On Animation Canceling, Yes, Again

Sabbathius · February 2019

OK, so we have another wave of posts and polls about animation canceling, as we have had, for pretty much the past 5 years. A goodly portion of players (41% on the poll currently on front page) believe it's bad for the game, for one reason or another. But I see people are still butting heads over nomenclature and misunderstanding. So let's try to define what people actually object to, and try to logically explain what is needed, and what, logically, makes no sense. This is going to be a long one, so buckle up.

First, when people say they want animation canceling gone, first counterargument is that this will make the game unplayable. If you start Endless Hail animation, with no way to interrupt it, and boss initiates a 1-shot mechanic you must block or die, without animation canceling you die. That's the argument. But that is not what people who are asking for animation canceling to go away are asking for. A distinction has to be made between *EMERGENCY* animation canceling, and *ROUTINE* animation canceling that is part of the rotation.

Currently, routine animation canceling is what we have. We cancel animations for the sake of canceling animations, and squeezing out more performance. We do not cancel only in emergencies. By comparison, most other MMOs have animation canceling for emergencies only, and this is reinforced by cast-and-effect. That is, the effect of the spell only occurs if the animation is allowed to play in full, or for the cast to complete. ESO already has some of this, if you animation cancel anything with a cast time, you won't get an effect. Trouble is, vast majority of ESO's abilities are instant, thus you cancel the animation, but still get the effect. Think of it this way - I am pouring a glass of water, and someone interrupts me. Do I magically end up holding a glass full of water? No. I was interrupted. I didn't finish pouring. My glass isn't full. In ESO, currently, you can interrupt, and still end up with a full glass.

In short, when people say "remove animation canceling", they are referring to *ROUTINE* animation canceling as part of the rotation, NOT animation canceling entirely. So can we please stop freaking out and yelling "OMG, what if I have to block!?" Moving on...

So, what's a better way? Allow animation canceling, like today. But the trigger is tied to the animation finish. You press a button, resource cost (magicka, stamina, etc) is subtracted from your resource pool, and animation begins to play. No effect has occurred yet. Animation finishes playing. Effect occurs. At any point throughout this, you can cancel via block, dodge, bar swap, bash, etc. But if you do, no effect will occur, because animation never finishes, and no resources are refunded. Meaning, if you have to move, if you have to block, etc., you CAN, that aspect of the game doesn't change. But now you can't just spam stuff at the target willy-nilly, you have to be selective about what you cast and when, as opposed to hammering out a rotation blindly regardless of context.

Now, this usually spawns two other arguments. First being "this will make the game too slow". Yes, for some, and also not necessarily. You have to remember, some people like lightning-fast gameplay, others like slow and tactical gameplay (which is also why turn-based games are still a thing), and there's people in the middle. So, if the game got a little slower and that was bad for you, there's be other players for whom this would be good. So the change wouldn't be a net negative. And when I said "not necessarily", it means some of the longer animations can be sped up, or buffed in damage so that the result is commensurate with the animation duration. Longer animation -> bigger bang. Another alternative would be longer animation -> less cost, you'd be trading animation time for lower resource consumption, but risk forced interrupt via mechanics.

Now, let me delve into the logical objection to animation canceling. Can we all agree that developers spend time and effort creating those pretty animations? Yes, yes? Anybody disagree? Remember the Warden reveal, where they spent half an hour just showing off those pretty animations, and how much love and care went into those? If you don't, just wait another month, they will do the same with Necromancer. BUT, why are they doing this, if we're all supposed to L2P and git gud and cancel animations? I have yet to have anyone make a cogent, logical argument why developers would waste precious time and money on creating animations we're never meant to see in full. Anyone care to try and explain? So, right there, is a logical contradiction.

Second logical objection is, animations in this game are meant to convey what is being cast. Enemy starts casting, you see what is being cast, you react accordingly. That's how it works with NPCs, including bosses. You see the animation, you know what's coming, you take steps. That is not the case for players. You often get hit by things the animation of which you never saw, because they were block-canceled 0.2 seconds after they began. Imagine PvE in this game, like a vet boss fight or raid, if bosses suddenly started animation canceling. Would that be fun? And would that look good? Doubt it, right? If you disagree, fire up a poll, and ask "Should bosses be animation canceling? Yea/Nay" and see the results. But I think we both know what the results will be, yes? Moving on.

