow the traditional tab targeting type of combat, but being able to swap between many abilities with such fluidity is something that I truly feel would make the experience better in this game. Actually, I'll even risk my neck here and say if they just did away with weapon swapping completely, I wouldn't at all be bothered, and it might actually force more creativity in how builds are put together. Look at how many one bar builds are out there already? Obviously there is a market for this type of combat, and I found myself leveling up scrying just to be able to make my own Oakensoul to be able to achieve just that.

Idk, just felt the need to post my thoughts out here. Feel free to share your perspectives (as respectfully as possible), as I definitely don't think my perspective is the only/ true perspective.

/Cheers

phaneub17_ESO

I spam spells in a rotation until I am near empty and heavy attack multiple times to full resources then repeat the process. The closest thing to weaving is hitting the right trigger rapidly while smashing circle which is my direct spammable like force pulse. I don't care about do max damage as long as I'm enjoying what I'm doing is fine enough for me.

ZOS_Suserial

Hi,

Please remember the Community Rules when posting titles and leaving comments.

Thank you.

reddeaddawnb14_ESO

ZOS_Suserial wrote: »

Hi,

Please remember the Community Rules when posting titles and leaving comments.

Thank you.

Can you elaborate on this please? I went back and read the community rules, and I can't see where my title, or the content, of my post might come close to infringing on any of the rules. The closest I could imagine would be if this would be considered baiting, which I can assure you it is not. I'm not intending to stir up conflict or discord with anyone, simply sharing a perspective that I've come to be able to verbalize.

fred4

If you're talking about a certain Josh, the video I saw was an off the cuff excerpt from a stream where I found the usually articulate Josh wasn't very articulate at all. As far as I could see his main complaint and what the comments revolved around was the lack of progression, the battle leveling, the lack of difficulty in story content making quests fall flat. In other words, the One Tamriel problem. Go anywhere and nothing is a challenge. No immersion. You want a challenge, do a world boss, but a world boss has no context, no payoff in terms of story. I am paraphrasing rather heavily, but that's the gist I got.

What you're saying is different. I have no comparison to other MMOs apart from New World. I found NW clunky af. ESO combat is far superior for me personally. I would not describe it as unresponsive (when it works). That said, what you say about holding a button to bar swap is very interesting. If the client enabled this, then I can see how that would feel smoother. The closest we have in ESO is assigning the front bar and back bar to two different buttons. This is what I do and I can only recommend it. Bar swapping via a toggle key - the default option - is not workable in lag or ... at all for me.

Hoghorn

i play this game despite the combat; i think i'd like it better if i could use shift modifiers to use my back bar skills, don't know if that's viable in this game but the bar swapping just feels bad for me

ZOS_Suserial

Community Rules

Names in Thread Titles: Please refrain from placing the names of ZeniMax Online Studios employees or ESO community members in your thread titles. Directing a thread at a specific individual, or otherwise using a thread to call someone out, is not considered constructive. If you need to get a hold of a specific community member, please send them a private message.

It extends to the community in general.

reddeaddawnb14_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Suserial wrote: »

Hi,

Please remember the Community Rules when posting titles and leaving comments.

Thank you.

Can you elaborate on this please? I went back and read the community rules, and I can't see where my title, or the content, of my post might come close to infringing on any of the rules. The closest I could imagine would be if this would be considered baiting, which I can assure you it is not. I'm not intending to stir up conflict or discord with anyone, simply sharing a perspective that I've come to be able to verbalize.

