Why have animations that allow cancelling?

Ifthir_ESO · October 2014

Serious question.

Why not prevent cancelling or shorten animations?

You shouldn't have to 'animation cancel' to be successful at this game. Stop having overlong animations maybe?

Tripwyr · October 2014

The animations sit on top of the game mechanics, the game mechanics do not sit on the animations. Animation cancelling is just the result of the internal mechanics (prioritizing skills to improve responsiveness).

Source: Guild Summit.

TheVindelator · November 2014

I think they should find a way to keep the game feeling responsive without pressuring people to do a bunch of weird glitchy stuff to max out their DPS. That's not immersive.

Unknown_poster · November 2014

Its a conspiracy I tell ya....they made a deal with Razer to sell more programmable gaming mouses. Buy one today and you too can be leet.

guybrushtb16_ESO · November 2014

Tripwyr wrote: »

The animations sit on top of the game mechanics, the game mechanics do not sit on the animations. Animation cancelling is just the result of the internal mechanics (prioritizing skills to improve responsiveness).

Source: Guild Summit.

This is it. It's not really about animations but about global cooldowns. Basically, if we didn't have animation cancelling, every skill and every attack would have to trigger at a 1s global cooldown (or maybe slightly less for light attacks but with the same principle), but that would essentially mean that you would be locked in into what you were doing until you could take the next action. While many mmos do this in one form or another, for ESO the devs decided that combat would feel faster and more reactive and fluent if you could instantly block, attack or interrupt without having to wait, so they allowed those actions to override each other to a degree.

What they didn't see coming is that people would then take advantage of the opportunity for more actions this creates and would do it rotationally every time it's possible of course.

In my personal oppinion, this is something that any game designer really should have seen coming honestly, but for now it is what we are left with. With the ability to animation cancel at no downside, you aren't competitive without using it.

timidobserver · November 2014

Pretty much, in WoW your character auto attacks by itself saving you the effort. In ESO, you need a macro to make it auto attack or do it manually.

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2 · November 2014

Ifthir_ESO wrote: »

Serious question.

Why not prevent cancelling or shorten animations?

You shouldn't have to 'animation cancel' to be successful at this game. Stop having overlong animations maybe?

In another MMO I played, and I won't mention names other than the fact that it is super hero related, animation cancelling was dubbed "clipping". Initially many began to question whether or not this was an exploit of sorts when it was encountered in PvP. Soon the forums were loaded with questions and threads asking for the developers to step in. Most thought that by circumventing intended animations to eek out another skill or more DPS it was an exploit of the game mechanics. It didn't take long before we were told by the developers that "clipping" is an intended game mechanic for "advanced" players seeking to maximize their DPS and/or healing. From what I am gathering in ESO we will have to get used to it and learn it to adapt to it in our own gameplay

. I think the developers just pushed the "e-z mode" button on this one as it easier for them to say it is intended than to find a way to prevent it.

Joy_Division · November 2014

@ Trip - thank for for providing an explanation and the source.

There are some positive things that come out of "animation canceling" is that's what we are going to call it. Nobody would ever use a light attack and that ability and the skills associated with it would be worthless. I also do not find weaving in light attacks to break immersion; if anything, martial arts and sword play is about weaving in combos, parrys, and ripostes.

Still_Mind · November 2014

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2 wrote: »

Ifthir_ESO wrote: »

Serious question.

Why not prevent cancelling or shorten animations?

You shouldn't have to 'animation cancel' to be successful at this game. Stop having overlong animations maybe?

In another MMO I played, and I won't mention names other than the fact that it is super hero related, animation cancelling was dubbed "clipping". Initially many began to question whether or not this was an exploit of sorts when it was encountered in PvP. Soon the forums were loaded with questions and threads asking for the developers to step in. Most thought that by circumventing intended animations to eek out another skill or more DPS it was an exploit of the game mechanics. It didn't take long before we were told by the developers that "clipping" is an intended game mechanic for "advanced" players seeking to maximize their DPS and/or healing. From what I am gathering in ESO we will have to get used to it and learn it to adapt to it in our own gameplay . I think the developers just pushed the "e-z mode" button on this one as it easier for them to say it is intended than to find a way to prevent it.

You're saying as if it's a bad thing. 1\1.5 gcd MMO combat feels clunky and unresponsive. Animation cancelling adds colour to it, brings a bit of manual skill to fighting, making it more involved. In fact, that's one of the high points of ESO for me. I always felt completely removed from combat in games like WoW, SWToR, LAII, etc.
Players who don't want to bother with it, but still want good performance can macro it.

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2 · November 2014

I don't actually mind it to be honest and if this is intended cool with me. Just need to perfect the "cancellations" for the skills I run and work on weaving.