The case for removing AC from LA weaving

ZeroXFF · March 2020

Many have probably seen me proposing this in various threads, but I don't know if the devs read anything beyond the first post, so I figured, I'll lay out the case as completely as possible here.

===== I. The Thesis =====
Light attacks should share the global cooldown with skills.

===== II. The Design Argument =====
This is agnostic towards the actual proposed changes in regards to sustain and damage of the light and heavy attacks, and is generally related to 2 principles:

1. The controls should be kept as simple as possible.
It is good design when every button press reflects a decision a user makes, and it should be as simple as possible for the user to perform those actions. For example when you decide to press Ctrl+C instead of just C on the keyboard while you have some text selected, you are deciding to copy the text instead of replacing it with the letter "c". You could argue that in ESO you decide to do a light attack and skill rather than just use a skill when you do LA weaving, but this isn't really true, because of 2 things:

- Both light attacks and skills serve the same purpose: doing damage.
- Light attacks do not represent a choice that you have to make, you must do them, or you're just performing incorrect actions for achieving the results that you want.

In our analogy with text editing it would be the equivalent of typing in all caps (doing HIGH damage). You can hold down Shift (do an LA) while pressing a key that represents a letter (skill). All letters perform the same function, and you would definitely get readable text if you just used the letter keys (skills) without using the Shift key, but you are not doing it correctly if you do not use the same Shift key with every single other key that you use, regardless of what word you decided to type (rotation you decided to use in a given situation).

Because pressing the Shift key with every letter when typing in caps would make typing unnecessarily complicated, we have a function that simplifies that: the Caps Lock. Once we have it on, we can continue without performing finger gymnastics.

Now the way some game developers chose to follow this design guideline is by implementing auto-attacks (WoW, Rift), while others, knowing that nobody wants to do low DPS, and accounting for the fact that their players would like to have more control over their caracters without them developing a life of their own, just rolled the damage into the skills that the players will be using already (GW2, Tera).

Note:
There is absolutely no argument here about the length of the GCD or whether there should be one at all. This is purely about the design of controls. So when you go "but StarCraft", they do not violate this design principle, because every keypress is a different action, and you do not have to press the same button before every keybind to become the best at the game. Every keypress represents a meaningful decision by the player. This is not the case with LA weaving in ESO.

2. Animation cancelling in general is an evil that is only sometimes necessary.
This principle stems from the fact that animations are at the very core of video games. There are resources being spent on creating those animations, and their purpose is to increase immersion and to provide aesthetically satisfying visuals. So while designing anything in the game, the default assumption should be that the visuals play out.

Some game developers stick strongly to this principle, and lock the characters into an animation that was started, even if it is so long that the player might have noticed something that he wants to react to, but just can't, and ends up bound by a decision he may have made multiple seconds ago (for example in Tera). This would be a valid game design choice, because it allows certain forms of counter-play that would otherwise not be possible, and promotes more proactive gameplay, but I think everyone can agree that ultimately this approach causes a lot of frustration, even if in principle it allows for a greater variety of strategies in combat. It just makes the game feel slow and unresponsive.

Now we get to the reason for the "sometimes necessary" part. If the goal is to design a fast-paced game like ESO, there is no way around animation cancelling. And the good way of doing it would be by making sure that you can cancel animations when you are about to change your strategy, but to still stick as closely to the basic principle as this exception allows by making it so that cancelling the animation is not necessary if there is nothing to react to. For example when you're just parsing at a dummy, changing the strategy is not necessary, you just go all out with the offense. But in a dungeon, when you were about to cast a spell when you see that the tank lost aggro and you're about to get a heavy attack in your face, you should be able to stop what you were doing and do a block/dodge roll. Since with this approach defense would be the primary use of AC, we'll call it "defensive AC".

Defensive AC should absolutely stay in the game to make sure it retains its fast-paced feel and high degree of control over your character that it is famous for. But LA weaving should not be subject to AC from other offensive actions, because it does not represent a change in strategy.

===== III. The Gameplay Argument =====
Let's review the stated goals from the PTS post on the topic:
1. The design should be more intuitive.
2. There should be more gameplay diversity.
3. The skill gap between the best players and everyone else should be smaller.

Here I will lay out how putting LAs on the GCD with skills would address all of these issues.

1. Intuitive design.
In a way I already addressed this. While there are different people who find different things intuitive, there are design principles that are true for most people most of the time, and I layed them out in section II. It is simply more intuitive that actions of the same type are treated the same, which currently is not the case with LAs. Putting LAs on the GCD will fix that problem.

2. Gameplay diversity.
- This will make it a gameplay decision about whether you use a skill or a light attack. This would result in people deciding depending on the situation whether they want to use the expensive spammable that does more damage, or use the free (or resource regenerating) equivalent that is the light attack. Nobody who is playing "correctly" will be mindlessly clicking the mouse button any more.
- Because light attacks would no longer effectively be a part of using a skill, mechanics relying on consecutive light attacks would be much more desirable, and the damage wouldn't need to be so low to make other options interesting. They wouldn't feel like you're giving up anything to proc Molag Kena or to get the extra resources from LAs. This means LAs will not be relegated to resource regeneration for the sake of sustaining bash weaving rotations, and can also be used to interact with future sets and gameplay mechanics in new and interesting ways without feeling like a punishment.

3. Skill gap.
Let's see how this affects different kinds of players:

a) The light attack spammers will remain more or less where they are, because light attack damage would not need to be nerfed this abyssmally. They don't use skills, so putting LAs on the GCD will make no difference. This is the group that was supposed to be buffed by the Summerset changes, and the group that will get hurt the most if the current PTS changes are implemented. I think leaving the LA damage relatively high and putting LAs on the GCD instead is the best thing you can do for them, because this way you effectively remove the LA DPS from the top, without nerfing this group much or at all. Goal achieved.

b) For heavy attack spammers it's hard to say without specific numbers, but as long as heavy attack damage is buffed, they are definitely going to do better, and be closer to the people performing a proper rotation.

c) The people following a rotation with skills, but who do not weave will be effectively indistinguishable from the people who are currently doing perfect LA weaving and nothing extra, assuming all other factors are the same. The gap is closed entirely.

d) The "weavers" who weave more than LAs will still have an edge over everyone else. Bash weaving could still be balanced in such a way that it's unsustainable when in permanent use (keep in mind, you would no longer be able to simply spam LAs for resources if LAs are on the GCD), or in such a way that the sum damage of LA+bash is lower than a spammable skill, but the combined cost is lower too. The former would mean, bash would remain that extra thing that people can do sometimes to do more damage for a short period of time, thereby not violating the design principle of it becoming a gameplay decision. And the latter would mean that you could potentially build for more damage stats and fall back to LA+bash as spammable for sustained damage equal to group c), but superior burst when switching to the same rotations as people in c). This is also the group that will find the optimal way of utilizing medium and heavy attacks for extra damage. So this would fulfill the criterium of rewarding particularly crafty players who are willing to take game mechanics to the limits.

