Exiting Feedback (Animation Canceling)

Wolfen_Steiner · March 2016

I just canceled my ESO Plus membership and wasn't given the option to directly tell ZOS why, so I'm doing it here. There is only one thing that ruins this great game for me and it's animation canceling. As an example, I play a stamina build using a 2hander and canceling Wrecking Blow's animation with a light attack virtually doubles my DPS. This is incredibly broken in my opinion. Those of us who took the twenty seconds to learn how to cancel animations are doing twice as much damage as those that don't and it can be difficult for targeted players to know when the hit is coming, even those who are experienced. Latency is a huge influence on the success of animation canceling in both giving and receiving damage and it turns PvP into an unpredictable roulette. Did the lag kill you or was it the hit you never saw land? Often it's both. There is no skill involved with any of this. Did you watch a short video on YouTube? Does your latency never go above 200ms even in Cyrodiil? Congratulations! You get to do double the DPS.

And this is coming from one of the people doing double. I want that to be clear. I'm not crying because somebody spammed Wrecking Blow on me. I'm the one doing the spamming and I'm saying this is a problem. And it's not just Wrecking Blow. I'm just using it as one of the more blatant examples. Not only is it incredibly game breaking both from a technical perspective and a balance perspective, but it also makes the game's combat visually disappointing. When I'm wrecking people with the aptly named Wrecking Blow and canceling the animation, my character looks like he is having a seizure. It looks stupid and it's not fun. I just can't stand it anymore. I can't stand how it looks. I can't stand how it feels. I can't stand how much damage I lose if I don't do it. I can't stand how much animation canceling contributes to the PvP meta being so bursty. But most of all, I can't stand how ZOS would rather semi-endorse it than to admit it's a problem because they know the technical complications involved with fixing it is more than they're willing to deal with. So I'm doing the only thing I know I can do and that's pulling my money out. Now you know why. Thanks.

sirrmattus · March 2016

It's a cheat and it's Wak

Wolfen_Steiner · March 2016

sirrmattus wrote: »

It's a cheat and it's Wak

Agreed. It definitely looks and feels like an exploit.

flguy147ub17_ESO · March 2016

I hate animation cancelling with a passion but feel forced to atleast do basic animation cancelling so i am not at a huge disadvantage. But i absolutely hate it but being on PS4 i really dont have other options for MMOs like i did when i use to game on a PC so might as well keep playing ESO.

zyk · March 2016

I find animation cancelling to be tedious and a recipe for repetitive strain injuries. Furthermore, the game was designed with a minimal UI because it is intended that we react to the animations and not the UI cues; cancelling obviously breaks this concept.

I cancel when I play PVE. I usually don't bother block cancelling in PVP because I play on busy servers during prime time. It's usually not beneficial to attempt to cancel because of lag.

I get the 'skill' argument. But it also takes skill to balance a banana upright on my nose while playing ESO. Should I be rewarded for doing so? Something is not inherently better because it is more difficult to do.

It is frustrating to feel one has to perform a cheesy activity like this to remain competitive.

Edit: I have no problems with straight attack weaves; it's block cancelling that I do not prefer.

Recremen · March 2016

Normal game mechanics aren't cheats and exploits. Next thing you know moving out of AoE is going to be called an exploit. Just because it isn't in the tutorials doesn't mean it isn't intended or is unfair.

olsborg · March 2016

I agree with OP, I animation cancel and have been since I learned how in the early days of beta. It needs to go so pvp isnt such a f up place for new ppl to come into..

Wolfen_Steiner · March 2016

Recremen wrote: »

Normal game mechanics aren't cheats and exploits. Next thing you know moving out of AoE is going to be called an exploit. Just because it isn't in the tutorials doesn't mean it isn't intended or is unfair.

Normal? It certainly doesn't look normal. It wasn't intended. It's a byproduct of design decisions they made on the technical side of the game's combat. Animation canceling is an unintended result, not a design choice.

zyk · March 2016

Recremen wrote: »

Normal game mechanics aren't cheats and exploits. Next thing you know moving out of AoE is going to be called an exploit. Just because it isn't in the tutorials doesn't mean it isn't intended or is unfair.

The benefits of animation cancelling are not by design. They are unintended, but also something the devs accept as part of the game. For now.

I don't mind attack weaves at all, but It's really silly conceptually that briefly blocking or bashing results in faster attacks.

