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Animation Cancelling; A Discussion

DuckthatGames
Animation Cancelling(Routine) is, as I have learned it to be, a necessary step to any successful build. Arguable? Yes, of course, but I feel as though anyone would find a great amount of difficulty being able to complete the game's most difficult content without it.

Whether or not you agree with the implementation of this mechanic, I would like to turn your attention to why this is such an issue in the first place.

Close your eyes and try to remember where exactly does the game instruct you on how to 'animation cancel' correctly.

...Were you able to think back to any tutorials you received during the game? Me neither.

My issue is not in of itself animation cancelling. While I myself do have gripes with the system I respect its overall purpose that it serves towards the combat system. It makes the game lightning-fast and captures the intensity of a boss fight much more than any other MMO to date. My time in one of the game's arenas, The Maelstrom Arena(Veteran Difficulty), forced me out of my comfort zone. At no point in the arena was I ever bored. In order to succeed and boast to my friends about my time in the fear-inducing Maelstrom Arena, I had to learn a lot. While I certainly had my work cut out for me when it came to learning mechanics, I spent most of my time learning how to 'animation cancel'.

My issue is again, not with Animation Cancelling, but is with the fact that I had to do this learning outside of the game.

Why is something so vital to being a successful damage-dealer learned outside the game? Who at Zenimax Studios thought this was a good idea?

My personal suggestion to at least, to appease everyone at least temporarily, is to implement a coherent guide in-game to this system so that the issue can finally be put to rest.

If you agree or disagree with my opinions stated above, feel free to leave a comment and hopefully we can do something to remedy this issue at last.
  • Vildebill
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    Because it was unintended from the beginning, not a feature, stuff never shared the same cooldown and hence we have this. Now it's just incorporated.
    EU PC
  • Brrrofski
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    We don't need another thread for this.

    Use the search function. Better yet, just realise it's going nowhere. It's here to stay so everyone just drop the subject.
  • Rikumaru
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    Can we actually stop doing this, it's getting a little insane. The majority voted they liked and wanted to keep animation cancelling and provided great reasoning as to why, the only counterpoint that I saw that made any sense was elderly / disabled players being unable to use such mechanics easily.

    As for ZOS adding ingame tutorials or tips, they added a tip on a loading screen telling you how to LA weave (apparently). This is pretty much the only thing you need to learn to be competitive, everything else is just for a very slight advantage.

    Also as for learning VMA, do you not think that was great to slowly progress and complete a challenge? Do you really just want to plough through content without learning things? If you can't figure out ways to improve ingame then using the internet is a completely valid and fine way of figuring out tips and tricks to help improve your performance. I remember having to do this for past games where I would be stuck on certain missions for hours, and I would either need to lookup on gamefaqs or figure it out ingame (the latter preferred).
    Edited by Rikumaru on February 26, 2019 10:10AM
    Overload rework. Power Overload now does physical damage and grants you the power of a tornado: You throw a brick at the target with a light attack, and you hammer your head into that brick with every heavy attack. We have decreased its Ultimate cost, but increased the chance that you get stuck in the animation.
  • mairwen85
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    So we don't all end up repeating ourselves, maybe continue the existing discussion:

    https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/460545/on-animation-canceling-yes-again#latest
  • AbysmalGhul
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    Most games don't teach you mechanics outside of the presented box. Why would ESO be the exception to the rule?
  • Hiruda
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    Rikumaru wrote: »
    Can we actually stop doing this, it's getting a little insane. The majority voted they liked and wanted to keep animation cancelling and provided great reasoning as to why, the only counterpoint that I saw that made any sense was elderly / disabled players being unable to use such mechanics easily.

    As for ZOS adding ingame tutorials or tips, they added a tip on a loading screen telling you how to LA weave (apparently). This is pretty much the only thing you need to learn to be competitive, everything else is just for a very slight advantage.

    Also as for learning VMA, do you not think that was great to slowly progress and complete a challenge? Do you really just want to plough through content without learning things? If you can't figure out ways to improve ingame then using the internet is a completely valid and fine way of figuring out tips and tricks to help improve your performance. I remember having to do this for past games where I would be stuck on certain missions for hours, and I would either need to lookup on gamefaqs or figure it out ingame (the latter preferred).

    and those who provided great reasoning on why they dont want it, they got put aside and insulted by elitist
  • Moonsorrow
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    If animation cancel did not exist, combat would feel clunky, slow and non-reactive.

    It is fine as is now and one of the things i enjoy on eso combat.