===== IV. Advantages Over Other Approaches =====
Consider this an extension of the gameplay arguments, except as far as I'm aware, these were not discussed extensively, only in posts that were kind of lost in big threads.

1. This helps PvP balance.
With the changes currently on the PTS the difference in damage between light and heavy attacks is massive. And it has to be to make HAs worth using, because LAs are just free extra damage on top of a regular rotation. Basically HAs have to outscale however many LA+skill combos you could cast during the HA charge time to be worth using. The consequence then is that the numbers would have to be truly huge to make HA rotations a viable alternative if LA damage is increased at all (which would be desirable to help the group A in the previous section). The consequence of this would be that you have a choice to make, and the 2 are exclusive:

a) Heavy attacks are a viable option for rotations.
b) Nobody is 1-shotting tanks in PvP.

By puttng LAs on the GCD their damage will no longer cost 0 time, it will now cost 1 second of time, which would allow HAs that do any amount of damage that is more than [HA duration in s]*[LA damage] to be sufficient to justify their usage. This would mean that the difference between LAs and HAs can be as little as 2x, which means they would not turn into 1-shots in PvP, but they would still be good enough for some rotations. This leaves more room for future adjustments and also ties into the argument about gameplay diversity.

2. This helps performance.
This is a minor point, since we all know that the servers should be able to handle it, but it's still valid. If there isn't always 2 actions being recorded every second, but one, the traffic would be a bit less, and the server wouldn't need to do as much work determining what fired first, because half as many actions would be performed. This effectively halves the queuing time on the server, reducing latency there yet again.

===== V. Conclusion =====
Putting LAs on the GCD:
1. Is good design.
2. Achieves the stated goals of the devs much better than anything that was proposed to date.
3. Allows more flexibility in future development.

The only real argument against it would be "but that's how ESO has been since its inception", which is not an argument at all, because the proposed changes are already big enough that adding this would make little difference to those who are screaming that they are leaving the game because of the amount of changes. But since such huge changes are already being made, they may as well be done right, even if it means a bit more has to change, because it will make new arriving players trying out the game more likely to stay, and because otherwise we might very well see another 180 on the current design and another equally large exodus, becuase Summerset LA buffs were supposed to help the very same people that are supposed to be helped by LA nerfs now.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BrianWheeler , please consider this when making further adjustments.

Opalblade · March 2020

There is another real argument. Some people, including myself, think that only being able to attack once per second makes combat feel too slow and clunky. I don't weave for the dps, I weave because otherwise I feel like I'm fighting under water.

ZeroXFF · March 2020

Opalblade wrote: »

There is another real argument. Some people, including myself, think that only being able to attack once per second makes combat feel too slow and clunky. I don't weave for the dps, I weave because otherwise I feel like I'm fighting under water.

Do the bash weaving thing then, if you're in desperate need of something to click.

And at the end of the day, I don't have a problem if it's decided that the GCD is reduced to 0.7 or 0.5 seconds. I want to be able to make a choice about what I press. How fast the devs decide it should happen, doesn't really matter from my point of view (the StarCraft argument I made).

Qbiken · March 2020

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Opalblade wrote: »

There is another real argument. Some people, including myself, think that only being able to attack once per second makes combat feel too slow and clunky. I don't weave for the dps, I weave because otherwise I feel like I'm fighting under water.

Do the bash weaving thing then, if you're in desperate need of something to click.

And at the end of the day, I don't have a problem if it's decided that the GCD is reduced to 0.7 or 0.5 seconds. I want to be able to make a choice about what I press. How fast the devs decide it should happen, doesn't really matter from my point of view (the StarCraft argument I made).

Exactly what in the current system prevents you from making a choice wether you want to light attack or use a skill?

ZeroXFF · March 2020

Qbiken wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Opalblade wrote: »

There is another real argument. Some people, including myself, think that only being able to attack once per second makes combat feel too slow and clunky. I don't weave for the dps, I weave because otherwise I feel like I'm fighting under water.

Do the bash weaving thing then, if you're in desperate need of something to click.

And at the end of the day, I don't have a problem if it's decided that the GCD is reduced to 0.7 or 0.5 seconds. I want to be able to make a choice about what I press. How fast the devs decide it should happen, doesn't really matter from my point of view (the StarCraft argument I made).

Exactly what in the current system prevents you from making a choice wether you want to light attack or use a skill?

The fact that if I use a skill I have to light attack before it, so I'm never using a skill instead of a light attack. It is not a decision I'm allowed to make under the current system. I explain it in detail in the original post. [Snip].

[Edited for baiting]

Qbiken · March 2020

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Opalblade wrote: »

There is another real argument. Some people, including myself, think that only being able to attack once per second makes combat feel too slow and clunky. I don't weave for the dps, I weave because otherwise I feel like I'm fighting under water.

Do the bash weaving thing then, if you're in desperate need of something to click.

And at the end of the day, I don't have a problem if it's decided that the GCD is reduced to 0.7 or 0.5 seconds. I want to be able to make a choice about what I press. How fast the devs decide it should happen, doesn't really matter from my point of view (the StarCraft argument I made).

Exactly what in the current system prevents you from making a choice wether you want to light attack or use a skill?

The fact that if I use a skill I have to light attack before it, so I'm never using a skill instead of a light attack. It is not a decision I'm allowed to make under the current system. I explain it in detail in the original post. [Snip].
[Edited for baiting]

[Snip], you´re not forced to light attack after a skill if you don´t want to. All you´ve to do is not pressing whatever key/button you´ve your skill bound to, and wait for the GCD to finish and you can use your skill again.

If I want to use a skill I press whatever number (1-5) I desire, or I press my left mouse button to do a light attack. If I want to utilize them both I light attack weave between my skills. You´re personally in controll of what pace you do your actions. Nothing forces me to press both in a rapid succession unless there´s some strange compulsive behaviour involved.

