Thogard's video explains exactly why the devs made a mistake

TheFM · March 2020

clocksstoppe wrote: »

Wycks wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIzNq2exFHs

Game mechanic / critical checks should not happen on the client. In any MMO. EVER.

Yet most online games do that, and just implement security systems like punkbuster to assure cheating doesnt occur.

rfennell_ESO · March 2020

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

I'm not playing eso currently (New World Alpha is more stable that eso right now lol)

just quoting myself... I'm totally serious. New World is totally stable and playable with no buggy bs and it's alpha. No I'm not some super tester... I just pre-ordered it when Amazon Prime alerted me to it's availability and got in on this past thursday.

An alpha that's more stable than a game in release for 5+ years or so.

rfennell_ESO · March 2020

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

I'm not playing eso currently (New World Alpha is more stable that eso right now lol)

just quoting myself... I'm totally serious. New World is totally stable and playable with no buggy bs and it's alpha. No I'm not some super tester... I just pre-ordered it when Amazon Prime alerted me to it's availability and got in on this past thursday.

An alpha that's more stable than a game in release for 5+ years or so.

best part is there was a Fengrush in game. Not the real one, I called him a hacker in global and he didn't angrily respond, so definitely not him.

Jaimeh · March 2020

Wing wrote: »

TLDR

your client (you) used to go, "targeted, within range, button pressed" send that data to the server (ZOS) and the server would go "got it" and do the thing.

NOW

your client (you) goes "targeted, within range, button pressed" sends the data to the server (ZOS) and the server goes "let me check, targeted, NOT within range, button pressed, nope, try again." and you will fail to do the thing.

there is an additional back and forth causing both lag and failure of action execution. its essentially sending back a confirmation check to see if your lying, and in lag and fast paced combat, it OFTEN looks like we are lying.

for an even clearer understanding, every skill is acting like uppercut behind the scenes, requiring you to be on target for the duration of the client server back and forth (your ping essentially)

Thank you for the insight--is this then the reason why skills like rapid strikes, surprise attack, etc., have been failing to cast, within range, and our characters are just left standing there light attacking instead?

barney2525 · March 2020

This is doggone interesting.

You got a skill that has an animation, and the skill states it takes, for example, 3 seconds before it inflicts damage. But players come up with a mechanic that allows the restriction to be lifted, and in effect the damage is done almost instantly.

Group one learns how to use this tactic effectively, and likes it.

Group two says the mechanic should be removed, since the animation and the restriction are designed be be part of the skill.

Now, it seems, things have changed and the mechanic does not work as it has been working. Some players say this is wrong. Some players say this is good.

It's not a 'right' or 'wrong' issue. It's just a matter of perspective.

But in the end, however things 'work', the Company makes the final decision and has to live with that decision.

IMHO

technohic · March 2020

barney2525 wrote: »

This is doggone interesting.

You got a skill that has an animation, and the skill states it takes, for example, 3 seconds before it inflicts damage. But players come up with a mechanic that allows the restriction to be lifted, and in effect the damage is done almost instantly.

IMHO

Not how it works so everything you say after this is wrong

How it works is the ability is instant, it does damage instant, but there is an animation afterwards as well as a global CD of 1 second for abilities. Light attacks have their own seperate GCD so you can weave a LA right after/before an ability. The abilities still go off at the same time restriction they always have. Block is the only thing they changed here in that it can just clip your animation but never allowed you to speed up the attack, and according to ZOS own stream, it is supposed to still block cancel the same timing as it always has, just let the animation show, but thats not what we are talking about

Really anything they have changed has not effected this and this is NOT what the issues are even about. Whether you weave or not. Block cancel or not. If you press an instant ability; and I mean INSTANT as it is in the tooltip as instant; it does not go off because the targets location is not at the same place on the server as it is on the client. This really has NOTHING to do with animation cancelling at all and I am baffled its being discussed. Its not like the abilities are just going off slow and playing their animation. They are just not going off.

FENGRUSH · March 2020

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

I'm not playing eso currently (New World Alpha is more stable that eso right now lol)

just quoting myself... I'm totally serious. New World is totally stable and playable with no buggy bs and it's alpha. No I'm not some super tester... I just pre-ordered it when Amazon Prime alerted me to it's availability and got in on this past thursday.

An alpha that's more stable than a game in release for 5+ years or so.

best part is there was a Fengrush in game. Not the real one, I called him a hacker in global and he didn't angrily respond, so definitely not him.