    And to those who blame "elitists" for defending it.. trust me, you have no clue how the game would be without it. Bar swaps and blocking (for tanks) would become a nightmare and really bad playability and fluidity on combat. It would make ESO like some 20 year old arcade game.

    So please stop with these threads already people. It is no magic or cheat, it just makes things smooth when doing things that way. :)
  • Nifty2g
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    animation cancelling is not something you need to do. skill have global cool downs of 1 second, animation cancelling doesn't bypass that. only thing you need to learn is to weave light attacks in since they are on separate global cooldowns than abilities

    the game teaches you this in the levelling up adviser and also with countless sets orientated with light attacking
    #MOREORBS
  • klowdy1
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    Brrrofski wrote: »
    We don't need another thread for this.

    Use the search function. Better yet, just realise it's going nowhere. It's here to stay so everyone just drop the subject.

    Exactly. In order to remove animation cancelling, they would have to completely redo the way combat works, or completely break it by locking you into animations. How many times have you ended an attack to dodge roll, or block? Well that's gone now. Too bad you started that heavy attack, tank, the boss is tossing out that one ability you need to block, and you're dead.
    Edited by klowdy1 on February 26, 2019 11:31AM
  • jcm2606
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    Animation cancelling aside, since at this point it's just like a broken record, completely agree that the in-game guides need work. It's not just animation cancelling, I feel combat in general needs to be explained better. From mechanics like animation cancelling, to certain hidden stats like penetration, to more concise explanations of crit and resistances that use percentages, etc.
  • frostz417
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    Jesus Christ I’m so sick of people crying about animation canceling. This does LITERALLY NO HARM TO THE GAME. People who cry about just don’t know how to do it therefore want to punish those who can do it. Honestly the amount of crying is so ridiculous. Let’s just nerf everything at this point since there’s so many cry babies who want to nerf things so they don’t have to “l2p” let’s just rename this game Minecraft and remove all forms of skill and only make it so you can build stuff and quest. Since that’s what these complainers want.
    Quit crying about animation cancelling because YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO DO IT. L2p and learn. It does no harm to the game aside from someone pulling better dps than you because they’re better than you.
    The amount of cries for nerfs in this forums is completely ridiculous.
  • mairwen85
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    I'm more sick of the fact that every time one thread on the matter hits the bottom of the page, a new one pops up! :neutral:

    It's almost like there's some kind of agenda to only have opinions from one side of the argument in perceived relevance.
  • blnchk
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    You know what's frustrating about these discussions? One side tends to be uninformed, while the other tends to be disingenuous. Good on you for seeking some middle ground, though, OP.
  • Vyvrhel
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    I feel as though anyone would find a great amount of difficulty being able to complete the game's most difficult content without it.

    Why do you think so? I believe that the most difficult content requires you know the combat mechanics.
  • mairwen85
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    The misinformed and disingenuous are usually the same half...
  • Rungar
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    like voicecoms i think most were ok that cancelling was limited to trials. A tiny portion of the playerbase do that content and the the gear wasnt really required.

    now the dungeons are like trials, you need voice coms to complete the content, and the best gear comes from the raids again.





  • Sylosi
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    Animation cancelling is low skilled garbage in this game, MMORPG bads are too bad to realize this...

    In a game with proper animation cancelling (many fighting games for example) the whole point is you cut the tail off the animation to go into the next skill faster, this is different to ESO in two ways,

    Firstly and most importantly, with proper ani cancelling your opponent still sees most of the animation when you cancel it, however in ESO you can cancel things so early that skills can get executed with no meaningful animation. So you effectively remove reacting to animation which is part of what makes skilled play in games and lower it to guesstimation that build X is probably going to do this, followed by that, so I'll spam dodge, block, etc based on what I think he is likely to do.

    Secondly in games with skilled animation cancelling you have to be very precise, because skills have different points at the tail of the animation that you can cancel, this actually takes skill / lots of practice and is one of the reasons good fighting games are renowned for having a high skill cap. ESO on the other hand skills have a huge window for cancelling and are typically just ani has started, oh I can cancel now. Low skilled garbage.
    Edited by Sylosi on February 26, 2019 12:37PM
  • mairwen85
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    @Sylosi I'm assuming you don't animation cancel then because it's beneath you. Not that you have difficulty with it - - its just not done good enough for you, right?
  • Zathras
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    My issue is again, not with Animation Cancelling, but is with the fact that I had to do this learning outside of the game.

    Why is something so vital to being a successful damage-dealer learned outside the game? Who at Zenimax Studios thought this was a good idea?