[Edited for baiting]

ZeroXFF · March 2020

Qbiken wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Opalblade wrote: »

There is another real argument. Some people, including myself, think that only being able to attack once per second makes combat feel too slow and clunky. I don't weave for the dps, I weave because otherwise I feel like I'm fighting under water.

Do the bash weaving thing then, if you're in desperate need of something to click.

And at the end of the day, I don't have a problem if it's decided that the GCD is reduced to 0.7 or 0.5 seconds. I want to be able to make a choice about what I press. How fast the devs decide it should happen, doesn't really matter from my point of view (the StarCraft argument I made).

Exactly what in the current system prevents you from making a choice wether you want to light attack or use a skill?

The fact that if I use a skill I have to light attack before it, so I'm never using a skill instead of a light attack. It is not a decision I'm allowed to make under the current system. I explain it in detail in the original post. I think you should read it before responding.

[Snip], you´re not forced to light attack after a skill if you don´t want to. All you´ve to do is not pressing whatever key/button you´ve your skill bound to, and wait for the GCD to finish and you can use your skill again.

If I want to use a skill I press whatever number (1-5) I desire, or I press my left mouse button to do a light attack. If I want to utilize them both I light attack weave between my skills. You´re personally in controll of what pace you do your actions. Nothing forces me to press both in a rapid succession unless there´s some strange compulsive behaviour involved.
[Edited for baiting]

The "strange compulsive behavior" is called "game design that demands it for competitive performance".

Sanguinor2 · March 2020

First of all: No.

Second:
Will spammables be changed to account for the several losses of light attacks having to obey the gcd?
Will all spammables be buffed to make up for the Damage loss?
Will all spammables proc glyphs?
Will all spammables give ult gen?
Will all spammables proc poisons?
Will all sets that interact with light attacks be completely reworked or buffed immensely?
Will class abilities or non class abilities that work with light attacks be completely reworked or buffed immensely?

kylewwefan · March 2020

I like it. 1 skill or 1 light attack per second. Not both. These “awesome” animations should have to play out imo. Cancelling them, should cancel the skill from being used imo. I think that’s the more intuitive approach.

But this is not the way it is. We should be able to have our cake and eat it too.

There was a breakdown of this a long time ago. In green letters. Written by someone at Zos.

There was some artwork or graph kind of thing to show the action cutoffs (down to the milliseconds) and much of what is left in the game you would describe as being able to stop your actions and react to game mechanics and stuff.

Essentially they gave a long winded response as to why animation cancelling is not getting cut from the game. It’s good for the game. They’ll even start promoting using it during load screens. (Light attack immediately followed by skill)

So, I agree. It looks like it would be good, but much time and resource has been spent on this issue in the past and is highly doubtful it needs be looked at again.

colossalvoids · March 2020

Putting LAs on the GCD:
1. Is lazy combat design.
2. Kinda achieves the stated goals of the devs much better than anything that was proposed to date... Except there is Code's approach on forums which fits for most players and actually meaningful.
3. Allows same flexibility as before in future development.

LiquidPony · March 2020

Even though I think this is a horrible idea to begin with, supported by flawed "principles", bad analogies, and logical fallacies (I particularly enjoy the petitio principii of "LA weaving is bad design ergo a combat system without LA weaving is good design"), there's one thing in particular that I take issue with ...

The only real argument against it would be "but that's how ESO has been since its inception"

No. Just ... no.

This is a fundamental flaw in so many "arguments". You can't make a truly meaningful argument unless you actually understand all sides of the argument. This is the principle of dissoi logoi.

There are many arguments that can be made for why animation canceling in the form of LA weaving belongs in the game:

1. "Fast, action combat" is not really very fast if you are strictly limited to firing off 1 skill every second.
2. LA weaving is fun, engaging, and actually takes more skill than "mindlessly clicking the mouse button" since its timing is dependent on cast times and channels and decisions about whether to LA before doing some other action like bar-swapping (e.g., many stamina DPS will do a skill-->LA-->barswap-->skill rotation, weaving a Jabs rotation has different timing than weaving a Surprise Attack rotation, weaving during execute with Jesus Beam has very different timing).
3. A number of other game mechanics are built around consistently incorporating basic attack damage into a rotation. Enchant procs, status effect procs, poison procs, numerous gear sets but most importantly arguably the most prestigious item in the game the Maelstrom Inferno staff, ultimate generation, etc.
4. Additionally, the very concept of LA weaving is explained in in-game documentation (loading screens and level-up).
5. LA weaving is completely natural and intuitive and fits the paradigm of a "combo", i.e., "weaving" jabs into a larger "rotation" of punches in boxing.
6. Skills like the Warden's Lotus Flower and the Psijic Mend Wounds are completely predicated on the concept of basic attack weaving.

If I were taking the same approach, I could say ... "the only argument for removing animation canceling is that bad and lazy players want to compete with better players without putting any real effort into it". Now I don't actually believe that, but I believe that mirrors the approach you're taking here.

*Also, I find it pretty obnoxious that the forum moderators are in here cleaning out disagreement when that disagreement has tons of agrees/insightfuls/awesomes. This whole off-cycle PTS thing has been over-policed by ZOS, almost like they're trying to squash dissent.

MrGhosty · March 2020

I think there are some fundamental issues with the combat in the game, but I don't believe a drastic re imagining of the core system is going to solve it. I would much prefer they add things to the system to help bring the builds that are under-performing up to the the baseline of weaving+perfect rotation. I don't mean that people unable/unwilling to reach that baseline should be doing the same damage as those who have mastered their particular set of skills, just that things should be a bit more balanced.

As I'm not much of a Pvper I can't speak to how best adjust for it beyond my experience of skill splits in other games working so maybe that could be a solution here, but as a Pver currently practicing his butt off to get into endgame content I feel like more could be done.

(At this point I'm going to speak in the form of "feelings" because I have not done any exhaustive testing/polling so I only have my own experiences to build off of.)

For me personally, it doesn't feel good to put the time and effort in to learning a particular hard dungeon/trial and get the mechanics down only to fail because my group's dps fell down. There are of course solutions, but most of those require excluding folks who aren't able to reach some dps benchmarks. The problem that I have been reaching is that normal mode trials aren't difficult anymore, but the later vet trials are tuned to be too difficult.