Third, what about discrimination against partially disabled players. OK, the easiest response would be "screw them!" or "who cares?" Not something most people here would say to someone's face in person, of course, but this is internet and /r/iamverybasass is a thing. However, let me point out that a lot of ESO's player base aren't kids. They're middle aged people *with* kids. Some of these people work with their hands, and the last thing they need after a 12 hr shift is to have to physically abuse their keyboard and mouse, trying to squeeze out Starcraft-like 400 APM. Again, I am not dismissing people who enjoy this, just pointing out that vast, vast majority of us cannot, physically, pull this off any longer. And when it comes to partial disabilities, this game ALREADY took steps towards helping these players. We can now set the telegraph color and opacity for better visibility, for example. There's still no colorblind mode, as far as I know, but most modern games that care about their user base have them by default. Last game I played would be recently-released Anthem, for example, which has multiple colorblind options built in since beta, to make sure players can see what is happening. And while these people are a minority, current estimate is approximately 8% for males. That's not insignificant. Well, in that vein, what about people who can't, due to age, arthritis, injury, etc., hammer out the perfect LA->Ability->Block cancel all the time, every time? Do we leave them overboard?

Then, there's also the question of animation canceling on a purely technical level not being attainable by some players, due to distance from server. Yes, people with 30-50ms latency can get these nice, crisp rotations. It's lovely. What about those of us with consistently triple digit latency, which spikes? Especially in places like Cyrodiil, where even bar-swapping sometimes doesn't register? I am asking this in the interests of fairness. We all know how in P2P games the host has the advantage, right? Well, can we then admit that someone at 30ms has a significant advantage, even just in PvE performance, to someone sitting at 300ms? Especially if that latency isn't uniform, but fluctuates between 200 and 400ms for the average of 300ms? Ever tried to animation cancel under these conditions? It's unreliable. So what is your response? Move closer to the server, you scrub? Not a very good response, now is it? But without animation canceling, suddenly it's not much of an issue. With ability queuing buffer (sometimes even under player's control to tweak to their liking), most other MMOs play just fine at those latencies. So that's another reason to ditch animation canceling.

Another argument to do away with animation canceling is balancing. Again, we've all seen the threads, haven't we? Please make X dungeon easier. No, make X dungeon harder. If ZOS balances the game for animation cancelers in mind, the dungeon will be so hard for Nana, Nono and Lil' Fabrizio. Who cannot, for love or money, animation cancel as well as you. Filthy casuals... Ehem, anyway. On the flipside, if ZOS balances the game for non-cancelers, the animation cancelers will go through that content, to quote General Patton, "like crap through a goose". And nobody is happy! Well, with animation canceling removed, this is no longer a consideration. And now the mechanics can be centered around making people *think* as opposed to hammering on keys like a spastic monkey. Choose what abilities to use, and when, based on animation length and context, as opposed to locking down the muscle memory and just hammering it out. Which brings us to macros.

Ah, yes. Zee macros, the horrible M-word. OK, first off, macros exist. Most of us use them. YES, probably even you! It just depends on how rigidly or loosely you define the word "macro". If your mouse or keyboard is programmable, you already use a macro, it's just the macro is simple. Press 4 with your thumb on the mouse, mouse executes 4. That's a simple macro - press 4, get 4. More complicated macro would be press 4, get left mouse button->short wait->4->short wait->right mouse button. This performs a light weave, an ability bound to 4, and block-cancels the animation. Now, these are against TOS, but people still use them. Especially people with disabilities or injuries, like a guildmate of mine last summer after a car crash. It was that, or walk away from ESO, and considering the guy was bedridden, that's just cruel and unusual punishment. OK, so against TOS, and it's bad, so don't do it, m'kay? But how far are we willing to take this mentality?

What I mean is, abilities in ESO are on-release. They fire not when you depress the key, but when you release the key. So would a macro that does "depress and release key" be cheating, and against TOS? It's still 1-to-1 input, you press 4, you get 4. But with this macro, the game doesn't wait for you to release the key, keypress and release are simultaneous. Is this cheating? Prooooobably, right? Though maybe not quite? Starting to get a little grey? OK, so let's take it a little farther towards absurdity. Would using a short travel time keyboard be cheating then? Especially if the keyboard doesn't allow hold-key, meaning every keypress the keyboard considers an automatic key release. Think about it. Where with a normal average keyboard you start depressing the key, it moves a while, then registers the keypress, but keeps moving down a bit until it bottoms out, and then you release the key, it starts moving back, and spring strength (or rubber or what have you) determines the acceleration of that snapback, and registers a release, and only THEN does your ability begin to fire? As opposed to someone using a short travel time keyboard, and with a slightest movement it registers a keypress, and immediately generates a release as well. That's mechanical cheating! They are shaving off microseconds with every single keypress, accruing entire seconds over the course of a play session! Monsters! Sooo, do we persecute and punish that as well? Do we track down people using red switches, and force them to use black switches instead? No, we don't.