I was chopping trees down stop ruining my immersions

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · March 2020

I like chasing someone then getting a roll back 30m away from my target. *runs out of breath*

technohic · March 2020

Youyouz06 wrote: »

I like chasing someone then getting a roll back 30m away from my target. *runs out of breath*

Thats what you get for trying to exploit the system and move when it should be on a cooldown.

Wing · March 2020

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

I'm not playing eso currently (New World Alpha is more stable that eso right now lol)

just quoting myself... I'm totally serious. New World is totally stable and playable with no buggy bs and it's alpha. No I'm not some super tester... I just pre-ordered it when Amazon Prime alerted me to it's availability and got in on this past thursday.

An alpha that's more stable than a game in release for 5+ years or so.

give it a few years and a few hacks.

the major historic performance downgrades in ESO history were done by ZOS due to cheating and hacks (this current one and the lighting patch)

for clarification it was not the actual "lighting" change in the lighting patch that caused the lag, but the fact that they moved info that was previously client side to the server, thus causing more back and forth between the two and tanking server performance.

this is the big patch that effectively threw pvp under the bus for the sake of security. as before this people were able to dupe things like gold mats and other items.

this current patch once again added more back and forth between the client and the server, asking for combat confirmations essentially, and once again, tanking performance.

I have no doubt once new world gets a hack or two, some cheats, etc. patches will move data server side causing more back and forth and tanking performance.

however from what I have seen no chance of being as bad as ESO, as the amount of action inputs is nowhere NEAR as massive as ESO, and that can go a long way to improving performance (less client to server back and forth)

for reference, the large pvp battles back in alpha, beta, and shortly into launch did run smooth.

Coppes · March 2020

barney2525 wrote: »

This is doggone interesting.

You got a skill that has an animation, and the skill states it takes, for example, 3 seconds before it inflicts damage. But players come up with a mechanic that allows the restriction to be lifted, and in effect the damage is done almost instantly.

Group one learns how to use this tactic effectively, and likes it.

Group two says the mechanic should be removed, since the animation and the restriction are designed be be part of the skill.

Now, it seems, things have changed and the mechanic does not work as it has been working. Some players say this is wrong. Some players say this is good.

It's not a 'right' or 'wrong' issue. It's just a matter of perspective.

But in the end, however things 'work', the Company makes the final decision and has to live with that decision.

IMHO

You can’t make damage happen instantly, AC is about getting rid of the animation’s continuation after the damage has landed.

Animation cancelling argument information...

It allows for two actions to come out quicker rather than having the wait.

This can be easily tested in-game. By allowing normal animations to play out without any action on your part while it’s happening.

(Uppercut - cancel - Uppercut) rather than (Uppercut - Uppercut) it seems like more time is spent AC but it’s actually faster than waiting.

NOTE: It is impossible (cannot stress this enough) for two abilities to happen in a second. If it seems like this happens it’s usually a desync.

You can cancel animations with a light attack, heavy attack, bash (interrupt) or dodge roll.

AC can also be used to cancel abilities (specifically cast time ultimates) before they hit when you know that the ability won’t hit.

(Cast Incap - target dodge rolls - cancel before the blades hit and damage is dodged; though this requires some good reaction time - try again)

The anti-AC crowd is fine with AC being used defensively but dislike the fact that it can lead to higher damage when combined with LA weaving.

The pro-AC crowd is obviously (by the name) fine with it.

The fact that both sides can’t come to a agreement leads ZoS to try and appease both sides which leads to what’s happening right now.

roflcopter · March 2020

Spaceroamer wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

This is doggone interesting.

You got a skill that has an animation, and the skill states it takes, for example, 3 seconds before it inflicts damage. But players come up with a mechanic that allows the restriction to be lifted, and in effect the damage is done almost instantly.

Group one learns how to use this tactic effectively, and likes it.

Group two says the mechanic should be removed, since the animation and the restriction are designed be be part of the skill.

Now, it seems, things have changed and the mechanic does not work as it has been working. Some players say this is wrong. Some players say this is good.

It's not a 'right' or 'wrong' issue. It's just a matter of perspective.

But in the end, however things 'work', the Company makes the final decision and has to live with that decision.

IMHO

You can’t make damage happen instantly, AC is about getting rid of the animation’s continuation after the damage has landed.

Animation cancelling argument information...

It allows for two actions to come out quicker rather than having the wait.

This can be easily tested in-game. By allowing normal animations to play out without any action on your part while it’s happening.