I want to note that I don't include hard modes in this, I feel the name fairly well establishes the fact that is and should be a punishing mode that only the best of the best will accomplish. My issue lies in that I've reached a point where my choices for group content is either too easy or too punishing. There is some content there, but it is fairly sparse and constantly repeating content gets old after awhile. This isn't the place to lay out sweeping changes, but I wanted to highlight this particular problem to emphasize where I'm coming from when I say that I don't feel our current combat system is working as well as it could be.

The only solution that I can think of is to give back some of the power taken from abilities and buff heavy attack damage while leaving the rest of the systems in place. The proposed pts changes don't feel good but I like the idea they're trying to attack with them.

usmcjdking · March 2020

This would only work in the event there was cooldowns, and in that case, there would be an entire rework of the combat system from the ground up.

No thanks.

StrangusMaximus · March 2020

No. Even though I'm tempted to leave it there, I'm going to try to address at least some of your points so that others reading understand why so many are responding with, "No."

- Light attacks do not represent a choice that you have to make, you must do them, or you're just performing incorrect actions for achieving the results that you want.

Where is this coming from? You certainly have the choice to use skills without light attacking in-between. Will you do less damage? Yes, but light attacks might make up around 20% of your DPS with an optimal rotation. You can certainly complete a ton of content without light attacks if that's how you choose to play.

Your keyboard shortcut analogy also doesn't work for this reason. You don't have to use keyboard shortcuts when typing. Is it optimal to do so? Yes. Can you function perfectly fine without them? Also yes. Should we put a limit on how fast people type and what shortcuts they're allowed to use to make everything equal?

If you want to play a game that has auto attacks, then go play one of those other games. There are many mechanics in this game where you shouldn't be auto attacking a boss - ie. Assembly General when he's in the middle of the arena, Calefactors' reflecting damage shield (I've been doing a lot of vHOF lately). It does require "strategy" and "choice" to know when to attack and when to not attack.

It is simply more intuitive that actions of the same type are treated the same, which currently is not the case with LAs. Putting LAs on the GCD will fix that problem.

First off, LAs already have a GCD. I'm not sure where this narrative that they don't is coming from. If they didn't, then light attacks would be happening at the speed that you click your mouse, which they don't. Anyone who actually knows how to LA weave knows it isn't about how fast you click - it's about timing your light attack with your skills.

Secondly, why create inconsistent design by allowing AC for some abilities and not others? Why is it "more intuitive" to allow for interrupting an animation to roll dodge or block, which you refer to as "defensive AC," than it is for "offensive AC?" Either allow AC for all abilities or none (which we seem to both agree would make combat slow) - inconsistency is unintuitive.

Nobody who is playing "correctly" will be mindlessly clicking the mouse button any more.

Again, not sure where this narrative comes from that "mindlessly clicking" is how DPS is done. To be a good DPS, you need to make sure your dots are recast at optimal times and you're being strategic about your buffs, which is a challenge particularly for classes where they all have different durations (ie. magblade). For instance, in a fight, channeled acceleration has a cast time - are you casting it at a time when all your dots are placed, or are you going to lose dps because you're casting it when you don't have any dots applied? On a magblade, are you using your soul harvest/incap ultimate when you can stay on your front bar as much as possible to do the most damage, or are you going to have to lose a little bit of dps during the 6 sec duration to switch to your back bar? Is it worth it to maybe let your wall/twisting path fall off for a few seconds in execute? What skills are you choosing to drop in execute and what are you replacing them with? How are you managing the timing to make sure you cast your merciless resolve immediately once it procs, and that you aren't accidentally stuck on the back bar instead? How are you placing your ground aoes so that they hit as many targets as possible? In a raid, are you using your ultimate as much as possible when running a set like Master Architect to buff the group, or are you saving it to use at the optimal time so the group doesn't get overwhelmed by adds?

All of these are just some examples for one class's decisions they have to make in a split second when doing damage. Granted, the magblade example I used is demonstrating a true dynamic rotation, but most mag and some stam rotations are dynamic in some sense. I wouldn't call dynamic rotations "mindless." Even on a dummy with no mechanics, you still need to think about many of these choices to do as much damage as possible.

In a fight, you also need to be following mechanics when making these DPS decisions. I stated examples above of choices for when/how to attack vs. when to not attack. More examples: Olms in vAS jumps - excellent time to "choose" to HA for resources, vMOL backroom - avoiding attacking the dancing cats, even the world boss in Southern Elsweyr where you need to avoid doing aoe attacks and single target focus the boss. In vCR, you need to ensure you're on the right bar when the barswap mechanic happens so that you don't lose out on more damage than necessary, which is, again a decision you have to make to adjust the way you attack. I could go on and on.

d) The "weavers" who weave more than LAs will still have an edge over everyone else.

Literally no one wants bash weaving. People who bash weave don't even want bash weaving. Having bash weaving in the game as is with the proposed changes slaughters magicka users. So now we have (even more of) a gap between magicka and stamina users. How does that make sense? Where's that gameplay diversity? Why allow for bash weaving but not LA weaving? This goes back to my inconsistency comment earlier.

Putting LAs on the GCD:
1. Is good design.
2. Achieves the stated goals of the devs much better than anything that was proposed to date.
3. Allows more flexibility in future development.

Your proposed changes would not achieve any of these goals. Damage in raid groups would go down significantly not because of the loss of LA damage itself, but because of how enchantments work, how buff sets work, the amount of damage that skills do, ulti gen, poisons, etc. Even bash weaving, which you're for whatever reason in favor of, will not do nearly enough damage to mitigate these losses. For achievements like vSS HM that demand a really high DPS threshold, you're just further ostracizing people from being able to complete this content.

Just once more for emphasis - LAs already have a GCD. You always have a choice with what skills you use and when - nothing in the game is preventing this behavior. If you don't want to LA weave, then don't do it. But don't punish everyone because some people are better at the game than others.

T3hasiangod · March 2020

As everyone else has stated: no.

I don't understand where this misconception that people just spam their light attack button comes from. Surprise we don't.

This is what a typical end-game player does with their mouse. We don't "mindlessly click" the mouse and keyboard.

Excessive clicking may actually hurt your ratio and DPS more than mindful clicking.

TheFM · March 2020

T3hasiangod wrote: »

As everyone else has stated: no.

I don't understand where this misconception that people just spam their light attack button comes from. Surprise we don't.

This is what a typical end-game player does with their mouse. We don't "mindlessly click" the mouse and keyboard.

Excessive clicking may actually hurt your ratio and DPS more than mindful clicking.