What I'm getting at is that macro isn't a script. It's not automation. You're still at the keyboard, pressing all the same buttons. And global cooldown still prevents you from activating more abilities in a second than anybody else. But you have pressing *fewer* buttons. Which brinngs me to manual light attacking. I wasn't going to touch it, so it wouldn't muddy the waters, but I'll mention it quick. There's a very good reason vast majority of MMOS either don't have these, or have these on autocast (also known as autoattack). Picture EVE Online ('03) or WoW ('04) or WAR ('08), etc., where autoattacks in those games had to be done manually with a left mouse click. Did the game just get better, or worse? I bet most would say it got significantly worse. It's just busy work. It distracts, puts unnecessary wear on the user's fingers and needlessly reduces the lifespan of our peripherals. It is, for lack of a better word, medieval.

OK, so I'll wrap this up on that. If you are going to respond, please start with attempting to answer some of the questions I posed. Like, how do you reconcile developers spending a lot of time creating animations, with apparent intent for those animations to not be seen via animation canceling. Or how would WoW or EVE's gameplay improve by making all autoattacks manual cast.

If you got this far, kudos to you, good sir or madam. Thanks for reading.

ZOS, on the odd chance you see this, please consider doing something about this. It is time. It's been 5 years, it's 2019. The mechanics of combat in this game are, frankly, embarrassing. It looks like you tried to fix it, failed, and instead enshrined it as a feature.

Bonusfeatures75 · February 2019

Why do you want to dumb the game down? Animation canceling adds another layer of skill, something most MMO’s are really missing. How about people get good and learn how to do it?

Yes, that would require the big scary E word- Effort

CyrusArya · February 2019

The ability to cancel and weave makes the combat system fast paced and engaging. This is the hall mark of ESO combat. The removal of these mechanics would make the game completely watered down and clunky. The simple concept that you and people like you can’t ever seen to grasp is that only instant cast abilities can be cancelled. Instant as in the effect fires as soon as the button is pressed. As such, cancelling doesn’t actually remove any intended effect. The term itself is actually a misnomer. What gets cancelled/removed is the down time between actions/animations.

Just like most posts that are opposed to this essential, foundational mechanic, yours too is riddled with misinformation and ignorance. But the bottom line is that for those who struggle to perform this most basic function, the onus is to raise themselves to bar and improve as players- not drag the entire system down to their level. At any rate, any and all posts on this matter are pointless because the mechanic has been looked at already, addressed, and given the blessing of the devs. Deal with it and learn how to properly play, or refuse to do so and accept lesser performance.

Shantu · February 2019

Because its currently needed it for max dps, I've learned to adapt and use it. However, I totally agree with the OP's fundamental point that while animation canceling should be allowed for emergency situations, if you use it, you cancel the skill. There are far more positives to this than negatives. The only people who would scream bloody murder are the elite players who have spent a gazillion hours perfecting it into their rotation. Since we know the reverence ZOS has towards combat elitists, I wouldn't expect this to ever change.

moses1763 · February 2019

skill should never be punished but encouraged...

if one is not good at a skill that someone else is much better at then observe said person, practice, and become skilled as well.

Gilvoth · February 2019

Bonusfeatures75 wrote: »

Why do you want to dumb the game down? Animation canceling adds another layer of skill, something most MMO’s are really missing. How about people get good and learn how to do it?

Yes, that would require the big scary E word- Effort

i can promise, and assure you that the amount of people who DO NOT know how to and cannot animation cancel is about 1% of ALL of eso community.
everyone animation cancels
we all do it.
it is even taught in the game by the devs.

what people are angry about is the over use of it when lagg and macros are involved that create and allow cheats to exist.
i have a list of people who do it regularly, i report them when i see them.
its allways the same thing, they hit people with 5 to 8 skills or light attacks in less then 1 second, its allways the same guys, i never see other people doing it.

in addition to that, i see those same guys at resources take out those guards on the flags instantly.
you see the guard fall and all you hear is one hit.
it's not "skill"

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · February 2019

I would very much like to see both weaving and cancelling (because I consider them slightly differently) remain in game. However, I would rather the damage of light and heavy attacks to be significantly nerfed in favour of actual skill damage being boosted / the main damaging factor.

This would still mean that players who know how to do weaving/cancelling well are at a dps and skill advantage but that advantage isn't so great.

I mainly say this as a player from EU who plays on NA (I'm sure its the same for AUS / others and even some NA ppl) Light and Heavy attacks just simply don't work very often due to latency.

I personally really dislike the focus on Light attacks that we have seen with Empower, it used to be really fun to buff skills and choose when to use empower vs just buffing a light attack, I think that the Psijic skill to buff light attacks should be the way to go for that sort of mechanic instead of 'empower'.