Liukke · March 2016

Welcome to the club mate,
I dropped mine to few months ago not just because of the bugs but because you feel that they'll stay there forever, it's like "we can't fix this? it becomes a feature!"
And yep, animation canceling sucks...I like doing that, it feels more rythmic and skillful but it's just stupid.
Some classes may have more advantages with that, others will just suck because you can't cancel proper skills, there are many possible builds out there that just don't work because they can't cancel the animation in a proficient way.

As I said in tons of other posts...bad programming, amateur developers, fail company

Recremen · March 2016

Wolfen_Steiner wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Normal game mechanics aren't cheats and exploits. Next thing you know moving out of AoE is going to be called an exploit. Just because it isn't in the tutorials doesn't mean it isn't intended or is unfair.

Normal? It certainly doesn't look normal. It wasn't intended. It's a byproduct of design decisions they made on the technical side of the game's combat. Animation canceling is an unintended result, not a design choice.

It's normal in that it's a standard part of MMO combat that allows two different attack action types. Same thing happens in WoW, for instance. You have basic attacks (I think they call it "white damage") and then you have your spells and abilities. Your spells and abilities are weaved in with the rest of your attacks and whatever animation has higher prioritization is what's played at any given time.

I don't know why you're saying it isn't intended, the game is specifically coded to allow for it. It's not some bug like the stamina regen while blocking in stealth, which was specifically against what both of those abilities are supposed to do for stam regen. It's a very typical function of what happens when your animations are longer than the cooldown between abilities and when you have two discrete sets of abilities with their own cooldowns. If they didn't want light/heavy attacks/blocking/dodging/etc. to cancel the tail end of other abilities, then they would have put them all on the same cooldown. They didn't. That's really the end of the story. If you don't like it, that's fine, but it's silly to support your dislike for it with statements that aren't true.

zyk · March 2016

@Recremen

https://i.imgur.com/J92M812.png

We know ZOS recognizes the issues with animation cancelling as it attempted to address them for 2.3 on PTS. Those changes were rolled back for further tweaking.

Wolfen_Steiner · March 2016

We are not talking about weaving here. We're talking about animation canceling. You're supposed to follow up Wrecking Blow with a weapon attack. That's weaving. It's intended. It even implies a follow-up attack in the ability's description. What's not intended is that you can fire off that follow-up attack before the animation for Wrecking Blow is even halfway visually completed. The most obvious fix would be to change the animation time itself. If it only takes one second to cast Wrecking Blow, the animation should only be one second long. The damage should be delivered at the completion of the animation. That's how combat is supposed to work in action-oriented combat games like ESO. Everything is supposed to be visual. Animation canceling bypasses the visual. That's what makes it broken.

Recremen · March 2016

zyk wrote: »

@Recremen

https://i.imgur.com/J92M812.png

Mrs. Folsom is a community manager, not one of the coders or combat designers. What she interprets as "not exactly intended" isn't a direct line from one of the developers. It could mean that they didn't expect that caliber of play to crop up from a game in the Elder Scrolls series (which has before now been a noncompetitive single-player experience), it could be that they weren't expecting people to have the resources to do it so frequently, it could be that the animations were supposed to play out fully but didn't, it could be any number of things. The only thing that's certain is that heavy/light attacks are on separate cooldowns from everything on the ability bar. I know people like to make fun of the devs, but that would be an oversight of considerable magnitude if it weren't intended.

Recremen · March 2016

Wolfen_Steiner wrote: »

We are not talking about weaving here. We're talking about animation canceling. You're supposed to follow up Wrecking Blow with a weapon attack. That's weaving. It's intended. It even implies a follow-up attack in the ability's description. What's not intended is that you can fire off that follow-up attack before the animation for Wrecking Blow is even halfway visually completed. The most obvious fix would be to change the animation time itself. If it only takes one second to cast Wrecking Blow, the animation should only be one second long. The damage should be delivered at the completion of the animation. That's how combat is supposed to work in action-oriented combat games like ESO. Everything is supposed to be visual. Animation canceling bypasses the visual. That's what makes it broken.

Okay, no argument from me there at least. Wrecking Blow's animation might be a little too heavy on the windup. I wouldn't say that the damage should come at the very end of the technique, however, as there's a substantial amount of time between the hit and returning to the normal combat idle pose, but I get what you're saying, The animation should be adjusted so it cancels after the impact, not before.