I will never understand how people say that is too fast or " spammy " .

[Deleted User] · March 2020

Hello everyone,

Recently we've had to remove a few spam posts, content that is against the Forum Rules. While it is perfectly fine to disagree please be sure to stay constructive when doing so.

Thank you for understanding.

Skjaldbjorn · March 2020

Normally I don't like to immediately discount ideas or brush aside concepts, especially without seeing all sides of the argument, but in this case, no. Most end-game players aren't spamming. No one wants a bash weave meta. Bash weaving is even more toxicly exclusive and demanding than LA weaving. Putting LAs on the GCD wasn't a good idea when you brought it up like a week ago and honestly, it's aged like milk.

Everyone here from Strange to Asian has given you all the sound, logical reasons why this would be a horrendously bad idea, and if you still can't grasp why this would absolutely destroy the core functionality of this game, I can't help you. Just say no.

idk · March 2020

1. The "thesis" ignores that basic attacks already have a control. It is redundant and pointless to add a second control which is exactly what OP is suggesting.
2. It reduced gameplay choices. Who in their right mind would waste a GCD on a basic attack if it did less damage than pretty much everything else in the game? OP's idea would literally only bad players would use a LA. Pure math would say this is a fact.
3. The entire suggestion ignores what sets ESO apart from most games and Zos' statements related to the changes they have us testing on the PTS which verifies that Zos is not interested in slowing down combat in the manner OP wants to see.

exeeter702 · March 2020

TheFM wrote: »

T3hasiangod wrote: »

As everyone else has stated: no.

I don't understand where this misconception that people just spam their light attack button comes from. Surprise we don't.

This is what a typical end-game player does with their mouse. We don't "mindlessly click" the mouse and keyboard.

Excessive clicking may actually hurt your ratio and DPS more than mindful clicking.

I will never understand how people say that is too fast or " spammy " .

Because those people have no clue about the subject they are arguing about.

satanio · March 2020

LiquidPony wrote: »

Even though I think this is a horrible idea to begin with, supported by flawed "principles", bad analogies, and logical fallacies (I particularly enjoy the petitio principii of "LA weaving is bad design ergo a combat system without LA weaving is good design"), there's one thing in particular that I take issue with ...

The only real argument against it would be "but that's how ESO has been since its inception"

No. Just ... no.

This is a fundamental flaw in so many "arguments". You can't make a truly meaningful argument unless you actually understand all sides of the argument. This is the principle of dissoi logoi.

There are many arguments that can be made for why animation canceling in the form of LA weaving belongs in the game:

1. "Fast, action combat" is not really very fast if you are strictly limited to firing off 1 skill every second.
2. LA weaving is fun, engaging, and actually takes more skill than "mindlessly clicking the mouse button" since its timing is dependent on cast times and channels and decisions about whether to LA before doing some other action like bar-swapping (e.g., many stamina DPS will do a skill-->LA-->barswap-->skill rotation, weaving a Jabs rotation has different timing than weaving a Surprise Attack rotation, weaving during execute with Jesus Beam has very different timing).
3. A number of other game mechanics are built around consistently incorporating basic attack damage into a rotation. Enchant procs, status effect procs, poison procs, numerous gear sets but most importantly arguably the most prestigious item in the game the Maelstrom Inferno staff, ultimate generation, etc.
4. Additionally, the very concept of LA weaving is explained in in-game documentation (loading screens and level-up).
5. LA weaving is completely natural and intuitive and fits the paradigm of a "combo", i.e., "weaving" jabs into a larger "rotation" of punches in boxing.
6. Skills like the Warden's Lotus Flower and the Psijic Mend Wounds are completely predicated on the concept of basic attack weaving.

If I were taking the same approach, I could say ... "the only argument for removing animation canceling is that bad and lazy players want to compete with better players without putting any real effort into it". Now I don't actually believe that, but I believe that mirrors the approach you're taking here.

*Also, I find it pretty obnoxious that the forum moderators are in here cleaning out disagreement when that disagreement has tons of agrees/insightfuls/awesomes. This whole off-cycle PTS thing has been over-policed by ZOS, almost like they're trying to squash dissent.

to add to 2.

But LA weaving is not fun and not engaging

and it is clicking the mouse button in +- same pace.
and to add to 5.No it is not completely natural and intuitive. Calling LA weaving a combo is superexaggeration.

Skills and sets can be changed.

But honestly, they are not and probably are not going to change anything that is really related to combat machanics. Tweaking some numbers and adding additional effects is not destroying LA weave and AC.

LiquidPony · March 2020

satanio wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Even though I think this is a horrible idea to begin with, supported by flawed "principles", bad analogies, and logical fallacies (I particularly enjoy the petitio principii of "LA weaving is bad design ergo a combat system without LA weaving is good design"), there's one thing in particular that I take issue with ...

The only real argument against it would be "but that's how ESO has been since its inception"

No. Just ... no.

This is a fundamental flaw in so many "arguments". You can't make a truly meaningful argument unless you actually understand all sides of the argument. This is the principle of dissoi logoi.

There are many arguments that can be made for why animation canceling in the form of LA weaving belongs in the game:

1. "Fast, action combat" is not really very fast if you are strictly limited to firing off 1 skill every second.
2. LA weaving is fun, engaging, and actually takes more skill than "mindlessly clicking the mouse button" since its timing is dependent on cast times and channels and decisions about whether to LA before doing some other action like bar-swapping (e.g., many stamina DPS will do a skill-->LA-->barswap-->skill rotation, weaving a Jabs rotation has different timing than weaving a Surprise Attack rotation, weaving during execute with Jesus Beam has very different timing).
3. A number of other game mechanics are built around consistently incorporating basic attack damage into a rotation. Enchant procs, status effect procs, poison procs, numerous gear sets but most importantly arguably the most prestigious item in the game the Maelstrom Inferno staff, ultimate generation, etc.
4. Additionally, the very concept of LA weaving is explained in in-game documentation (loading screens and level-up).
5. LA weaving is completely natural and intuitive and fits the paradigm of a "combo", i.e., "weaving" jabs into a larger "rotation" of punches in boxing.
6. Skills like the Warden's Lotus Flower and the Psijic Mend Wounds are completely predicated on the concept of basic attack weaving.

If I were taking the same approach, I could say ... "the only argument for removing animation canceling is that bad and lazy players want to compete with better players without putting any real effort into it". Now I don't actually believe that, but I believe that mirrors the approach you're taking here.