Princess_Ciri · February 2019

Removing animation cancelling in ESO in any form would make the combat boring. The reason why ESO's combat is heads and shoulders better than any other MMO is because there is a significant lack of cast times, combat feels fast AND you can animation cancel things to make it run smoother.

Also anyone who thinks animation cancelling is an exploit are just salty they haven't managed to master it.

mairwen85 · February 2019

You can only ani cancel instant cast skills and still benefit, if you cancel a channelled skill or skill with cast time, the effect is voided - - ani cancelling an instant cast, you still have to observe cool down timer, you still have 0.9s before you can recast. Ani cancelling groung aoes can nullify the cast. Ani cancelling only custs the tail off animations that overrun the gcd window, approx 0.1 or 0.2 seconds. Ani cancelling every skill in rotation decreases dps as it rhythmically readies for next skill too early if the culled animation is not an overrun offender. Most players only ani cancel the worst offending skill anims and do so with bar swap.

Rotational ani cancelling can be removed from the game if ZOS ensure all instant skill cast anims last 0.9s.

General ani cancelling has to occur to allow action exit and mitigation.

Attack weaving is not animation cancelling.

StrangerTelvani · February 2019

Fully agree with the author! Canceling of animation dramatically spoils the game. Every time you meet with this in the game you feel a trick. The developers simply messed up and were too lazy to correct their mistakes.

Slack · February 2019

There is a GCD of 1 second. So what's the issue, people are just bad and need excuses for it, because it is simpler than admitting.
"My dps is lower because I don't Animation-cancel"
"I just lose in pvp because I refuse to animation cancel"

This whole discussion is futile, if ZOS removed ani-cancelling then people would resort to even more nerf posts or cheating accusations

VaranisArano · February 2019

Three thoughts.

1. Whether we like it or not, routine AND emergency animation canceling is part of the game. ZOS has been unable to remove it, nor have they chosen to adjust for it by changing animation times to match the global cool down.

Until ZOS makes those changes, routine and emergency animation cancelling should not (and likely will not) be changed.

2. Here's a official ZOS statement on gaming keyboards and Macros.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1826830/#Comment_1826830

Specifically, in the second comment by ZOS_MollyH, she says:

"The use of gaming keyboards and mice are not prohibited, but the use of third-party software or other means of creating macros to automate in-game functions is a violation."

3. Using Macros to automate in game actions is against Section 9 of the TOS, as attested to by several Dev comments.

This is the case whether they are adaptive tools or just cheating. Becuase people will use them to cheat, its just human nature.

People. We're why we cant have nice things.

Dev comments relating the macros being against the TOS are collected here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/460348/macro-in-action/p3

Gilvoth · February 2019

everyone animation cancels
we all do it.
it is even taught in the game by the devs.

Demra · February 2019

Wow its like people cannot read in here..
if you can't improve because you are not in your early twenties any more than no amount of practice is going to help. If you work all day with your hands and they shake a tiny bit at the end of the day than no practice will help. If you have a bit latency than no amount of practice will help...

Also if your opponent animation cancel you cannot react. This also remove "layer of gameplay"... also i miss the animations.

I can do animation cancelling pretty well when i am not lagging and even enjoy it. But after reading your post and hearing so many similar complains from my guild members who are not young anymore i am convinced you're right. Its not a small minority we are talking about. And most of these people do not go to the forum. Its the highly competitive that do. That's why we only hear their opinion here.

Facefister · February 2019

"Other MMOs"
Other MMOs have also a GCD of 1.5s~2s

MaleAmazon · February 2019

Now I basically skimmed through the text so sorry if I missed anything, however:

(Raises hammer above dead horse)

One thing people need to understand is that the damage of an instant-cast spell or effect is not tied to the animation. They are separate. You can see this especially if you have a combat live report chat window on. The damage is done before the animation finishes. For example, I get the damage from spambush before the knives actually hit and the slash sound plays. Same thing with binding javelin - I throw the javelin, I get damage report, javelin actually hits a split second later. And I am not sure that the damage isn´t technically done even earlier and I get it reported late compared to the animation on my screen. I believe this is the case, more or less, at least. There are travel times etc, most noticeable with snipe.

Like, how do you reconcile developers spending a lot of time creating animations, with apparent intent for those animations to not be seen via animation canceling.

Because the alternative would be extremely detrimental to gameplay. I can go into detail why, but I think you already know.

Also, weaving (I prefer using this word to animation cancelling since ani cancelling would also encompass block-cancelling to mask used skill, which isn´t really weaving IMO) is what makes combat responsive and fun.

I mean, if your PvE overland feels like Vivec at 9 pm Saturday night, I understand that sucks. I´ve played vs Asians in RTS... yeay great, my units are walking into his line because of 5 second latencies... But then, Vivec is a PITA most of the time for several reasons.