DHale · March 2016

Animation cancelling has been in game for 2 year it is not new. Not sure why anyone would complain about it now and as you said it takes 20 seconds to learn. It is not difficult but it is important to define the skill it takes to play this game (as much as video gaming can be a skill). The vast majority of pvp players do it or want to do it. You don't have to use it I did not use Nirn on my armor I did not roll a dk when they were the thing I did not run vamp when bats were the hardest hitting ult in the game I did not use Camo hunter. I did not cheese dawnbreaker or rearming trap. I did not get more than one Mundus stone even though I knew how. I did not cheese inner light and bound ages on my overload bar then toggle out packing 50 k magic I also knew how to do this too. I made those decisions willingly and deliberately even getting killed by ppl using this quite a lot. I knew when I beat someone with three Mundus it was all me with honor and that save lag I beat them bc without the cheese they were sad little kids in thier moms basement. They need that edge to beat ppl. If you want to quit... quit if you don't want to sub or play... don't but don't tell me this is the hill you will die on. To all other learn how to do it. Just like getting team speak it just is part of the game. Deal with it. I assure you I will never accuse someone of having skill who uses wrecking blow. BTW I use it on two of my Stam builds where I chose not use an axe and it definitely does not require skill to use it.

zyk · March 2016

Recremen wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

@Recremen

https://i.imgur.com/J92M812.png

Mrs. Folsom is a community manager, not one of the coders or combat designers. What she interprets as "not exactly intended" isn't a direct line from one of the developers.

It was a common question at the time. She wasn't talking out of her ass. It's always been a contentious subject. Others at ZOS have commented on the subject over the years. The challenge is to preserve responsive combat while eliminating the cancellation of ability animations.

We know from the changes introduced in the 2.3 PTS that ZOS would like to eliminate block cancelling while maintaining weaves. By weaves, I mean cancelling a light/heavy attack animation by executing an ability. Almost no one has an issue with this. it's block cancelling that most people have an issue with.

Krycek89 · March 2016

Recremen wrote: »

Wolfen_Steiner wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Normal game mechanics aren't cheats and exploits. Next thing you know moving out of AoE is going to be called an exploit. Just because it isn't in the tutorials doesn't mean it isn't intended or is unfair.

Normal? It certainly doesn't look normal. It wasn't intended. It's a byproduct of design decisions they made on the technical side of the game's combat. Animation canceling is an unintended result, not a design choice.

It's normal in that it's a standard part of MMO combat that allows two different attack action types. Same thing happens in WoW, for instance. You have basic attacks (I think they call it "white damage") and then you have your spells and abilities. Your spells and abilities are weaved in with the rest of your attacks and whatever animation has higher prioritization is what's played at any given time.

I don't know why you're saying it isn't intended, the game is specifically coded to allow for it. It's not some bug like the stamina regen while blocking in stealth, which was specifically against what both of those abilities are supposed to do for stam regen. It's a very typical function of what happens when your animations are longer than the cooldown between abilities and when you have two discrete sets of abilities with their own cooldowns. If they didn't want light/heavy attacks/blocking/dodging/etc. to cancel the tail end of other abilities, then they would have put them all on the same cooldown. They didn't. That's really the end of the story. If you don't like it, that's fine, but it's silly to support your dislike for it with statements that aren't true.

you are aware that Wow Like Most mmos use something called Global cooldowns, and ability cooldowns- sure you can use your weapon- for most classes that is useless cough tried using melee staff on a priest yeah

But there is usually a cooldown that prevents you from using an ability straight after or the same ability multiple times in succession- known as the global cooldown- which is shared with ALL abilities - for you to say that eso animation cancelling is like white damage in wow is just plain stupidity.

Was this loophole intended when they designed a combat system that allowed no GCD, probably not so they rolled with it
But the fact that you can fudge the system into having two or more "abilities" hit in close sequence WITHOUT even an animation queue is nigh on absurd.
And i laugh at your comment that the game is coded for animation cancelling - it is purely an offshoot of having no GCD, they couldn't fix it without changing the core coding and simply ran with it,

intended coding..... ahhahha

sirrmattus · March 2016

Recremen wrote: »

Normal game mechanics aren't cheats and exploits. Next thing you know moving out of AoE is going to be called an exploit. Just because it isn't in the tutorials doesn't mean it isn't intended or is unfair.

really?