Jaimeh

reddeaddawnb14_ESO wrote: »

To be blunt, I can't stand it. Not because I don't want to be bothered to go to another bar, but because it can often be a crap shoot on how responsive swapping to the next bar, firing ability, then swapping back, will be. I have a great internet connection, but often I'm just spamming a key hoping that it will fire off in a timely manner. In contrast, I played FF XIV on the PS4 for a good while using controller, and having the option to hold a trigger to temporarily swap a bar to use an ability, then releasing it to swap back, actually felt intuitive and flowed very well, even in high-end raid content. Now, I know that those are very different combat systems, in that ESO does not follow the traditional tab targeting type of combat, but being able to swap between many abilities with such fluidity is something that I truly feel would make the experience better in this game. Actually, I'll even risk my neck here and say if they just did away with weapon swapping completely, I wouldn't at all be bothered, and it might actually force more creativity in how builds are put together. Look at how many one bar builds are out there already? Obviously there is a market for this type of combat, and I found myself leveling up scrying just to be able to make my own Oakensoul to be able to achieve just that.

Idk, just felt the need to post my thoughts out here. Feel free to share your perspectives (as respectfully as possible), as I definitely don't think my perspective is the only/ true perspective.

/Cheers

The combat is one of the best things about this game, there's no question about it. It's incredibly rich, reactive and satisfying. If your bar swap isn't responsive then you might be dealing with high ping, but coming from someone who plays with both a high ping and a controller, I never had a problem unless there was a particularly high spike. Having also played FFXIV there's nothing intuitive about holding one button down and pressing another for a skill, neither is the targeting in that game. It's a lot more tedious and taxing playstyle. Also a lot more boring. ESO is fast and reactive, and that reactiveness makes it really intuitive, and there is indeed a beautiful fluidity to it if you know what you're doing (including knowing about the GCD and ways to capitalize on it). Weapon swapping is what makes the combat so varied and interesting, not just in the PvE side of things where it enables you to have more skills in your rotation, but in the PvP side of things where you can come up with some pretty creative uses of your space for buffing, mitigating and evading. I wish we still had the overload third bar, that was even more unique back in the day. Doing away with a weapon would decrease creativity, not increase it, like you've said, it's simple math, there would be less possibilities, and infinitely more boring. You can already complete almost everything in the game with static one-bar rotations and in builds with high mitigation that basically allow you to stand in AoE, you can already do that, but there are players who love the fast, challenging, two-bar playstyle, who like glass canon builds that are high risk and mean moving and executing mechanics perfectly, who like having rotations and pushing the limits of combat as well. Because of the vocal minority of people who don't appreciate the uniqueness of combat (and in the majority of cases it's people who are not well versed in it, don't understand it, don't execute it well, or simply don't care to learn) that will end up ruining it by asking for things to get slower. Enough already.

colossalvoids

Quite the contrary for me personally, combat is the only thing that somehow makes me not quit the game for good, game wise obviously, as there's people also which are the main factor. Especially after branching out recently I've found out that other games still have something I severely lack in eso - progression. Nothing is static, whilst here it's QoL and "ease of use" that made game stale as heck. It was nice on paper, it's great beginner game overall but past that gaps emerge. I agree with other Josh takes on it more, combat in vacuum is completely fine with me but other issues kinda relate and roll back to it as it's something we're involved in most of the time.

reddeaddawnb14_ESO

fred4 wrote: »

If you're talking about a certain Josh, the video I saw was an off the cuff excerpt from a stream where I found the usually articulate Josh wasn't very articulate at all. As far as I could see his main complaint and what the comments revolved around was the lack of progression, the battle leveling, the lack of difficulty in story content making quests fall flat. In other words, the One Tamriel problem. Go anywhere and nothing is a challenge. No immersion. You want a challenge, do a world boss, but a world boss has no context, no payoff in terms of story. I am paraphrasing rather heavily, but that's the gist I got.

What you're saying is different. I have no comparison to other MMOs apart from New World. I found NW clunky af. ESO combat is far superior for me personally. I would not describe it as unresponsive (when it works). That said, what you say about holding a button to bar swap is very interesting. If the client enabled this, then I can see how that would feel smoother. The closest we have in ESO is assigning the front bar and back bar to two different buttons. This is what I do and I can only recommend it. Bar swapping via a toggle key - the default option - is not workable in lag or ... at all for me.