CompM4s · February 2019

This post was so long he should have published it on kindle...

Noctus · February 2019

Demra wrote: »

Wow its like people cannot read in here..
if you can't improve because you are not in your early twenties any more than no amount of practice is going to help. If you work all day with your hands and they shake a tiny bit at the end of the day than no practice will help. If you have a bit latency than no amount of practice will help...

Also if your opponent animation cancel you cannot react. This also remove "layer of gameplay"... also i miss the animations.

I can do animation cancelling pretty well when i am not lagging and even enjoy it. But after reading your post and hearing so many similar complains from my guild members who are not young anymore i am convinced you're right. Its not a small minority we are talking about. And most of these people do not go to the forum. Its the highly competitive that do. That's why we only hear their opinion here.

how old are u ?

mxxo · February 2019

Its more than 41%. Lot of ppl didnt vote, because the poll had manipulative options, especcially for ppl who wanted to vote "no".

Wifeaggro13 · February 2019

Sabbathius wrote: »

OK, so we have another wave of posts and polls about animation canceling, as we have had, for pretty much the past 5 years. A goodly portion of players (41% on the poll currently on front page) believe it's bad for the game, for one reason or another. But I see people are still butting heads over nomenclature and misunderstanding. So let's try to define what people actually object to, and try to logically explain what is needed, and what, logically, makes no sense. This is going to be a long one, so buckle up.

First, when people say they want animation canceling gone, first counterargument is that this will make the game unplayable. If you start Endless Hail animation, with no way to interrupt it, and boss initiates a 1-shot mechanic you must block or die, without animation canceling you die. That's the argument. But that is not what people who are asking for animation canceling to go away are asking for. A distinction has to be made between *EMERGENCY* animation canceling, and *ROUTINE* animation canceling that is part of the rotation.

Currently, routine animation canceling is what we have. We cancel animations for the sake of canceling animations, and squeezing out more performance. We do not cancel only in emergencies. By comparison, most other MMOs have animation canceling for emergencies only, and this is reinforced by cast-and-effect. That is, the effect of the spell only occurs if the animation is allowed to play in full, or for the cast to complete. ESO already has some of this, if you animation cancel anything with a cast time, you won't get an effect. Trouble is, vast majority of ESO's abilities are instant, thus you cancel the animation, but still get the effect. Think of it this way - I am pouring a glass of water, and someone interrupts me. Do I magically end up holding a glass full of water? No. I was interrupted. I didn't finish pouring. My glass isn't full. In ESO, currently, you can interrupt, and still end up with a full glass.

In short, when people say "remove animation canceling", they are referring to *ROUTINE* animation canceling as part of the rotation, NOT animation canceling entirely. So can we please stop freaking out and yelling "OMG, what if I have to block!?" Moving on...

So, what's a better way? Allow animation canceling, like today. But the trigger is tied to the animation finish. You press a button, resource cost (magicka, stamina, etc) is subtracted from your resource pool, and animation begins to play. No effect has occurred yet. Animation finishes playing. Effect occurs. At any point throughout this, you can cancel via block, dodge, bar swap, bash, etc. But if you do, no effect will occur, because animation never finishes, and no resources are refunded. Meaning, if you have to move, if you have to block, etc., you CAN, that aspect of the game doesn't change. But now you can't just spam stuff at the target willy-nilly, you have to be selective about what you cast and when, as opposed to hammering out a rotation blindly regardless of context.

Now, this usually spawns two other arguments. First being "this will make the game too slow". Yes, for some, and also not necessarily. You have to remember, some people like lightning-fast gameplay, others like slow and tactical gameplay (which is also why turn-based games are still a thing), and there's people in the middle. So, if the game got a little slower and that was bad for you, there's be other players for whom this would be good. So the change wouldn't be a net negative. And when I said "not necessarily", it means some of the longer animations can be sped up, or buffed in damage so that the result is commensurate with the animation duration. Longer animation -> bigger bang. Another alternative would be longer animation -> less cost, you'd be trading animation time for lower resource consumption, but risk forced interrupt via mechanics.

Now, let me delve into the logical objection to animation canceling. Can we all agree that developers spend time and effort creating those pretty animations? Yes, yes? Anybody disagree? Remember the Warden reveal, where they spent half an hour just showing off those pretty animations, and how much love and care went into those? If you don't, just wait another month, they will do the same with Necromancer. BUT, why are they doing this, if we're all supposed to L2P and git gud and cancel animations? I have yet to have anyone make a cogent, logical argument why developers would waste precious time and money on creating animations we're never meant to see in full. Anyone care to try and explain? So, right there, is a logical contradiction.