    While I agree there are very few guides on..anything..in-game, I don't think animation cancelling is going to be added to that small list. As has been noted, and discussed ad nauseum, it seems to be an unintended effect from early in the game that wasn't dealt with. Unfortunately, the game grew around it. Like a nasty, rotten little pearl.
    For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. - Douglas Adams

    It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too. - Douglas Adams
  • Temeraire507
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    Animation cancelling is nothing ESO specific and a core feature in almost every game. It just makes people able to cancel an animation for another, so for example stop channeling an ability and dodge roll instead.

    Your problem is with the way light attacks are able to be cast aside from the global cooldown if done correctly and that that is not explained in the game.

    I'm neutral here I can understand people liking it and people not liking it. But noone can argue the game explains this, which is exactly the OP's point. First the level up messages normally don't include useful information and therefor many people don't read of it there. Second the game says "light attacks put between skills can make you deal more damage" it never said that this is only true if done with the correct timing and it never explained that timing to its players. A new player does not automatically know the timing and therefor is likely to just cast light attacks and skills one after another but in different GCD's without cancelling their animations if he/she reads the small message on the side of the screen when leveling up a character and sees it as important as it is.
  • DuckthatGames
    I'm getting the impression that the majority of people responding to this post aren't reading my concerns and assume it's just another forum post complaining about the mechanic itself. Please take some time to read the original post. I simply was suggesting the game take more steps than just a tip within a loading screen to instruct players on the importance of animation cancelling. :)
  • DuckthatGames
    frostz417 wrote: »
    Jesus Christ I’m so sick of people crying about animation canceling. This does LITERALLY NO HARM TO THE GAME. People who cry about just don’t know how to do it therefore want to punish those who can do it. Honestly the amount of crying is so ridiculous. Let’s just nerf everything at this point since there’s so many cry babies who want to nerf things so they don’t have to “l2p” let’s just rename this game Minecraft and remove all forms of skill and only make it so you can build stuff and quest. Since that’s what these complainers want.
    Quit crying about animation cancelling because YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO DO IT. L2p and learn. It does no harm to the game aside from someone pulling better dps than you because they’re better than you.
    The amount of cries for nerfs in this forums is completely ridiculous.

    I mentioned within my post that I respect animation cancelling. I'm not whining about it. I just think the game should do a better job a instructing you on how to do said mechanic.
  • DuckthatGames
    mairwen85 wrote: »
    So we don't all end up repeating ourselves, maybe continue the existing discussion:

    https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/460545/on-animation-canceling-yes-again#latest

    I wrote a different post because my issue doesn't relate to Wifeaggro13's concerns. I'm not discussing animation cancelling as a whole. I'm simply suggesting the game do more to teach you how to do it.
  • Slack
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    Was about time a discussion has been started
    PC EU
    Betty Breeze - Magwarden
    Hunts S'hitblades - Stamplar
    Aschavi - Magplar
  • DuckthatGames
    Animation cancelling is nothing ESO specific and a core feature in almost every game. It just makes people able to cancel an animation for another, so for example stop channeling an ability and dodge roll instead.

    Your problem is with the way light attacks are able to be cast aside from the global cooldown if done correctly and that that is not explained in the game.

    I'm neutral here I can understand people liking it and people not liking it. But noone can argue the game explains this, which is exactly the OP's point. First the level up messages normally don't include useful information and therefor many people don't read of it there. Second the game says "light attacks put between skills can make you deal more damage" it never said that this is only true if done with the correct timing and it never explained that timing to its players. A new player does not automatically know the timing and therefor is likely to just cast light attacks and skills one after another but in different GCD's without cancelling their animations if he/she reads the small message on the side of the screen when leveling up a character and sees it as important as it is.

    I wasn't aware of this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. However, as you stated yourself, many players will never see this. I personally feel as though the game would stand to benefit greatly if they developed an entire tutorial much like the one you get when you first enter cyrodiil. The game doesn't have to completely pause to teach you this, but it'd be nice if it were at the very minimum something you could choose to go do.
  • Temeraire507
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    Animation cancelling is nothing ESO specific and a core feature in almost every game. It just makes people able to cancel an animation for another, so for example stop channeling an ability and dodge roll instead.

    Your problem is with the way light attacks are able to be cast aside from the global cooldown if done correctly and that that is not explained in the game.