I think it's interesting that you bring up New World, as I, too, compare the combat to each other, and I feel the same issues about the responsiveness of the bar swapping system in both games. Also, I did have to giggle a bit when you said "I would not describe it as unresponsive (when it works)" XD

Maybe there is a way to make the swapping a bit less painful in the way that you are using it. I'll have to dig deeper and find out. I'm not 100% opposed to the concept of bar swapping, it's just that there are times where I hit the swap, and nothing happens, or takes too long to happen, and throws me off of my rotation.

reddeaddawnb14_ESO

Jaimeh wrote: »

reddeaddawnb14_ESO wrote: »

To be blunt, I can't stand it. Not because I don't want to be bothered to go to another bar, but because it can often be a crap shoot on how responsive swapping to the next bar, firing ability, then swapping back, will be. I have a great internet connection, but often I'm just spamming a key hoping that it will fire off in a timely manner. In contrast, I played FF XIV on the PS4 for a good while using controller, and having the option to hold a trigger to temporarily swap a bar to use an ability, then releasing it to swap back, actually felt intuitive and flowed very well, even in high-end raid content. Now, I know that those are very different combat systems, in that ESO does not follow the traditional tab targeting type of combat, but being able to swap between many abilities with such fluidity is something that I truly feel would make the experience better in this game. Actually, I'll even risk my neck here and say if they just did away with weapon swapping completely, I wouldn't at all be bothered, and it might actually force more creativity in how builds are put together. Look at how many one bar builds are out there already? Obviously there is a market for this type of combat, and I found myself leveling up scrying just to be able to make my own Oakensoul to be able to achieve just that.

Idk, just felt the need to post my thoughts out here. Feel free to share your perspectives (as respectfully as possible), as I definitely don't think my perspective is the only/ true perspective.

/Cheers

The combat is one of the best things about this game, there's no question about it. It's incredibly rich, reactive and satisfying. If your bar swap isn't responsive then you might be dealing with high ping, but coming from someone who plays with both a high ping and a controller, I never had a problem unless there was a particularly high spike. Having also played FFXIV there's nothing intuitive about holding one button down and pressing another for a skill, neither is the targeting in that game. It's a lot more tedious and taxing playstyle. Also a lot more boring. ESO is fast and reactive, and that reactiveness makes it really intuitive, and there is indeed a beautiful fluidity to it if you know what you're doing (including knowing about the GCD and ways to capitalize on it). Weapon swapping is what makes the combat so varied and interesting, not just in the PvE side of things where it enables you to have more skills in your rotation, but in the PvP side of things where you can come up with some pretty creative uses of your space for buffing, mitigating and evading. I wish we still had the overload third bar, that was even more unique back in the day. Doing away with a weapon would decrease creativity, not increase it, like you've said, it's simple math, there would be less possibilities, and infinitely more boring. You can already complete almost everything in the game with static one-bar rotations and in builds with high mitigation that basically allow you to stand in AoE, you can already do that, but there are players who love the fast, challenging, two-bar playstyle, who like glass canon builds that are high risk and mean moving and executing mechanics perfectly, who like having rotations and pushing the limits of combat as well. Because of the vocal minority of people who don't appreciate the uniqueness of combat (and in the majority of cases it's people who are not well versed in it, don't understand it, don't execute it well, or simply don't care to learn) that will end up ruining it by asking for things to get slower. Enough already.

"The combat is one of the best things about this game, there's no question about it." I mean, that's a subjective perspective, which is 100% fine. But to say there is no question is obviously not true, else it wouldn't be a topic.

As I stated in a reply above, I'm not opposed to a bar swap system, but in MMOs, this more often than not can be impacted by factors that are outside the player/user's control. My ping is almost always low, but sometimes in trials, it can get off track, throwing my rotation out of whack, and having to essentially fight against something I can't directly affect (I have a high end PC, so FPS drops aren't an issue for me).

"Because of the vocal minority of people who don't appreciate the uniqueness of combat (and in the majority of cases it's people who are not well versed in it, don't understand it, don't execute it well, or simply don't care to learn) that will end up ruining it by asking for things to get slower. Enough already."