Reevster · March 2016

Another reason not to PvP in this game, I mean ya its fun for those who have marcos and super fast Computers/connections, but for most of us its just not fun dieing repeatedly in less then 2 seconds.

I don't mind dieing in PvP when its "fair" and you have at least a chance to survive long enough to hit the guy back a few times, but for the most part it just isn't fun for many of us.

Molag_Crow · March 2016

Agreed with OP for sure. Animation canceling ruined this game and I don't care what anybody says or how comfortable they already are with animation canceling...

Recremen · March 2016

zyk wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

@Recremen

https://i.imgur.com/J92M812.png

Mrs. Folsom is a community manager, not one of the coders or combat designers. What she interprets as "not exactly intended" isn't a direct line from one of the developers.

It was a common question at the time. She wasn't talking out of her ass. It's always been a contentious subject. Others at ZOS have commented on the subject over the years. The challenge is to preserve responsive combat while eliminating the cancellation of ability animations.

We know from the changes introduced in the 2.3 PTS that ZOS would like to eliminate block cancelling while maintaining weaves. By weaves, I mean cancelling a light/heavy attack animation by executing an ability. Almost no one has an issue with this. it's block cancelling that most people have an issue with.

I wouldn't say they want to eliminate block canceling, and moreover I don't see why that is any more problematic than weaving. If anything you are doing less damage by block canceling than by weaving. Also, they reverted the changes specifically because they weren't able to preserve the flow of combat the way it has typically worked. I'd say the block canceling changes on the PTS were unintended.

zyk · March 2016

Recremen wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

@Recremen

https://i.imgur.com/J92M812.png

Mrs. Folsom is a community manager, not one of the coders or combat designers. What she interprets as "not exactly intended" isn't a direct line from one of the developers.

It was a common question at the time. She wasn't talking out of her ass. It's always been a contentious subject. Others at ZOS have commented on the subject over the years. The challenge is to preserve responsive combat while eliminating the cancellation of ability animations.

We know from the changes introduced in the 2.3 PTS that ZOS would like to eliminate block cancelling while maintaining weaves. By weaves, I mean cancelling a light/heavy attack animation by executing an ability. Almost no one has an issue with this. it's block cancelling that most people have an issue with.

I wouldn't say they want to eliminate block canceling, and moreover I don't see why that is any more problematic than weaving. If anything you are doing less damage by block canceling than by weaving. Also, they reverted the changes specifically because they weren't able to preserve the flow of combat the way it has typically worked. I'd say the block canceling changes on the PTS were unintended.

Block cancelling results in more damage than medium attack weaves in a variety of scenarios. For example, when using a resto staff or when a target is in execute range.

What you've written is contrary to what ZOS has frequently explained. For example, Rich Lambert on the 2.3 PTS changes that were rolled back:

We wanted to make it more clear which attacks players are using, while preserving the responsiveness and feel of the combat system. The goal is that if an ability is successful, the player should always be able to see it impact (or launch in the case of projectiles). Under the new system, we are prioritizing the impact/launch of the first attack over the first few milliseconds of the wind up of the interrupting 2nd attack.

The bottom line is ability animations need to be displayed.

Edit:

The practical impacts to the changes on PTS were that roll dodge and bar swap cancels still worked, weaving still worked, but block/bash cancelling were less effective; to the point of having no value. I believe cancelling an ability with an ultimate still worked as well.

You can get an idea about what ZOS is trying to accomplish via staff posts in this PTS thread:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/245038/official-feedback-thread-for-prioritization-of-combat-animations/

Recremen · March 2016

Krycek89 wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Wolfen_Steiner wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Normal game mechanics aren't cheats and exploits. Next thing you know moving out of AoE is going to be called an exploit. Just because it isn't in the tutorials doesn't mean it isn't intended or is unfair.

Normal? It certainly doesn't look normal. It wasn't intended. It's a byproduct of design decisions they made on the technical side of the game's combat. Animation canceling is an unintended result, not a design choice.

It's normal in that it's a standard part of MMO combat that allows two different attack action types. Same thing happens in WoW, for instance. You have basic attacks (I think they call it "white damage") and then you have your spells and abilities. Your spells and abilities are weaved in with the rest of your attacks and whatever animation has higher prioritization is what's played at any given time.

