The_Outsider wrote: »This game would not work at all without AC. Every time this comes up I simply cannot understand why people actually want to be limited to performing a single action per second in this or any game...
I've come to ESO from the FPS world. My last "gotta play it" game was Destiny (D1, not the unholy nightmare which is D2). In Destiny, there is a reload animation for your guns. Some guns have quicker reloads, some slower. The slower reloads are for guns that hit harder or have some other advantage over the quicker reload guns.
A perfect example is the exotic sniper rifle No Land Beyond. NLB was an "op" gun because it could be equipped in the primary slot instead of the special slot, and could use primary ammo. This made it incredibly powerful in the right hands because as a primary-slotted sniper rifle it didn't suffer from the special ammo throttling Bungie threw into the mix to balance out the Crucible (Destiny's PVP mode). All other snipers (except Icebreaker, which regenerated its own ammo) had a very limited amount of ammo you could pick up, and you would spawn in with zero.
NLB, however, spawned in with ammo since it was a primary, and you pretty much never ran out of ammo...because it was a primary.
To balance the gun, Bungie made NLB a single-shot bolt-action, with a long reload animation.
To get around that, some players discovered they could animation cancel the reload by sprinting right after initiating the reload. This circumvented the animation, allowing the gun to fire far more often than intended.
Instead of just calling it a "feature" that they left in the game, Bungie patched gun reloading - so that you could not "sprint-cancel" the animation, thus bringing the gun back into balance.
Ragnaroek93 wrote: »Sabbathius wrote: »Ragnaroek93 wrote: »It's funny how many people really think that no animation cancelling would make the game easier. Good luck when you can't dodgeroll or block immediately anymore.
You are kinda missing the point of what many (most?) people are asking for.
In many MMOs that have action combat, it goes like this. You press the button. The resouce (stamina, mana, energy, what have you) gets used up. You are not getting that back. Then the animation starts playing. If you need to "dodgeroll or block immediately", YOU CAN! Nothing changes! Except you don't get the effect from the ability you activated, UNLESS the ability completes! Makes sense now? You can still roll-dodge if you need to. You just can't roll-dodge-cancel an animation of an attack to make its damage happen faster, killing the opponent. You'd have to choose - dodge roll, or kill the opponent. But since animation would play, the opponent now has time to react, rather than just die to a burst which happened with no corresponding animation.
See it now? What anti-ani-cancelers are asking is actually quite sensible, and will not harm the game in the slightest. What it will do is make combat more reactive, and force people to think a little more. Or how ZOS would put it, "this is a buff if you have a working brain".
No, you can't block cancel a heal or shield anymore nor can you roll cancel a heal or a shield anymore so don't tell me that nothing changes, it would be a massive global nerf. I have the feeling that most people who voted with "yes" actually have no idea what they are asking for and wouldn't even be happy with the result. The game wouldn't feel smoother at all nor would it be easier nor more casual friendly. If you want to see how a game without animation cancel works then go ahead and play Dark Souls... I can guarantee you that Dark Souls combat isn't easier nor smoother than ESO combat.
There is simply no reason to change animation canceling, you can't bypass a global cooldown with it, all you can cancel is a visual animation. It's not possible to hit several skills at the same time with animation canceling (not even macros allow that) unless you run a cheating program in the background.
Sabbathius wrote: »The_Outsider wrote: »This game would not work at all without AC. Every time this comes up I simply cannot understand why people actually want to be limited to performing a single action per second in this or any game...
Imagine chess, in real time. Challenging but not bad, right? Now imagine chess when players don't have to wait for each other to finish their turn. They still have to obey the rules, but they can move pieces, based on the state of the board as it is when they grab the piece, as fast as they want, with as many hands as they want. See the problem? That's why people want to be able to perform one action at a time to completion, before beginning another action. It's a poor analogy, but you get the drift.
Sabbathius wrote: »Ragnaroek93 wrote: »Sabbathius wrote: »Ragnaroek93 wrote: »It's funny how many people really think that no animation cancelling would make the game easier. Good luck when you can't dodgeroll or block immediately anymore.
You are kinda missing the point of what many (most?) people are asking for.
In many MMOs that have action combat, it goes like this. You press the button. The resouce (stamina, mana, energy, what have you) gets used up. You are not getting that back. Then the animation starts playing. If you need to "dodgeroll or block immediately", YOU CAN! Nothing changes! Except you don't get the effect from the ability you activated, UNLESS the ability completes! Makes sense now? You can still roll-dodge if you need to. You just can't roll-dodge-cancel an animation of an attack to make its damage happen faster, killing the opponent. You'd have to choose - dodge roll, or kill the opponent. But since animation would play, the opponent now has time to react, rather than just die to a burst which happened with no corresponding animation.