(Uppercut - cancel - Uppercut) rather than (Uppercut - Uppercut) it seems like more time is spent AC but it’s actually faster than waiting.

NOTE: It is impossible (cannot stress this enough) for two abilities to happen in a second. If it seems like this happens it’s usually a desync.

You can cancel animations with a light attack, heavy attack, bash (interrupt) or dodge roll.

AC can also be used to cancel abilities (specifically cast time ultimates) before they hit when you know that the ability won’t hit.

(Cast Incap - target dodge rolls - cancel before the blades hit and damage is dodged; though this requires some good reaction time - try again)

The anti-AC crowd is fine with AC being used defensively but dislike the fact that it can lead to higher damage when combined with LA weaving.

The pro-AC crowd is obviously (by the name) fine with it.

The fact that both sides can’t come to a agreement leads ZoS to try and appease both sides which leads to what’s happening right now.

Only thing ZOS needs to do is to put a setting in that allows people to turn on / off skill animations.

WhisperLFE · March 2020

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

I think the fact that the client and server are better synchronized

They aren't. At all. Desyncs are through the roof and abilities frequently aren't firing at all. There's nothing to get used to when the base combat is so inconsistent and unreliable.

Agreed. I don't notice it as much in PvE day-to-day (although it still pops up on occasion, especially in large crowds), but I just popped into Cyrodiil for about 5 minutes and it was unplayable. I'd say about 20% of the abilities I used actually fired, and those after a considerable delay.

darthgummibear_ESO · March 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

I think the fact that the client and server are better synchronized

They aren't. At all. Desyncs are through the roof and abilities frequently aren't firing at all. There's nothing to get used to when the base combat is so inconsistent and unreliable.

I am assuming that those are bugs that they need to address, probably due to scaling to full production. We are seeing these changes almost as they are making them. ZOS is incrementally making changes, putting them out into full production, and fixing things. They are not building this behind the curtain for years, then putting them out into full production, and fixing things. That puts defects, and the need for refinement, right in our lap a lot more frequently. It's a gutsy move, if you ask me. There is always the risk that something will blow up.

I would agree with this if they actually fixed anything, but every update makes things worse.

rfennell_ESO · March 2020

FENGRUSH wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

I'm not playing eso currently (New World Alpha is more stable that eso right now lol)

just quoting myself... I'm totally serious. New World is totally stable and playable with no buggy bs and it's alpha. No I'm not some super tester... I just pre-ordered it when Amazon Prime alerted me to it's availability and got in on this past thursday.

An alpha that's more stable than a game in release for 5+ years or so.

best part is there was a Fengrush in game. Not the real one, I called him a hacker in global and he didn't angrily respond, so definitely not him.

I was chopping trees down stop ruining my immersions

I bet the axe was hacked tier dev.

Tommy_The_Gun · March 2020

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Hey! ZOS should hire this guy. Oh wait...!

I see what you did there...

rfennell_ESO · March 2020

Of course the whole issue can be a bug they introduced like they did to snipe that one time.

Snipe had a couple checks it does and they messed the whole thing up.

e.g. Snipe doesn't start an animation until a target is acquired and range is found. (no los is required)
Snipe will start it's animation and only continue if los is acquired (no range check or target check)
While the animation is playing it doesn't matter if you have a target, los or range.
When the animation completes it does a final los check (no range, no target required) and fire the arrow.

They added a requirement for los+target for the entire cast and broke the ability beyond broke.

Thogard · March 2020

I don't like people taking what was supposed to be a bug report vid and turning it into some sort of crusade against the devs. ESO is an awesome game. It has a few bugs. So what. I still play it. I still stream it. I wouldn't do those things if it wasn't a great game.

Next time I'll have to refrain from speculating so much as to the causes of some minor bugs that aren't really noticeable except to the top 1% of the player base. I'm making educated guesses but I'm not a dev and I don't understand the code. All i know is just from testing and deductive reasoning.

Anyway, my "solution to fix the bug" wouldn't work. It'd make the game vulnerable to memory hacks if we made all targetting back to client-side timing. If that even is the problem.

TL:DR don't take my videos too seriously. I'm not a coder.

LuxLunae · March 2020

Solution is simple let ALL distance moves go off.. don't cancel the animation... lower the damage the further away the are from the initial distance...