*Also, I find it pretty obnoxious that the forum moderators are in here cleaning out disagreement when that disagreement has tons of agrees/insightfuls/awesomes. This whole off-cycle PTS thing has been over-policed by ZOS, almost like they're trying to squash dissent.

to add to 2. But LA weaving is not fun and not engaging and it is clicking the mouse button in +- same pace.
and to add to 5.No it is not completely natural and intuitive. Calling LA weaving a combo is superexaggeration.

Skills and sets can be changed.

But honestly, they are not and probably are not going to change anything that is really related to combat machanics. Tweaking some numbers and adding additional effects is not destroying LA weave and AC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

exeeter702 · March 2020

T3hasiangod wrote: »

As everyone else has stated: no.

I don't understand where this misconception that people just spam their light attack button comes from. Surprise we don't.

This is what a typical end-game player does with their mouse. We don't "mindlessly click" the mouse and keyboard.

Excessive clicking may actually hurt your ratio and DPS more than mindful clicking.

Man look at all those actions per minute!!! I'm getting arthritis just watching!

Barbaran · March 2020

LA weaving while staying on target I'm between attacks is an acquired skill.
CAN you stay on target long enough to get both attacks off. If Yes, then you deserve added damage.
If you are complaining that you cannot, then practice. It IS a skill that needs to be developed, you can't just log in and expect to win for nothing.
If you are complaining you take too much damage, learn to move around. The amount of potatoes that barely move while fighting someone is staggering.
Why should someone who learns how to fight better not get rewarded with more damage and kills?

I just learnt how to play basketball today. Why can't I play in the NBA after playing for a day or two? That's unfair, they should make it easier for me to play.
Players can be better, but maybe they just lower the net a little bit so I have a chance too?

ZeroXFF · March 2020

I'll go through the responses other than just "no" that I find to be particularly off-mark with their criticism.

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

First of all: No.

Second:
Will spammables be changed to account for the several losses of light attacks having to obey the gcd?
Will all spammables be buffed to make up for the Damage loss?
Will all spammables proc glyphs?
Will all spammables give ult gen?
Will all spammables proc poisons?
Will all sets that interact with light attacks be completely reworked or buffed immensely?
Will class abilities or non class abilities that work with light attacks be completely reworked or buffed immensely?

Weapon skills already proc glyphs. Ulti gen can be another thing to account for when designing a rotation. See, gameplay depth right there. As for the rest, in one form or another all of those have to be done already, because LA damage is pretty much irrelevant at this point on the PTS.

LiquidPony wrote: »

Even though I think this is a horrible idea to begin with, supported by flawed "principles", bad analogies, and logical fallacies (I particularly enjoy the petitio principii of "LA weaving is bad design ergo a combat system without LA weaving is good design"), there's one thing in particular that I take issue with ...

The only real argument against it would be "but that's how ESO has been since its inception"

No. Just ... no.

This is a fundamental flaw in so many "arguments". You can't make a truly meaningful argument unless you actually understand all sides of the argument. This is the principle of dissoi logoi.

There are many arguments that can be made for why animation canceling in the form of LA weaving belongs in the game:

1. "Fast, action combat" is not really very fast if you are strictly limited to firing off 1 skill every second.
2. LA weaving is fun, engaging, and actually takes more skill than "mindlessly clicking the mouse button" since its timing is dependent on cast times and channels and decisions about whether to LA before doing some other action like bar-swapping (e.g., many stamina DPS will do a skill-->LA-->barswap-->skill rotation, weaving a Jabs rotation has different timing than weaving a Surprise Attack rotation, weaving during execute with Jesus Beam has very different timing).
3. A number of other game mechanics are built around consistently incorporating basic attack damage into a rotation. Enchant procs, status effect procs, poison procs, numerous gear sets but most importantly arguably the most prestigious item in the game the Maelstrom Inferno staff, ultimate generation, etc.
4. Additionally, the very concept of LA weaving is explained in in-game documentation (loading screens and level-up).
5. LA weaving is completely natural and intuitive and fits the paradigm of a "combo", i.e., "weaving" jabs into a larger "rotation" of punches in boxing.
6. Skills like the Warden's Lotus Flower and the Psijic Mend Wounds are completely predicated on the concept of basic attack weaving.

If I were taking the same approach, I could say ... "the only argument for removing animation canceling is that bad and lazy players want to compete with better players without putting any real effort into it". Now I don't actually believe that, but I believe that mirrors the approach you're taking here.

*Also, I find it pretty obnoxious that the forum moderators are in here cleaning out disagreement when that disagreement has tons of agrees/insightfuls/awesomes. This whole off-cycle PTS thing has been over-policed by ZOS, almost like they're trying to squash dissent.

1. It is, because skills aren't the thing that makes a game feel slow, it's the ability to react to things that are happening on the screen. Besides, as I already said, it doesn't have to be 1s, it can be 0.5s. The point is to make it so that LAs don't feel like they are part of a shortcut for activating a skill if you want to do it right. So this "one skill per 1s" argument is absolutely besides the point. I already addressed that when I talked about StarCraft.
2. It doesn't take any more skill than pressing shift before every letter when you're typing text in all caps. The only trick is to wait out the previous skill's CD/animation. If you want it to be timing sensitive, why not make skills unable to fire when used with wrong timing, why just LAs?
3. This change would allow those mechanics to be deliberately chosen by the player rather than just "be there" regardless of what choices you made. This would achieve what ZOS is trying to do with the off-balance changes, except you would actually have control over those procs. So this in fact promotes gameplay diversity, because different people will prioritize different effects.
4. Irrelevant.
5. If you do a jab in boxing, you aren't also doing another attack at the same time. A jab is treated by a boxer as a way to keep going while waiting for a good moment to do a devastating attack - an equivalent of spamming LAs to restore resources while waiting for a moment to lay down a burst attack.
6. One of them wasn't always like that. ESO changes over the years, so arguments from the status quo are not arguements.

The reason I put it there at the end, because all of what I just described, in one way or another, was already addressed by what was written before. So yeah, you could make that argument, but that would only make you look like you didn't read or didn't understand what I was saying.

usmcjdking wrote: »

This would only work in the event there was cooldowns, and in that case, there would be an entire rework of the combat system from the ground up.

No thanks.

Nope. We have resources to manage, and this would work very well with this paradigm, no cooldowns beyond those that arlready exist would be necessary. In fact the existing ones could even be shortened.