Second logical objection is, animations in this game are meant to convey what is being cast. Enemy starts casting, you see what is being cast, you react accordingly. That's how it works with NPCs, including bosses. You see the animation, you know what's coming, you take steps. That is not the case for players. You often get hit by things the animation of which you never saw, because they were block-canceled 0.2 seconds after they began. Imagine PvE in this game, like a vet boss fight or raid, if bosses suddenly started animation canceling. Would that be fun? And would that look good? Doubt it, right? If you disagree, fire up a poll, and ask "Should bosses be animation canceling? Yea/Nay" and see the results. But I think we both know what the results will be, yes? Moving on.

Third, what about discrimination against partially disabled players. OK, the easiest response would be "screw them!" or "who cares?" Not something most people here would say to someone's face in person, of course, but this is internet and /r/iamverybasass is a thing. However, let me point out that a lot of ESO's player base aren't kids. They're middle aged people *with* kids. Some of these people work with their hands, and the last thing they need after a 12 hr shift is to have to physically abuse their keyboard and mouse, trying to squeeze out Starcraft-like 400 APM. Again, I am not dismissing people who enjoy this, just pointing out that vast, vast majority of us cannot, physically, pull this off any longer. And when it comes to partial disabilities, this game ALREADY took steps towards helping these players. We can now set the telegraph color and opacity for better visibility, for example. There's still no colorblind mode, as far as I know, but most modern games that care about their user base have them by default. Last game I played would be recently-released Anthem, for example, which has multiple colorblind options built in since beta, to make sure players can see what is happening. And while these people are a minority, current estimate is approximately 8% for males. That's not insignificant. Well, in that vein, what about people who can't, due to age, arthritis, injury, etc., hammer out the perfect LA->Ability->Block cancel all the time, every time? Do we leave them overboard?

Then, there's also the question of animation canceling on a purely technical level not being attainable by some players, due to distance from server. Yes, people with 30-50ms latency can get these nice, crisp rotations. It's lovely. What about those of us with consistently triple digit latency, which spikes? Especially in places like Cyrodiil, where even bar-swapping sometimes doesn't register? I am asking this in the interests of fairness. We all know how in P2P games the host has the advantage, right? Well, can we then admit that someone at 30ms has a significant advantage, even just in PvE performance, to someone sitting at 300ms? Especially if that latency isn't uniform, but fluctuates between 200 and 400ms for the average of 300ms? Ever tried to animation cancel under these conditions? It's unreliable. So what is your response? Move closer to the server, you scrub? Not a very good response, now is it? But without animation canceling, suddenly it's not much of an issue. With ability queuing buffer (sometimes even under player's control to tweak to their liking), most other MMOs play just fine at those latencies. So that's another reason to ditch animation canceling.

Another argument to do away with animation canceling is balancing. Again, we've all seen the threads, haven't we? Please make X dungeon easier. No, make X dungeon harder. If ZOS balances the game for animation cancelers in mind, the dungeon will be so hard for Nana, Nono and Lil' Fabrizio. Who cannot, for love or money, animation cancel as well as you. Filthy casuals... Ehem, anyway. On the flipside, if ZOS balances the game for non-cancelers, the animation cancelers will go through that content, to quote General Patton, "like crap through a goose". And nobody is happy! Well, with animation canceling removed, this is no longer a consideration. And now the mechanics can be centered around making people *think* as opposed to hammering on keys like a spastic monkey. Choose what abilities to use, and when, based on animation length and context, as opposed to locking down the muscle memory and just hammering it out. Which brings us to macros.

Ah, yes. Zee macros, the horrible M-word. OK, first off, macros exist. Most of us use them. YES, probably even you! It just depends on how rigidly or loosely you define the word "macro". If your mouse or keyboard is programmable, you already use a macro, it's just the macro is simple. Press 4 with your thumb on the mouse, mouse executes 4. That's a simple macro - press 4, get 4. More complicated macro would be press 4, get left mouse button->short wait->4->short wait->right mouse button. This performs a light weave, an ability bound to 4, and block-cancels the animation. Now, these are against TOS, but people still use them. Especially people with disabilities or injuries, like a guildmate of mine last summer after a car crash. It was that, or walk away from ESO, and considering the guy was bedridden, that's just cruel and unusual punishment. OK, so against TOS, and it's bad, so don't do it, m'kay? But how far are we willing to take this mentality?