QQ

Look on to gravity if you will... it's a great example... up close you will die if you fall... but far away from the center ...it's almost like you are floating...

what was that formula newton made... uhh k=1/x^2

ok here i lifted this from google somewhere

DAMAGE is inversely proportional to the square of the distance that separates their centers. Well the center being the tip of the axe....or arrow... and the person...

you can easily make it so the damage drops off big time .... but the uncertainty area should be the distance to which it goes from 100% to 0%

so lets say 7m distance with an uncertainty distance of 3... The move is 10 m max...but after the 7, it drops off quick...

ok maybe this is just stupid... people will cry when they can't get all their power at once...and it might increase calculation load..

HOWEVER ITS BETTER THAN JUST STOPPING THE SWING AND LETTING ME GET NOTHING FROM IT...

EDIT: If the server checks fix the part where I am already in a keep and then it pulls me out and then lets them kill me, I am all for server checks. Oh and the break free twice bug...

Ragnaroek93 · March 2020

The combat was fine how it was pre patch. Animation canceling was completely fine, the game felt smooth (outside of cast times on ults...) and complaining about it was a l2p issue to be honest. Now the combat feels clunky and awful and this is because of devs trying to please a few people who are unwilling to put minimal effort into the game. Animation canceling is trivial, you learn it passively in a few days by trying so and you definitely don't need to be a MLG player to do so.

I'm kinda excited about what these people will complain next after they realise that removing animation cancelling didn't make them a better player.

LuxLunae · March 2020

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

The combat was fine how it was pre patch. Animation canceling was completely fine, the game felt smooth (outside of cast times on ults...) and complaining about it was a l2p issue to be honest. Now the combat feels clunky and awful and this is because of devs trying to please a few people who are unwilling to put minimal effort into the game. Animation canceling is trivial, you learn it passively in a few days by trying so and you definitely don't need to be a MLG player to do so.

I'm kinda excited about what these people will complain next after they realise that removing animation cancelling didn't make them a better player.

Hmm...I read that last comment but I am thinking...if you are a good player do you need anim cancelling?

Wycks · March 2020

Sorry Thogard for bringing unwanted attention to your vid, but I've been struggling with the game recently and when I saw your vid, it was like an ...oh that's why moment.

A lot of people clearly didn't even watch the video or pay attention, it's less about animation cancelling and more about client/server issues.

- Not being able to consistantly hit same target under same circumstances
- LOS and targeting being wonky and making no logical sense
- Losing stamina for complete animations that don't hit
- Animations for no hits, or even worse no LOS, messing up the overall arc of anmiations or combos (aka smooth gameplay).

This video highlights a complete lacks of consitancy with how combat works. And if you have not noticed these issues as of late, maybe you mouse click your abilities.

nhisso · March 2020

The only other game where Ive seen devs who listen this little to their fanbase is Crypit/PW's handling of Champions Online or perhaps the folks who own Rift. Youd think after they admitted they were taken aback that no one like how fallout 76 was handled, theyd acknowledge they are going to kill this game soon.
Yes, I know they are different companies. But come on, they arent really. ZoS and Bethesda are the same. They just are.

eso_lags · March 2020

Sad to see them finally *** the only good thing this game had going for it. Not like I could play either way since performance is still garbage and only getting worse. Fantastic.

LuxLunae · March 2020

Let me put this on the record.. whatever zos did to combat to make skills not go off...I can't stand that...

If I have to choose between skills not going off or break free twice..I'll chose break free twice..

but as you see in a vid I posted a year ago, zos locks out my skill use when I roll or sprint...

Give me back rolling vigors...give me back sprinting vigors...I'll deal with the other stuff with the sets you give us...

I realize, that Heavy Armor is truly the way to be... put that stuff on and you don't have to worry about the sprint or roll dodge mechanic glitching out and blacking your bar... Then there is the immovable pots/other things ....

This allows Heavy Armor users the ability to walk freely...through immovability.. not having to fight another glitchy mechanic.

There is a certain point with a certain class and race + heavy armor... Medium armor just looks foolish..dumb and useless..

I've seen the light...and all i had to do was play 2 weeks in heavy armor... I thought I was so cool making my own medium armor build then I realized if I have to fight zos's broken mechanics of the break free, roll dodge, and sprinting...there is no reason to have medium armor. So I just stopped playing pvp... maybe going on a month or so? I am thinking about going back to pve this summer.

I don't find a game fun when it just becomes something similar (i said this years ago as well in these forums) a first person shooter... It all comes down to who has the faster CPU/burst damage. Then everybody else just jumps the bandwagon of the same build.