See it now? What anti-ani-cancelers are asking is actually quite sensible, and will not harm the game in the slightest. What it will do is make combat more reactive, and force people to think a little more. Or how ZOS would put it, "this is a buff if you have a working brain".
No, you can't block cancel a heal or shield anymore nor can you roll cancel a heal or a shield anymore so don't tell me that nothing changes, it would be a massive global nerf. I have the feeling that most people who voted with "yes" actually have no idea what they are asking for and wouldn't even be happy with the result. The game wouldn't feel smoother at all nor would it be easier nor more casual friendly. If you want to see how a game without animation cancel works then go ahead and play Dark Souls... I can guarantee you that Dark Souls combat isn't easier nor smoother than ESO combat.
There is simply no reason to change animation canceling, you can't bypass a global cooldown with it, all you can cancel is a visual animation. It's not possible to hit several skills at the same time with animation canceling (not even macros allow that) unless you run a cheating program in the background.
Whoa there. You said "Good luck when you can't dodgeroll or block immediately anymore". My point was, none of THAT is going to change. And that's 100% true. You would still be able to dodge and block any time you please. You just wouldn't be able to *interrupt* (e.g. cancel) the shield, dodge roll, and still get a shield. It would be a choice! Either you choose a shield, and stick to it. Or you choose a shield, change your mind and roll, losing resources you spent initiating a shield but not getting one. Or you choose to forgo the shield and just dodge. That's the part I was referring to when I said "this is a buff if you have a working brain". This system would require actual *thought*, not *spam!*
"Smoother" is subjective. The game doesn't feel smooth to me now, at all. The spastic, jerky, seizure-like animation cancels are too jarring for it to be smooth. And slightest bit of latency of frame drop leads to dropped abilities. That's hardly smooth.
"Easier" is contextual. Would DPS drop (and HPS, etc.) and make the game technically harder? Yes. But would it be easier to perform said tasks without hammering on keys like a monkey having a conniption fit? YES! Would it be easier for someone suffering from early arthritis, to NOT have to push additional buttons just to cancel animations that developers spent months creating in the first place? I mean, you can hear how ridiculous that sounds, right? Developers spend a lot of time creating a class, with unique animations and then...our goal as players is to CANCEL them, and never see them? Are you seriously saying that was their intended goal all these years?! Makes no sense.
As far as Dark Souls goes, I don't remember it being too bad. Also if I'm not mistaken, Dark Souls was spawned by Demon's Souls, which in turn spawned from Monster Hunter. Latest Monster Hunter game is a HUGE hit and blows ESO's combat right out of the water in every respect. Many games did action combat incredibly well, like Bloodborne. Without animation canceling. Don't get me wrong, people DO complain, saying things like "Oh, I'm doing a combo, and I have to roll, but I'm out of stamina." Yeah, that's why you manage your resources better! And again, what I'm asking for ESO, if you would be able to block or dodge roll (again assuming you have stamina for it) at any point. You would just have to think and plan a little, not spam. Why are you people so terrified of that concept?
Sabbathius wrote: »I have a POS mouse and nothing rebound, which is all it takes to animation cancel. Press light, press skill.
And how exactly does that extra left mouse click improve the quality of your gaming experience? As opposed to not doing it, or making a macro that has left click + 125ms wait + 1 bound to 1, left click + 125ms wait + 2 bound to 2, etc?
You see, every game designer should ask themselves, before doing something "Is this going to make the game better, more interesting, more fun?" Soooo, does it? Does pressing LMB before 1-6 make your gaming experience better? More interesting? More fun? Because it doesn't do anything for me. I really don't consider teaching my brain to automatically hit LMB with my index before my thumb hits 1-6 (6 being ulti) on my Razer or Logitech a serious achievement on my part. If anything, it's just an annoyance. What my professor used to call "busy work".
Also, not to get personal, but how old are you, and what kind of work do you do? No answer needed, it's purely rhetorical. But the reason I mention it is because my guild has a lot of people in their 50s and 60s. Arthritis is a definite issue, and animation canceling isn't doing their hands any favours. Some of them, even younger folks, also do work that is pretty heavy on the hands, so the last thing they need after a 9 hr shift is more LMB and RMB spam. And yes, obvious answer is "go play something else". But as a business owner, that's really the absolute WORST thing you can tell your customer, "please take your money and go over to my direct competitor and give it to them". It's just not smart. Soooo, perhaps tweaking ESO to not be quite so spammy is a right move, even if all other arguments for keeping animation canceling have total merit.
Abysswarrior45 wrote: »Animation cancelling is the last feature that requires any sort of skill to do. Remove it and the game is officially a dead rng based game.
Thunderknuckles wrote: »I'll still play for a while if they keep animation cancelling, but as far as them not being able to fix this unintended feature, please allow me to use a much older, and now (sadly) offline MMO as an example: City of Heroes.
