Why I dislike the new Animation Prioritization system.

Derra · July 2016

Wollust wrote: »

The changes are awful. No idea why they felt the need to change something which was actually working fine.

How the sunk cost fallacy makes people act stupid. ZOS decisionmaking has shown a couple of prime examples for this one (antibot - or the sideeffects of that one, lighting patch, abilityreworks, animations etc.)

Basically they invested into something that turned out to be unwanted by almost everyone it was meant for. They push it anyways because they already put the manpower (money) into it to make it - hell might also release it then (the intention of the changes are good - the result however...)

Meanwhile Mr. W. is sitting in his office like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfwN0X8YnWo

Joy_Division · July 2016

Defilted wrote: »

OP States that he did not like that ZOS called this a goal "This was never going to happen and I don't know why it was even touted as a goal."

ZOS needs to define the goal it is trying to achieve and implement that going forward. I work for a software company and I have said this many times. Sometimes your vision of how the software should work does not flesh out in the first iteration of a stated goal. I do not believe it is wrong of ZOS to have this goal and if they can make it work like they say they want *** to work then more power to them.

Anyway,

I will agree that the combat system is definitely different and does not feel responsive to the button I am pressing and needs some improvement.

Not quite. I called the overall vision/goal admirable. I said the specific goal of "the game's 'feel' should not change" was not going to happen.

The very fact that they changed how animation were prioritized, inputs were registered and displayed on screen, and the admitted necessary loss of "smooth blending" meant this goal was not going to happen. By their very definition and pointing out the "side effects" means the feel of the game had to change.

ZoS wants to have it both ways, keeping "animation canceling" and yet forcing certain actions on our characters, but not others (block). It is completely inconsistent, contradictory and what has happened was that this admirable goal fell between two stools and in essence given us the worst of both worlds: we still have "animation cancelling" yet our characters are still locked into certain actions.

If Zos has a goal, then the goal should be first and foremost: responsiveness. I could care less what I see my opponent doing if I am too frustrated since my character does not attack, move, dodge, drink a potion, etc., when I press a button.

PainfulFAFA · July 2016

bikerangelo wrote: »

Can barely stomach how combat feels; button mashing is now a requirement since every ability feels unreliable and slow, some abilities stack on each other due to some sort of lag in animations, weaving is much more clunky, and IMO the animation system is even uglier than before.

Also, just for *** and giggles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBSRbGTQY-c

Animations changes to help the noobs out and instead they get rekt by it as shown in this video lmao oh zos

Skitttles · July 2016

Roechacca wrote: »

Skitttles wrote: »

This game has been dumbed down too much since launch. Idk anymore...

What exactly do you mean?

Animation changes, snares freaking everywhere, gap closers immobilize, roll/streak cool downs, AoE Caps...etc. All things added because scrubs won't L2P.

thankyourat · July 2016

I'm confused as to why they even messed with it. What was wrong with animation cancelling it was working fine the way it was, and it was actually one of the better parts to this game. Who asked for these changes?

stevepdodson_ESO888 · July 2016

Miszou wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Miszou wrote: »

Why can't it just be changed so that if an attack is interrupted, it does no damage?

If they did that, a lot of people would be spending a lot of their "alive time" in combat doing no damage.

Exactly.

PvP would be slowed down to actual skill use, not animation abuse.

and who knows...it might even reduce some of the lag in PvP (just a thought)

stevepdodson_ESO888 · July 2016

Roehamad_Ali wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

Animation canceling was never supposed to be a thing. Combat was supposed to be visual, you see what is happening and react.

I agree . All animation canceling did for me was make it more difficult to figure out when to block or dodge roll / bash interrupt . Now it's all about speed flipping so fast all you see is a guy standing over your corpse that barely even moved . You have to look at the death recap to see what just happened .

Not to mention some people have hand injuries and carpool tunnel whatever from typing for years .

Carpal Tunnel...caused by compression of the nerves

Carpool Tunnel...caused by annoying people you drive to work with

Samphaa · July 2016

Light attack weaving with funnel health on magicka nb seems slow, unresponsive and sometimes doesn't even light attack, the annimation starts but nothing comes out. Something definitely changed, and for the worse.
Have also noticed problems with blocking, I'll be at a certain point in an annimation and need to block for mechanics and my dude just won't block, I pressed the trigger but it doesn't seem to register in game.

Tapio75 · July 2016

So this is the reason why combat feels bads these days.

I believe it now works the same way that caused so many to quit SWTOR which uses the same engine and had this system on the launch onwards. An9imation priority over the actual player action makes combat sluggish and unresponsive.

Game was fluid on the launch, combat did have some lag issues at times but it was not due the combat system but the server issues. Games like Warcraft with fluidic comabt, fast action and responsive combat have always been on the winning side, animation can not take priority over player action, if there has to be time to wait, there has to be clear cooldown on ability rather than having a non cooldown combat with animation taking over the action.