StrangusMaximus wrote: »

No. Even though I'm tempted to leave it there, I'm going to try to address at least some of your points so that others reading understand why so many are responding with, "No."

- Light attacks do not represent a choice that you have to make, you must do them, or you're just performing incorrect actions for achieving the results that you want.

Where is this coming from? You certainly have the choice to use skills without light attacking in-between. Will you do less damage? Yes, but light attacks might make up around 20% of your DPS with an optimal rotation. You can certainly complete a ton of content without light attacks if that's how you choose to play.

Your keyboard shortcut analogy also doesn't work for this reason. You don't have to use keyboard shortcuts when typing. Is it optimal to do so? Yes. Can you function perfectly fine without them? Also yes. Should we put a limit on how fast people type and what shortcuts they're allowed to use to make everything equal?

If you want to play a game that has auto attacks, then go play one of those other games. There are many mechanics in this game where you shouldn't be auto attacking a boss - ie. Assembly General when he's in the middle of the arena, Calefactors' reflecting damage shield (I've been doing a lot of vHOF lately). It does require "strategy" and "choice" to know when to attack and when to not attack.

It is simply more intuitive that actions of the same type are treated the same, which currently is not the case with LAs. Putting LAs on the GCD will fix that problem.

First off, LAs already have a GCD. I'm not sure where this narrative that they don't is coming from. If they didn't, then light attacks would be happening at the speed that you click your mouse, which they don't. Anyone who actually knows how to LA weave knows it isn't about how fast you click - it's about timing your light attack with your skills.

Secondly, why create inconsistent design by allowing AC for some abilities and not others? Why is it "more intuitive" to allow for interrupting an animation to roll dodge or block, which you refer to as "defensive AC," than it is for "offensive AC?" Either allow AC for all abilities or none (which we seem to both agree would make combat slow) - inconsistency is unintuitive.

Nobody who is playing "correctly" will be mindlessly clicking the mouse button any more.

Again, not sure where this narrative comes from that "mindlessly clicking" is how DPS is done. To be a good DPS, you need to make sure your dots are recast at optimal times and you're being strategic about your buffs, which is a challenge particularly for classes where they all have different durations (ie. magblade). For instance, in a fight, channeled acceleration has a cast time - are you casting it at a time when all your dots are placed, or are you going to lose dps because you're casting it when you don't have any dots applied? On a magblade, are you using your soul harvest/incap ultimate when you can stay on your front bar as much as possible to do the most damage, or are you going to have to lose a little bit of dps during the 6 sec duration to switch to your back bar? Is it worth it to maybe let your wall/twisting path fall off for a few seconds in execute? What skills are you choosing to drop in execute and what are you replacing them with? How are you managing the timing to make sure you cast your merciless resolve immediately once it procs, and that you aren't accidentally stuck on the back bar instead? How are you placing your ground aoes so that they hit as many targets as possible? In a raid, are you using your ultimate as much as possible when running a set like Master Architect to buff the group, or are you saving it to use at the optimal time so the group doesn't get overwhelmed by adds?

All of these are just some examples for one class's decisions they have to make in a split second when doing damage. Granted, the magblade example I used is demonstrating a true dynamic rotation, but most mag and some stam rotations are dynamic in some sense. I wouldn't call dynamic rotations "mindless." Even on a dummy with no mechanics, you still need to think about many of these choices to do as much damage as possible.

In a fight, you also need to be following mechanics when making these DPS decisions. I stated examples above of choices for when/how to attack vs. when to not attack. More examples: Olms in vAS jumps - excellent time to "choose" to HA for resources, vMOL backroom - avoiding attacking the dancing cats, even the world boss in Southern Elsweyr where you need to avoid doing aoe attacks and single target focus the boss. In vCR, you need to ensure you're on the right bar when the barswap mechanic happens so that you don't lose out on more damage than necessary, which is, again a decision you have to make to adjust the way you attack. I could go on and on.

d) The "weavers" who weave more than LAs will still have an edge over everyone else.

Literally no one wants bash weaving. People who bash weave don't even want bash weaving. Having bash weaving in the game as is with the proposed changes slaughters magicka users. So now we have (even more of) a gap between magicka and stamina users. How does that make sense? Where's that gameplay diversity? Why allow for bash weaving but not LA weaving? This goes back to my inconsistency comment earlier.

Putting LAs on the GCD:
1. Is good design.
2. Achieves the stated goals of the devs much better than anything that was proposed to date.
3. Allows more flexibility in future development.

Your proposed changes would not achieve any of these goals. Damage in raid groups would go down significantly not because of the loss of LA damage itself, but because of how enchantments work, how buff sets work, the amount of damage that skills do, ulti gen, poisons, etc. Even bash weaving, which you're for whatever reason in favor of, will not do nearly enough damage to mitigate these losses. For achievements like vSS HM that demand a really high DPS threshold, you're just further ostracizing people from being able to complete this content.

Just once more for emphasis - LAs already have a GCD. You always have a choice with what skills you use and when - nothing in the game is preventing this behavior. If you don't want to LA weave, then don't do it. But don't punish everyone because some people are better at the game than others.

Where is this coming from? You certainly have the choice to use skills without light attacking in-between. Will you do less damage? Yes, but light attacks might make up around 20% of your DPS with an optimal rotation.

This fits right with the analogy I made with typing text. You want to type in all caps? Don't worry, type in all small letters, people will still understand what you wrote, even if you didn't achieve what you set out to do. Yet we still have a caps lock for some reason.

As for putting limits on how fast people type, I addressed this multiple times, both in the original post, in previous responses, and even in this response. It's not about limits, it's about doing away with unnecessary keypresses that have to always be done to achieve what you set out to do, regardless of any circumstances.

There are many mechanics in this game where you shouldn't be auto attacking a boss

I didn't argue in favor of auto attacks, I proposed that they are a better solution than LA weaving the way it exists in ESO, but ultimately inferior to treating LAs like skills. But if we are going this route, name me a game where you can't control auto attacks? In those games auto attacks are the same as a caps lock - you can turn them off any time you want, so your argument with raid mechanics is absolutely besides the point, both because I didn't argue in favor of auto attacks, and because you don't know how auto attacks actually work in other games.