What I mean is, abilities in ESO are on-release. They fire not when you depress the key, but when you release the key. So would a macro that does "depress and release key" be cheating, and against TOS? It's still 1-to-1 input, you press 4, you get 4. But with this macro, the game doesn't wait for you to release the key, keypress and release are simultaneous. Is this cheating? Prooooobably, right? Though maybe not quite? Starting to get a little grey? OK, so let's take it a little farther towards absurdity. Would using a short travel time keyboard be cheating then? Especially if the keyboard doesn't allow hold-key, meaning every keypress the keyboard considers an automatic key release. Think about it. Where with a normal average keyboard you start depressing the key, it moves a while, then registers the keypress, but keeps moving down a bit until it bottoms out, and then you release the key, it starts moving back, and spring strength (or rubber or what have you) determines the acceleration of that snapback, and registers a release, and only THEN does your ability begin to fire? As opposed to someone using a short travel time keyboard, and with a slightest movement it registers a keypress, and immediately generates a release as well. That's mechanical cheating! They are shaving off microseconds with every single keypress, accruing entire seconds over the course of a play session! Monsters! Sooo, do we persecute and punish that as well? Do we track down people using red switches, and force them to use black switches instead? No, we don't.

What I'm getting at is that macro isn't a script. It's not automation. You're still at the keyboard, pressing all the same buttons. And global cooldown still prevents you from activating more abilities in a second than anybody else. But you have pressing *fewer* buttons. Which brinngs me to manual light attacking. I wasn't going to touch it, so it wouldn't muddy the waters, but I'll mention it quick. There's a very good reason vast majority of MMOS either don't have these, or have these on autocast (also known as autoattack). Picture EVE Online ('03) or WoW ('04) or WAR ('08), etc., where autoattacks in those games had to be done manually with a left mouse click. Did the game just get better, or worse? I bet most would say it got significantly worse. It's just busy work. It distracts, puts unnecessary wear on the user's fingers and needlessly reduces the lifespan of our peripherals. It is, for lack of a better word, medieval.

OK, so I'll wrap this up on that. If you are going to respond, please start with attempting to answer some of the questions I posed. Like, how do you reconcile developers spending a lot of time creating animations, with apparent intent for those animations to not be seen via animation canceling. Or how would WoW or EVE's gameplay improve by making all autoattacks manual cast.

If you got this far, kudos to you, good sir or madam. Thanks for reading.

ZOS, on the odd chance you see this, please consider doing something about this. It is time. It's been 5 years, it's 2019. The mechanics of combat in this game are, frankly, embarrassing. It looks like you tried to fix it, failed, and instead enshrined it as a feature.

oh boy this one will be good. your right and your wrong all at the same time.

Alpheu5 · February 2019

mxxo wrote: »

Its more than 41%. Lot of ppl didnt vote, because the poll had manipulative options, especcially for ppl who wanted to vote "no".

It also could have been less than 41%, because a lot of people that don't use the forums have been OK with ani cancelling in other games.

Rikumaru · February 2019

Tons of threads calling for nerfs on dungeons and animation cancelling (minority but still), wanting old content to be made easier eventually so every player can do it and doesn't want CP changed. Anyone notice a trend here? How about you go learn how to animation cancel, it's really not as complex as you so believe. And you blaming lag for not being able to animation cancel is rubbish, I can do it just fine on PRIME TIME EU CYRODILL. The thing most often which doesn't fire off during that is the skill itself, not the light attack or bash.

As for you blaming your equipment or using it as an excuse to want to nerf animation cancelling, I'm literally using a keyboard which is a similar age to myself (inb4 memes) of which some of the keys don't work. Switches? It's rubber dome and requires a decent amount of force to even press one of the keys. One of the stands for the keyboard is gone and I'm using a god damn crystal to prop it up, stop blaming your equipment it's got nothing to do with how you perform ingame. As for clarity of what's going on during animation cancelling, forcing the animations to play out actually makes it far harder imo to get a grasp on what's going on. Before the animation changes years ago it was far easier to recognize what was going on during that cancel as everything was so fluid. Making it play out will just make things more confusing and worse.

As for people who have disabilities, it's unfortunate but do you really expect ZOS to balance the game around people who won't be able to play correctly? You don't see shooters or MOBA's do the same thing do you? And it's not as if they can't enjoy and play all the content in the game without animation cancelling, you can still clear all the content it's just you won't be topping leaderboards and such.

Also as explained before about macros, ESO has too many combinations for them to work nearly as well as a player normally animation cancelling. Think about it, you would need a combination for la skill, for all your skills and also one for la skill bash and then a combination of either with a roll dodge or / and a weapon swap. Sounds more complicated than just normally doing it? Yeah it is. And before people jump up and say "well you only need a macro for la skill" sure, you could do that. But that would be far inferior to actually learning animation cancelling so it's completely a non-issue.