I don't know why you're saying it isn't intended, the game is specifically coded to allow for it. It's not some bug like the stamina regen while blocking in stealth, which was specifically against what both of those abilities are supposed to do for stam regen. It's a very typical function of what happens when your animations are longer than the cooldown between abilities and when you have two discrete sets of abilities with their own cooldowns. If they didn't want light/heavy attacks/blocking/dodging/etc. to cancel the tail end of other abilities, then they would have put them all on the same cooldown. They didn't. That's really the end of the story. If you don't like it, that's fine, but it's silly to support your dislike for it with statements that aren't true.

you are aware that Wow Like Most mmos use something called Global cooldowns, and ability cooldowns- sure you can use your weapon- for most classes that is useless cough tried using melee staff on a priest yeah
But there is usually a cooldown that prevents you from using an ability straight after or the same ability multiple times in succession- known as the global cooldown- which is shared with ALL abilities - for you to say that eso animation cancelling is like white damage in wow is just plain stupidity.

Was this loophole intended when they designed a combat system that allowed no GCD, probably not so they rolled with it
But the fact that you can fudge the system into having two or more "abilities" hit in close sequence WITHOUT even an animation queue is nigh on absurd.
And i laugh at your comment that the game is coded for animation cancelling - it is purely an offshoot of having no GCD, they couldn't fix it without changing the core coding and simply ran with it,

intended coding..... ahhahha

Goodness gracious you either never played WoW or you have no idea how its combat system worked. Just as an example, if you were playing an Enhancement Shaman back in the day, you would have your autoattacks, which were constant damage, and then you would cast instant spells to boost DPS. The instant spells were on a completely separate cooldown than the autoattacks and the autoattacks never suffered global cooldown. The only thing that would stop autoattacks was a channeled spell. Thus, white damage in WoW is actually a very direct cognate for light and heavy attacks in ESO.

Your GCD argument is, for the same reason, completely off base. Autoattacks were not on the GCD they had their own swing timer separate from ability casts. I'm not sure where you aren't seeing the connection, it's a straight line.

Recremen · March 2016

zyk wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

@Recremen

https://i.imgur.com/J92M812.png

Mrs. Folsom is a community manager, not one of the coders or combat designers. What she interprets as "not exactly intended" isn't a direct line from one of the developers.

It was a common question at the time. She wasn't talking out of her ass. It's always been a contentious subject. Others at ZOS have commented on the subject over the years. The challenge is to preserve responsive combat while eliminating the cancellation of ability animations.

We know from the changes introduced in the 2.3 PTS that ZOS would like to eliminate block cancelling while maintaining weaves. By weaves, I mean cancelling a light/heavy attack animation by executing an ability. Almost no one has an issue with this. it's block cancelling that most people have an issue with.

I wouldn't say they want to eliminate block canceling, and moreover I don't see why that is any more problematic than weaving. If anything you are doing less damage by block canceling than by weaving. Also, they reverted the changes specifically because they weren't able to preserve the flow of combat the way it has typically worked. I'd say the block canceling changes on the PTS were unintended.

Block cancelling results in more damage than medium attack weaves in a variety of scenarios. For example, when using a resto staff or when a target is in execute range.

What you've written is contrary to what ZOS has frequently explained. For example, Rich Lambert on the 2.3 PTS changes that were rolled back:

We wanted to make it more clear which attacks players are using, while preserving the responsiveness and feel of the combat system. The goal is that if an ability is successful, the player should always be able to see it impact (or launch in the case of projectiles). Under the new system, we are prioritizing the impact/launch of the first attack over the first few milliseconds of the wind up of the interrupting 2nd attack.

The bottom line is ability animations need to be displayed.

The practical impacts to the changes on PTS were that roll dodge and bar swap cancels still worked, weaving still worked, but block/bash cancelling were less effective; to the point of having no value. I believe cancelling an ability with an ultimate still worked as well.

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but last I checked medium weave was not better than light weave, the only difference is that you can use light weave with a Resto and Lightning staff. I've never tested medium weave on those staff types but if there's a problem it's with those two specific weapons. Not exactly a game changer either way, you were making it sound like block canceling is breaking the game. Same goes for when a target is in execute range, except we can do even better, you can just cancel your ability with the same ability, block not needed. Unless block canceling is letting you somehow bypass the ability's cooldown, it's no change.