    I'm neutral here I can understand people liking it and people not liking it. But noone can argue the game explains this, which is exactly the OP's point. First the level up messages normally don't include useful information and therefor many people don't read of it there. Second the game says "light attacks put between skills can make you deal more damage" it never said that this is only true if done with the correct timing and it never explained that timing to its players. A new player does not automatically know the timing and therefor is likely to just cast light attacks and skills one after another but in different GCD's without cancelling their animations if he/she reads the small message on the side of the screen when leveling up a character and sees it as important as it is.

    I wasn't aware of this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. However, as you stated yourself, many players will never see this. I personally feel as though the game would stand to benefit greatly if they developed an entire tutorial much like the one you get when you first enter cyrodiil. The game doesn't have to completely pause to teach you this, but it'd be nice if it were at the very minimum something you could choose to go do.

    I agree
  • Hiruda
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    frostz417 wrote: »
    Jesus Christ I’m so sick of people crying about animation canceling. This does LITERALLY NO HARM TO THE GAME. People who cry about just don’t know how to do it therefore want to punish those who can do it. Honestly the amount of crying is so ridiculous. Let’s just nerf everything at this point since there’s so many cry babies who want to nerf things so they don’t have to “l2p” let’s just rename this game Minecraft and remove all forms of skill and only make it so you can build stuff and quest. Since that’s what these complainers want.
    Quit crying about animation cancelling because YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO DO IT. L2p and learn. It does no harm to the game aside from someone pulling better dps than you because they’re better than you.
    The amount of cries for nerfs in this forums is completely ridiculous.

    Yes they do harm to the game, they lock people who cant do it due to phyical restriction to not be able to pull out some insane dps number, without animation cancelling, it's IMPOSSIBLE to pull out more than 25k dps
    and ALL the stupid raid guild are asking you to pull out some 50-60k dps to just have a place in vet DLC trial otherwise, they told you to go *** yourself and say you're just a noob and to git gud ( which i usually answer "Take my handicap and then i'll git gud" ), strictly ALL the trial guild ive tried to join, i ended up being kicked, and oh god dont try to tell them you have paralized fingers, because they just mock you for it
    so yeah, animation cancelling is *** and should be removed, so we have combat mechanic that doesnt turn around glitch and exploit
  • DocFrost72
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    Hiruda wrote: »
    frostz417 wrote: »
    Jesus Christ I’m so sick of people crying about animation canceling. This does LITERALLY NO HARM TO THE GAME. People who cry about just don’t know how to do it therefore want to punish those who can do it. Honestly the amount of crying is so ridiculous. Let’s just nerf everything at this point since there’s so many cry babies who want to nerf things so they don’t have to “l2p” let’s just rename this game Minecraft and remove all forms of skill and only make it so you can build stuff and quest. Since that’s what these complainers want.
    Quit crying about animation cancelling because YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO DO IT. L2p and learn. It does no harm to the game aside from someone pulling better dps than you because they’re better than you.
    The amount of cries for nerfs in this forums is completely ridiculous.

    Yes they do harm to the game, they lock people who cant do it due to phyical restriction to not be able to pull out some insane dps number, without animation cancelling, it's IMPOSSIBLE to pull out more than 25k dps

    Wrong. Just straight up wrong. Play werewolf and don't animation cancel claws dot. Tada, 25k+ all day every day.
    and ALL the stupid raid guild are asking you to pull out some 50-60k dps to just have a place in vet DLC trial otherwise, they told you to go *** yourself and say you're just a noob and to git gud

    Actually this could be right as you specified it. Dumb guilds might do this. Most normal guilds though will accept 28-30k on a 6 mil dummy for vet raids. You're thinking score pushes definitely not prog groups. My guild would never say "git gud". They'd help, as would most guilds. That is, if you want help.
    ( which i usually answer "Take my handicap and then i'll git gud" ), strictly ALL the trial guild ive tried to join, i ended up being kicked, and oh god dont try to tell them you have paralized fingers, because they just mock you for it

    Sorry you found idiots and jerks, but please don't smear every raid group like this...

    so yeah, animation cancelling is *** and should be removed, so we have combat mechanic that doesnt turn around glitch and exploit

    What part of the TOS does it break?

    Edited by DocFrost72 on February 26, 2019 8:03PM
  • tyrobia
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    Nifty2g wrote: »
    animation cancelling is not something you need to do. skill have global cool downs of 1 second, animation cancelling doesn't bypass that. only thing you need to learn is to weave light attacks in since they are on separate global cooldowns than abilities

    the game teaches you this in the levelling up adviser and also with countless sets orientated with light attacking

    Thank you. This is where the debate should begin and end if you ask me.
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