I believe animation canceling and complaints about ti were invented by people who could not cope with fast paced combat

vyndral13preub18_ESO · July 2016

Tapio75 wrote: »

I believe animation canceling and complaints about ti were invented by people who could not cope with fast paced combat

Or by zen itself. Make a game with no combat log and no buff/debuff tracker. Is it any surprise people get annoyed when they get killed and cant see why?

RinaldoGandolphi · July 2016

Im in the middle, I can see both sides of this.

the old system was a joke and violated every principle of User Interface Design(being able to hide feedback in the form of cliping animations). On the flipside, the current system feels clunky and isn't quite right.

When i was playing my Magic DK as a tank spec in PVP, i came across quite a few people i would hear "Clang, Clang, Clang" on my shield(3 hits) but only see one animation from them(Bash) this is just BS no matter how you shake it...the default game has no active combat log or addons and the primary feedback mechanism of the game was intended to be animations, they have to be visible....imagine if mobs in VMAS could hide all their animations from you and just insta kill you without ever seeing any kind of visual feedback..it would be broken of course....why should it be broken in PVP then?

there has to be a happy middle ground here....where the combat system feels fluid yet hiding or clipping important combat feedback mechanisms(animations) isn't possible. I'v advocated a color coded system, Light Attacks one color, Heavy Attacks another color, and skills another color...clip all the animations you want, long as you cna't hide the color, its good a player will know if he should block, dodge, attack etc...right now its just mashing buttons and trying to clip those animations as much as possible...i don't see that as skill, i only do it because its required...you can't get acceptable dps without animation canceling yet its not mentioned at all in the games help files or combat tutorials....i don't think thats fundamentally good.

at the end of the day they need to make combat responsive while also have a feedback mechanism that can't be obscured...it can be done, the only question is, does ZOS really want to?

Eirella · July 2016

Tapio75 wrote: »

I believe animation canceling and complaints about ti were invented by people who could not cope with fast paced combat

^This so much.

Tapio75 · July 2016

I admit the game could use good combat logging/feedback system. I think the best aproach would have been to start building such system and leave the combat as it was. Engine is quite capable of this but the user interface block is just missing.

mistermutiny89 · July 2016

Mix Aussie ping with attempted animation cancelling and you've got a real clusterbuck at times.

The problem is animation cancelling is super important for games where every millisecond counts and you can't tell me that you can finish vet maelstrom arena without being able to fire off a buff, damage ability and a light attack in the one second. That whole arena is one big animation cancelling challenge.

Since DB, staff wielding has been a major issue for me, getting stuck in light attack with just the basic light attack, wall of elements, light attack, swallow soul, light attack.... Um light attack again? And again?? It doesn't feel right and I'm not sure this is just a "get used to it" issue.

Elsonso · July 2016

Well, obviously, the solution to animation canceling and animation priority is to never allow an instant cast skill to interrupt an animated skill. The only way to do this is, and still have something close to the same feel, is to use an effect rather than an animation for those instant cast skills. Any skill or action that shows an animation would honor a cooldown for the animation playing so that there is no interruption and no overlap.

Wifeaggro13 · July 2016

Ackwalan wrote: »

Animation canceling was never supposed to be a thing. Combat was supposed to be visual, you see what is happening and react.

Exactly it was a broken mecahinc that they just let ride. the problem is everyone learned the exploit to artificially inflate their DPS. Now the whole end game population has to readjust to no exploit lol

Tapio75 · July 2016

I would ask from people who say that animation canceling is a broken mechanism to bolster that belief by showing the article or whatever where Zemimax stuff responsible for design clearly say it is broken mechanism.

Player that does not like some part of game mechanism can not simply say it is broken just because they dont like it.

Toc de Malsvi · July 2016

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Im in the middle, I can see both sides of this.

the old system was a joke and violated every principle of User Interface Design(being able to hide feedback in the form of cliping animations). On the flipside, the current system feels clunky and isn't quite right.

When i was playing my Magic DK as a tank spec in PVP, i came across quite a few people i would hear "Clang, Clang, Clang" on my shield(3 hits) but only see one animation from them(Bash) this is just BS no matter how you shake it...the default game has no active combat log or addons and the primary feedback mechanism of the game was intended to be animations, they have to be visible....imagine if mobs in VMAS could hide all their animations from you and just insta kill you without ever seeing any kind of visual feedback..it would be broken of course....why should it be broken in PVP then?

there has to be a happy middle ground here....where the combat system feels fluid yet hiding or clipping important combat feedback mechanisms(animations) isn't possible. I'v advocated a color coded system, Light Attacks one color, Heavy Attacks another color, and skills another color...clip all the animations you want, long as you cna't hide the color, its good a player will know if he should block, dodge, attack etc...right now its just mashing buttons and trying to clip those animations as much as possible...i don't see that as skill, i only do it because its required...you can't get acceptable dps without animation canceling yet its not mentioned at all in the games help files or combat tutorials....i don't think thats fundamentally good.

at the end of the day they need to make combat responsive while also have a feedback mechanism that can't be obscured...it can be done, the only question is, does ZOS really want to?