As far as Mr. Lambert's statements go, I'm all for it, and I believe you'll find my own praise of the new animations in that same thread (before I'd heard of the problems people were having with block canceling). The crux of the "animation canceling" debate, for me, is not at all about cutting animations in half, it's about being able to use heavy/light attacks and abilities on their own individual cooldowns, same as for block and dodge roll. Currently, this happens to cut animations short. If they find a way to let the animations play out while still preserving the speed and responsiveness of combat, still let me go right from Vigor into a dodge roll, and all that sort of thing, then by golly I'm all for it.

starkerealm · March 2016

To be fair, Wrecking Blow... and honestly, 90% of the animation canceling issues, could be dealt with by simply not applying damage if the animation was canceled before the strike actually connected.

And, yeah, I know, this is where lag comes in and kicks all of our asses.

technohic · March 2016

starkerealm wrote: »

To be fair, Wrecking Blow... and honestly, 90% of the animation canceling issues, could be dealt with by simply not applying damage if the animation was canceled before the strike actually connected.

And, yeah, I know, this is where lag comes in and kicks all of our asses.

Easy to say, but apparently hard to implement. The reason we have a lot of mechanics in game are because they cannot figure out how to code things right. Animation cancelling. That delay after toppling charge. They have tried to address them in the past but just say "Meh. Working as intended. It is a feature."

zyk · March 2016

Recremen wrote: »

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but last I checked medium weave was not better than light weave, the only difference is that you can use light weave with a Resto and Lightning staff. I've never tested medium weave on those staff types but if there's a problem it's with those two specific weapons. Not exactly a game changer either way, you were making it sound like block canceling is breaking the game. Same goes for when a target is in execute range, except we can do even better, you can just cancel your ability with the same ability, block not needed. Unless block canceling is letting you somehow bypass the ability's cooldown, it's no change.

I do not believe medium weaves are even possible with a resto staff. In my testing, my DPS can be significantly higher when performing a sequence of 'LA -> ability -> brief block -> repeat' than 'LA -> ability -> repeat'.

The same is true when an ability is used repeatedly without a LA/HA. This is beneficial when executing, when buffing/healing, and for abilities on the DW bar of a magicka build (unless weapon damage is buffed).

Weaving medium attacks is preferred with Inferno staves, but at the cost of mobility.

These results are according to my testing based on my individual ability and using an IPS display with moderate processing lag. My cancelling performance would be improved with a TN display featuring no processing lag. I test with the recount addon so I can clearly see the results in milliseconds. CLS is not sufficient.

The main point of this thread is that block cancelling is tedious, but effective and results in the cancellation of an ability animation, possibly removing the visual cue entirely.

While editing my videos, I often notice times when the viewer will be unable to tell that I even executed an ability/ultimate with the sound removed.

kuro-dono · March 2016

its funny when they say that game without animation cancelling feels too boring, lol, if everyone was able to do it better than the person who was before saying it felt boring without it would be complaining instead, but since only very skilled and those who dont have issues with their hands are more than happy to have it around we struggle with this case. Most players just want to make sure they are using every possible way to make themself superior than their enemies. Expecially when eso offers such an nice variation of ridiculous sets to bandaid fix issues aswell.

starkerealm · March 2016

technohic wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

To be fair, Wrecking Blow... and honestly, 90% of the animation canceling issues, could be dealt with by simply not applying damage if the animation was canceled before the strike actually connected.

And, yeah, I know, this is where lag comes in and kicks all of our asses.

Easy to say, but apparently hard to implement. The reason we have a lot of mechanics in game are because they cannot figure out how to code things right. Animation cancelling. That delay after toppling charge. They have tried to address them in the past but just say "Meh. Working as intended. It is a feature."

No, I know. It's also not really a competency issue. Live code deployment, particularly with extensive netcode, and the current state of the American internet infrastructure is a nightmare.

Wolfen_Steiner · March 2016

The issue is definitely with something going on under the hood in regards to how the game was engineered. I remember in beta testing the combat was so terrible that I couldn't believe the game was three months out from launch. I've played early alpha builds of similar games that had better combat. I don't know what they tried to do with ESO but it's opened up its own can of worms and I don't think they want to spend the time and resources trying to really fix it. The only way I see it getting fixed is if they dramatically overhaul every ability and mechanic that is affected by animation canceling, which is a ton of work but probably much easier than fixing the netcode because they've had problems with it since Day One.