Then it truly just devovles into boom headshots.. it dont matta if you hittin 5 keys.. its boom head shot at the end of the day...

oh and when the person is rolling around the rocks/towers just russian roullete..

if you want to know a good balanced game that increased with skill... it was a PSP game called Syphon filter: Dark Mirror and Logans Shadow.

You had your boom headshotters but they gave us tripwires, mines, grenades, and knives, a cover system it was CQC. You could win a match just by tricking the player into the traps or hand to hand combat. There was METHOD to the game...

You see, that's why I LOVED when the Trebuchets and the meatbags killed almost instantly... it allowed for another type of play... but then that was removed and it devolved back down into mindless zergballs and boom headshotters..

Thogard · March 2020

Wycks wrote: »

Sorry Thogard for bringing unwanted attention to your vid, but I've been struggling with the game recently and when I saw your vid, it was like an ...oh that's why moment.

A lot of people clearly didn't even watch the video or pay attention, it's less about animation cancelling and more about client/server issues.

- Not being able to consistantly hit same target under same circumstances
- LOS and targeting being wonky and making no logical sense
- Losing stamina for complete animations that don't hit
- Animations for no hits, or even worse no LOS, messing up the overall arc of anmiations or combos (aka smooth gameplay).

This video highlights a complete lacks of consitancy with how combat works. And if you have not noticed these issues as of late, maybe you mouse click your abilities.

No worries mate. All publicity is good publicity I guess.

Animation cancelling was a way around the client waiting for the server to perform the “to hit” checks. It made the check happen sooner, and it was especially noticeable for anything conal.

Tessitura · March 2020

technohic wrote: »

I've always been on the fence on ani-cancel in how it works. Always felt like you should be able to block mid attack to stop it and defend yourself, but probably shouldn't still do the damage or at least full damage. If anything this patch has shown me though, and the comments made; I can only come to the conclusion that anti-ani-cancel crowd are just ignorant to what actually is going on.

[Snip]
[Edited for bashing]

You know its funny you bring up ignorance, when ignorance is pretending like the problem with this patch is a perceived removal of animation canceling. You can still weave and cancel, the problem has nothing to do with the animation canceling in this patch, the problem is with the new way their system processes the signals it received from our clients. They are clearly trying to improve the way animation canceling works and the way the system handles all the signals it gets, they just messed it up. Which honestly, what else is new? Thats pretty normal for this game at this point.

mav1234 · March 2020

Thogard wrote: »

No worries mate. All publicity is good publicity I guess.

Animation cancelling was a way around the client waiting for the server to perform the “to hit” checks. It made the check happen sooner, and it was especially noticeable for anything conal.

Your video(s) brought a lot of attention and put to words issues many of us face... Even those of us that are *not* in the top 1% of players or whatever. The game feels clunkier for a lot of us, so I appreciate you trying to raise attention even if you were not 100% spot on in all of your commentary or explanations. Your platform is a bit bigger than many of ours, and this is an important issue for those of us that care about the longevity of the game.

JumpmanLane · March 2020

Thogard wrote: »

I don't like people taking what was supposed to be a bug report vid and turning it into some sort of crusade against the devs. ESO is an awesome game. It has a few bugs. So what. I still play it. I still stream it. I wouldn't do those things if it wasn't a great game.

Next time I'll have to refrain from speculating so much as to the causes of some minor bugs that aren't really noticeable except to the top 1% of the player base. I'm making educated guesses but I'm not a dev and I don't understand the code. All i know is just from testing and deductive reasoning.

Anyway, my "solution to fix the bug" wouldn't work. It'd make the game vulnerable to memory hacks if we made all targetting back to client-side timing. If that even is the problem.

TL:DR don't take my videos too seriously. I'm not a coder.

Nah....but your video highlighted something, that when it happens live in game, I'd just get mad and log and play Red Dead 2 or something. Thanks for the video. Keep doing what you do!

Tigerseye · March 2020

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

The combat was fine how it was pre patch. Animation canceling was completely fine, the game felt smooth (outside of cast times on ults...) and complaining about it was a l2p issue to be honest. Now the combat feels clunky and awful and this is because of devs trying to please a few people who are unwilling to put minimal effort into the game. Animation canceling is trivial, you learn it passively in a few days by trying so and you definitely don't need to be a MLG player to do so.

I'm kinda excited about what these people will complain next after they realise that removing animation cancelling didn't make them a better player.

It was better pre-patch, but I don't think that has anything to do with people asking for ac to be removed?

They didn't remove it, for a start...