For years a huge percentage of their player base asked for the ability to change your toon's powers colors (among other things). The devs always responded that it would be impossible as it would require rebuilding the game from the ground up. Then, right before Champions Online was to go live (one of their selling points being able to choose such things as the color of your powers) guess what CoH was suddenly able to do? You got it. They did "the impossible" and brought that change into effect.
I think that example applies here. Is it really and truly impossible for ESO devs to fix this, or is it just extremely time consuming? Again, either way I'll be playing for a while longer, but I DO have to wonder.
dovakiin5574 wrote: »It's a feature, ZoS has indicated this.
Sabbathius wrote: »I have a POS mouse and nothing rebound, which is all it takes to animation cancel. Press light, press skill.
And how exactly does that extra left mouse click improve the quality of your gaming experience? As opposed to not doing it, or making a macro that has left click + 125ms wait + 1 bound to 1, left click + 125ms wait + 2 bound to 2, etc?
You see, every game designer should ask themselves, before doing something "Is this going to make the game better, more interesting, more fun?" Soooo, does it? Does pressing LMB before 1-6 make your gaming experience better? More interesting? More fun? Because it doesn't do anything for me. I really don't consider teaching my brain to automatically hit LMB with my index before my thumb hits 1-6 (6 being ulti) on my Razer or Logitech a serious achievement on my part. If anything, it's just an annoyance. What my professor used to call "busy work".
Also, not to get personal, but how old are you, and what kind of work do you do? No answer needed, it's purely rhetorical. But the reason I mention it is because my guild has a lot of people in their 50s and 60s. Arthritis is a definite issue, and animation canceling isn't doing their hands any favours. Some of them, even younger folks, also do work that is pretty heavy on the hands, so the last thing they need after a 9 hr shift is more LMB and RMB spam. And yes, obvious answer is "go play something else". But as a business owner, that's really the absolute WORST thing you can tell your customer, "please take your money and go over to my direct competitor and give it to them". It's just not smart. Soooo, perhaps tweaking ESO to not be quite so spammy is a right move, even if all other arguments for keeping animation canceling have total merit.
[...]Its an extra layer in combat that makes fights more diverse and promote skilled gameplay. [...]
And yes there are people who cant animation cancel for multiple reasons. Whether that is age, disabilities or whatever. And you would have a point IF the game was so competitive to the point where it was impossible to play without animation cancelling.[...]
Without animation cancelling:
1. You won't be able to reactively block or dodge roll out of AOE if you're in the middle of a long animation. That extra second or half second can make the difference between everyone living and everyone wiping in veteran content.
2. Most healers have a primary healing bar and a damage/debuff bar. Whoops, you stood in red and weren't able to dodge roll in time because there was no animation cancelling, and now you're at 5% health? If your healer is in the middle of a long animation and can't bar swap cancel to get to their healing bar in time, you're not getting that BoL or Healing Ward when you need it, and then you're dead.
3. Non-tanks would have to rebuild their characters for more defence because they couldn't play quite as reactively anymore and would have to eat big AOEs/heavy attacks that they can't escape in time. That means less group damage overall, and slower, less-engaging combat.
There you go, bud. Three legitimate issues we'd have if you got rid of animation cancelling.
FoolishHuman wrote: »[...]Its an extra layer in combat that makes fights more diverse and promote skilled gameplay. [...]
And yes there are people who cant animation cancel for multiple reasons. Whether that is age, disabilities or whatever. And you would have a point IF the game was so competitive to the point where it was impossible to play without animation cancelling.[...]
I'm curious. Would you say then that being young and healthy = skill? People always talk about skill, but seem to always see the things they can do as skillful and the things they can't as not. And I mean both sides of this argument here. Maybe this entire thing isn't about skill at all, but about preference?
GeorgeBlack wrote: »
Without animation cancelling:
1. You won't be able to reactively block or dodge roll out of AOE if you're in the middle of a long animation. That extra second or half second can make the difference between everyone living and everyone wiping in veteran content.
2. Most healers have a primary healing bar and a damage/debuff bar. Whoops, you stood in red and weren't able to dodge roll in time because there was no animation cancelling, and now you're at 5% health? If your healer is in the middle of a long animation and can't bar swap cancel to get to their healing bar in time, you're not getting that BoL or Healing Ward when you need it, and then you're dead.
3. Non-tanks would have to rebuild their characters for more defence because they couldn't play quite as reactively anymore and would have to eat big AOEs/heavy attacks that they can't escape in time. That means less group damage overall, and slower, less-engaging combat.
There you go, bud. Three legitimate issues we'd have if you got rid of animation cancelling.
Without animation cancelling you wont be able to deal damage/heal/buff/shieldUP before you dodge block weaponswap.
Fixed it for you.
If you want to block incoming damage, cancel your action by blocking/dodging REACTING.
Dont demand that your action prior to your reaction takes place.