Why do people just refuse to put in the effort of learning the game and actually work to improve at it? I don't understand why this is a trend in more recent games, this was never a thing in the past. You either learnt the game or you didn't do the thing you couldn't do, no holding hands at all.

mxxo · February 2019

Alpheu5 wrote: »

mxxo wrote: »

Its more than 41%. Lot of ppl didnt vote, because the poll had manipulative options, especcially for ppl who wanted to vote "no".

It also could have been less than 41%, because a lot of people that don't use the forums have been OK with ani cancelling in other games.

Or more. You can´t tell.

Hyzock · February 2019

The time it took to write that essay is probably at least twice as long as the time it takes to just learn how to animation cancel. This bug became a feature years ago and the majority of the playerbase thinks that was a good thing. These threads are pointless.

Emma_Overload · February 2019

NOPE. The big problem with OP's suggestion is that lots of UNINTENDED cancellations will occur, causing the caster to lose tons of resources with with no worthwhile actions being performed in exchange for those resources.

This has all been discussed before. ESO has animation cancelling since launch, and it always will. ZOS has shown NO DESIRE WHATSOEVER to re-code key combat mechanics in years... why do you expect this to happen now?

Zathras · February 2019

CyrusArya wrote: »

The simple concept that you and people like you can’t ever seen to grasp is that only instant cast abilities can be cancelled.

Easy there with that tar brush. He does talk about the things you..explained..to him. It was in the 3rd paragraph.

CyrusArya wrote: »

Just like most posts that are opposed to this essential, foundational mechanic, yours too is riddled with misinformation and ignorance. But the bottom line is that for those who struggle to perform this most basic function, the onus is to raise themselves to bar and improve as players- not drag the entire system down to their level.

Although it is a *ahem* lengthy post, I don't see the misinformation and ignorance of the system, or the mechanics, that screams out so loudly to you. Also, please reign in the elitism. Even though his post was a bit windy and rambling at times, I found it to be an interesting read. There is a lot of room for intellectual discussion. Rather than speaking down to someone, and being insulting, you could take another look and see what the OP was actually communicating.

To the OP:

I thought your post was interesting, and rather insightful, so I gave one to you.

Unfortunately, the system isn't going to change any time soon, if ever. People are used to animation cancelling, and the Devs haven't made any moves to discuss it as a point of change. We're stuck with it.

As you can see from a lot of the pro-AC posts, people want to keep it as it is a means to increase dps. As such, a lot of newer content is based around people being able to reliably, consistently, pull off the mechanic to defeat that content. So, if they were to scrub AC, they would have to ensure that it's replacement was just as good as the old system. Which would mean that damage numbers across the board would have to be tweaked to compensate.

That's a lot of work. Not only would that require a complete overhaul of skills and weapons, think of the re-balancing. Also, the ACing people would lose their minds. So, I don't see the system changing, based on the time, effort, and fallout.

Kr3do · February 2019

As people said above, in the time you wrote this post you could've easily learned how to weave or animation cancel. And if you're physically unable to press your left mouse button between skills, you shouldn't be doing the content that "requires" you to animation cancel anyway.
I feel like 90% of the people that make posts requesting animation cancelling to get removed, don't understand how boring and clunky combat would become.

Gilvoth · February 2019

what about snipe?
i like animation canceling, but you keep trying to say its ok when your piticular skills are involved but others cant have thier skill animation cancled?
animation canceling opens the door to cheats, and exploits constantly and yes it is used with lagg in cheats.

Alpheu5 · February 2019

mxxo wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

mxxo wrote: »

Its more than 41%. Lot of ppl didnt vote, because the poll had manipulative options, especcially for ppl who wanted to vote "no".

It also could have been less than 41%, because a lot of people that don't use the forums have been OK with ani cancelling in other games.

Or more. You can´t tell.

And neither can you, so stop acting like you know as a fact. Citing forum polls with, currently, 354 total votes as definitive sources of the public's opinion at large would get you an F in a high school statistics project.

mxxo · February 2019

Alpheu5 wrote: »

mxxo wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

mxxo wrote: »

Its more than 41%. Lot of ppl didnt vote, because the poll had manipulative options, especcially for ppl who wanted to vote "no".

It also could have been less than 41%, because a lot of people that don't use the forums have been OK with ani cancelling in other games.

Or more. You can´t tell.

And neither can you, so stop acting like you know as a fact. Citing forum polls with, currently, 354 total votes as definitive sources of the public's opinion at large would get you an F in a high school statistics project.

Hey how about you play some ESO to come down a bit?

Sabbathius · February 2019

Emma_Overload wrote: »

why do you expect this to happen now?

Because it would be an improvement, for reasons listed painstakingly above. You know what also has been in the game for years, and ZOS didn't make any attempts to change? Traits on gear being set in stone. Until we got CWC. And it changed. And now the game is better. Same principle.