^this.

With the old system there were times especially against good players where you were unable to see half of what they were doing. You would die and be all WTF when your death screen showed 3-4 skills that were never animated and you had no clue were going off. WB was a bad offender of this, you just had to know that if you were up against a 2h and all you saw was medium weaves then he was hitting you with WB(assuming you were not knocked down).

The new updates have improved some animations and made them more responsive while others remain less responsive, and some are more clunky than ever. I've noticed in my VMA runs that often my medium weaves on my destro staff seem to glitch out and I'm stuck charging the attack until it releases a fully charged attack. Often with the latest changes I'm stuck blocking and have to double tap block repeatedly to get it to stop.

Divinius · July 2016

e1team wrote: »

Did anyone actually read all of this?

Every word, and I 100% agree with the whole thing.

Lord_Wrath · July 2016

Animation cancelling is not skill at all, its not even pvp. Its cheap, just like the Call of Duty kids that sprinting around the battlefield insta-headsniping trick way back when. It doesnt make them a good player. If I instantly kill someone while locking up their responsiveness with 5 skills when they see 1 attack, id kiss Rosie O'Donell before patting myself on the back.

Take out animation cancelling and I guarantee you newbies trying to grasp the fun and aspects of pvp end up staying a little longe, I also bet you a lot of these cancellers will struggle on fairer playgrounds.

Armitas · November 2016

Nice write up.

This new animation stuff is game breaking for me. I seriously want to quit the game. I feel like I'm playing some shovelware game on the nintendo Wii. If there were another games out I would have already left, now I just dread logging in and try to "hang on" to the game by mixing my time with other games. These changes were a complete and utter failure.

If combat was like this at release this game would be scored a 5. Game development is working the wrong direction.

Waffennacht · November 2016

Necromancer!

FriedEggSandwich · November 2016

Miszou wrote: »

Why can't it just be changed so that if an attack is interrupted, it does no damage?

How would that work with insta-cast abilities? If you hit dawnbreaker or insta-frags and then hit block to cancel it will be too late. The vast majority of damaging skills in the game are insta-cast even if their animations aren't. A complete redesign of the combat system would be needed to make damage cancelling a thing.

FriedEggSandwich · November 2016

Waffennacht wrote: »

Necromancer!

Yeah only just noticed. Still highly relevant though.

MickeyBN · November 2016

The fact that this is the 28th thread regarding this problem to be necroed and ZOS still hasn't shown any fraction of giving a fudge, just supports my theory that the developers of this game care more about adding garbage to the crown store than fixing the core mechanics of the game.

Joy_Division · November 2016

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Necromancer!

Yeah only just noticed. Still highly relevant though.

Extremely.

I bet this new system is the reason we get locked into heavy lightning attacks even without holding down a button.

A bunch of people probably just got used to these changes, but I'm a visual person and the disconnect between when the button is pressed and when the action appears throws me off. I'm not the most coordinated person in the world, but even I quickly picked up on the old system and never had a problem with it.

Ishammael · November 2016

So this thread just popped up.

I took an ESO break from July through September. Meaning I just came back a couple weeks ago.

I immediately recognized something had been changed the first second I walked into combat. Now I get stuck inside of heavy attack motions, sometimes my ultimate doesn't fire, or weapon swap canceling doesn't fire properly.

One of the most infuriating things I have seen is the following: weapon swap to a heal skill won't fire and I'll die. When I get rezzed, the first thing my character does is heal itself.

Also, medium weaving destro attacks is ridiculously sensitive now. Sometimes I'll get locked out of one or two GCDs if the timing is off.

TLDR: animations are messed up and the game is totally less responsive than it used to be.

Xvorg · November 2016

Waffennacht wrote: »

Necromancer!

Blizzard has something to tell you, Waff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcPZaaXKjo8

Preyfar · November 2016

Ishammael wrote: »

I immediately recognized something had been changed the first second I walked into combat. Now I get stuck inside of heavy attack motions, sometimes my ultimate doesn't fire, or weapon swap canceling doesn't fire properly.

Yep, I've had issues with this constantly (as in, every single fight) since ZOS updated the animation prioritization changes. I do a light attack, but get the animation for a full heavy attack... and do NO DAMAGE at the end of it. Drives me crazy.

LEGENDARYYY · November 2016

We gotta try to fix this problem.. I'm not sure how, but we can start by joining up and voting. If we make the poll the most popular on the forums, and get enough people to vote, maybe they listen.

Vote for rollback here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-GB/discussion/302373/combat-skills-animation-rollback-to-patch-1-5-1-6#latest