It's obvious that you like and care for the combat style. Great, and I'm happy for you. However, the way this is worded makes a lot of implications towards the skills, motivation, and tastes of players who may disagree. Additionally, at no point did I ask for things to be "slower", nor have I readily seen calls for that from others. Rather, there are those of us who do have issues with how factors that aren't in our control impact our ability to enjoy the game, namely high-paced play (which is good) that lives/dies by how the server decides to respond to our rotation. As stated to another person above, New World has this issue, albeit in a MUCH greater way. To be clear: I LIKE fast-paced action games, and I am not asking for anything to be dumbed down. Simply explaining my own experiences with ESO over the last 10 years that I've played the game. My goal is not to change minds, or even necessarily change the game. I sincerely hope you have continued fun with ESO.

fred4

reddeaddawnb14_ESO wrote: »

Also, I did have to giggle a bit when you said "I would not describe it as unresponsive (when it works)" XD

I've gotten so used to writing that caveat, because I PvP. However to be fair, ZOS' PC EU server upgrade seems to have fixed the issues for the time being on their end.

I'll have to dig deeper and find out. I'm not 100% opposed to the concept of bar swapping, it's just that there are times where I hit the swap, and nothing happens, or takes too long to happen, and throws me off of my rotation.

The way I think of rotations is <light attack> <skill> <bash or bar swap or dodge roll>. In other words that's how I divide up the 1 second GCD in my head, in that order. I've been told this isn't 100% accurate and that you can fit in a light attack before a bar swap instead, but most of the time the above is what I do. If you want to play at a high level, then getting that rythm down so the bar swap doesn't fail is important alright.

In PvP it generally works best to have offensive skills on the front bar and defensive ones on the back bar. This cuts down on the number of bar swaps. That said, I typically have 1 offensive skill on the back bar, which I use as I go on the attack, just before a bar swap. Something ranged works best, such as Poison Injection, Structured Entropy, Elemental Susceptibility, or possibly a gap closer. You're aiming to activate your back bar enchant via a light attack or weapon skill at that time.

In PvE it's somewhat similar (as a DD). Long duration skills go on the back bar, the spammable and execute (if any) on the front bar. If you are ultra competitive and have a dynamic rotation, that can involve frequent bar swaps. However in general you lay out your build to avoid that.

I personally do not aim to be ultra competitive. I do everything up to vet DLC dungeons, normal trials and vet Craglorn trials. I rarely partipate in vet DLC trials or DLC dungeon hard modes. I often PUG, which means I prefer to be self-sufficient. I'm a solo player at heart. This means my PvE builds borrow from my PvP ones. Take my magplar for example:

Back bar:

Race Against Time - not used consistently for damage, but I hate playing without a speed / snare removal skill
Channeled Focus - extra tankiness and sustain, used mainly as a pre-buff while running around
Honor the Dead - self heal, only used on demand
Blazing Spear - used initially while running towards mobs or a boss, later refreshed
Unstable Wall - same as Spear, needed to keep the back bar enchant activated
Meteor - I actively use this when available

Front Bar:

Puncturing Sweeps - I still like this playstyle, not least for the self heals
Camou Hunter - passive damage increase and can use tri pots
Degeneration - bring your own Major Sorcery so can use tri pots
Solar Barrage - bring your own Minor Sorcery and do some AOE
Radiant Glory - Templar's saving grace
Flawless Dawnbreaker - used occasionally over Meteor and more passive damage

This kind of build keeps bar swaps down, because I'm not doing much on the back bar. I basically just have to keep my two ground DOTs up and can fit the sustain rune in while doing that, as needed. It does average to good damage in the content I do, mostly with PUGs. It's only in vet trials I've noticed (via Combat Metrics) that my damage is lagging a bit.

Jaimeh

reddeaddawnb14_ESO wrote: »

I sincerely hope you have continued fun with ESO.

Thank you, I hope you can find a way to enjoy it too!