LAs already have a GCD

They do not. They have a cooldown, they do not have a global cooldown. You can't use a LA as fast as you want because it has a cooldown, but it doesn't lock you out of using anything else, because the cooldown is "local" as it were. Skills have a global cooldown, because once you use a skill, you can't use another skill. So you arguing that it would make anything inconsistent is purely a failure of understanding the terms being used. Putting LAs on the same GCD as skills would make LAs equal to skills, reducing inconsistencies.

Again, not sure where this narrative comes from that "mindlessly clicking" is how DPS is done. To be a good DPS, you need to make sure your dots are recast at optimal times and you're being strategic about your buffs

All of those things would still have to be done with the system I'm proposing, but without mindlessly clicking the mouse button before every single one of those actions. That entire part is a strawman argument, so this is all you get in response to that.

Literally no one wants bash weaving. People who bash weave don't even want bash weaving

As someone who LA weaves I can say that "people who LA weave don't even want LA weaving". And unlike with LA weaving that has to be done all the time no matter what, bash weaving is more situational, and I also describe how to make sure it remains situational. I literally addressed this very point in my original post. As for the difference with mag - mag can bash weave too under the proposed system, since they have to be in melee range already for the best DPS.

Besides, it's not inconsistent, because bashing is a defensive action. If you find the solutions I propose in my original post unsatisfactory, removing all damage from bashing is also an option - one I have no issue with at all. There you go, absolutely no inconsistencies.

For achievements like vSS HM that demand a really high DPS threshold, you're just further ostracizing people from being able to complete this content

Uhm... Buff skills? Not like ZOS isn't doing extreme "balance" passes every 3 months already anyways. I'm tired of this argument being brought up again and again, because this is based on misunderstanding of the cause for it. The problem is not that people do little damage, the problem is that you can't make it challenging for the top players without making it impossible for literally everyone else when there is a big disparity in the performance of various players. If everyone does less (or more) damage, the content (or the damage) can be adjusted to that, but if you have a group where everyone does 50k+ DPS, and another where nobody gets beyond 20k, you can't adjust the content in a way that it works for both groups. This is the very reason they want to shrink this difference, and this is exactly what my proposal would do. Once that is done, adjusting the size of the health bar on bosses and mobs or adjusting the base level of dps is an easy task.

Just once more for emphasis - LAs already have a GCD

Just one more emphasis - LAs have a CD, not a GCD. Big difference.

T3hasiangod wrote: »

As everyone else has stated: no.

I don't understand where this misconception that people just spam their light attack button comes from. Surprise we don't.

This is what a typical end-game player does with their mouse. We don't "mindlessly click" the mouse and keyboard.

Excessive clicking may actually hurt your ratio and DPS more than mindful clicking.

"Excessively" and "mindlessly" are different things. Just because you mindlessly sleep-walk doesn't mean you're sprinting everywhere you go. It means that no mental effort is expended on it, and that's exactly what this change would fix. You'd actually have to think about whether you want to do that LA rather than mindlessly doing it every time regardless of the situation.

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Normally I don't like to immediately discount ideas or brush aside concepts, especially without seeing all sides of the argument, but in this case, no. Most end-game players aren't spamming. No one wants a bash weave meta. Bash weaving is even more toxicly exclusive and demanding than LA weaving. Putting LAs on the GCD wasn't a good idea when you brought it up like a week ago and honestly, it's aged like milk.

Everyone here from Strange to Asian has given you all the sound, logical reasons why this would be a horrendously bad idea, and if you still can't grasp why this would absolutely destroy the core functionality of this game, I can't help you. Just say no.

Everyone who responded negatively so far, including Asian, just entirely missed the point, same as you. It hasn't "aged like milk", because there isn't a single argument I heard so far that contradicted the fact that this change would achieve the stated goals much more efficiently and elegantly than anything that was proposed to date, including Code's suggestion (especially considering that he conveniently ignores the biggest "low APM" group that would be disadvantaged the most by his suggestion). If anything, it ages like Nicolaus Copernicus - I'm being burned at the stake by the religious pro-LA weaving lobby that will end up complaining a couple more times about rollercoaster changes that make no sense (i.e. repeat of the Summerset LA buffs after the current nerfs, and then a nerf again, because both changes are supposed to help the same people, but somehow something never fits) until enough people realize that the underlying system is the very cause of the problem.

idk wrote: »

1. The "thesis" ignores that basic attacks already have a control. It is redundant and pointless to add a second control which is exactly what OP is suggesting.
2. It reduced gameplay choices. Who in their right mind would waste a GCD on a basic attack if it did less damage than pretty much everything else in the game? OP's idea would literally only bad players would use a LA. Pure math would say this is a fact.
3. The entire suggestion ignores what sets ESO apart from most games and Zos' statements related to the changes they have us testing on the PTS which verifies that Zos is not interested in slowing down combat in the manner OP wants to see.

1. Please explain, I don't know what you mean.
2. People who need resources. People who decided to build for less sustain to have higher burst, and would benefit from a lower cost rotation when the fight takes longer than they anticipated. People who have always done it (i.e. part of the group that the PTS changes were supposed to help in the first place). People who want to activate the Ulti regen. People who don't have a weapon skill slotted, but would like to activate the enchant. PvPers who would suddenly have the option to control when their enchant procs so that they can line it up with their burst combo instead of having it wasted on reapplying DoTs. There are a lot of people who would use LAs for very different reasons in very different gameplay situations. Something that isn't true when you always have to do LA weaving, because otherwise you're doing it all wrong.
3. I'm not interested in slowing down combat, and this change wouldn't do it, it would just simplify the controls. I explained it at length. If you want to reduce the GCD to 0.5s, I have no problem with that, but I don't want to have to press the same button with every GCD regardless of what I'm trying to do.

EDIT: write-out the term "auto attacks", because for some reason the abbreviation of the term gets censored.

Sanctum74 · March 2020

Despite your long paragraphs of opinions you do not need to la weave and you do not need to animation cancel with the game in its current state. You have a choice to do it, not to do it, or play a different game that has combat you enjoy.

Personally I think it’s selfish for people to keep pushing their agenda and asking devs to change the game to their liking with no consideration to the people that enjoy it and have taken the time to get better.

MashmalloMan · March 2020

Can you please stop trying to ruin other peoples enjoyment of the game for your own benefit. It's 1 thing to request nerf/buffs in the form of changing numbers. A number is a number.

It's another thing entirely to ask ZOS to completely gut core gameplay mechanics to suit YOUR preferred ideology of how the game should be played. This goes beyond the annoyance of threads requesting nerfs to classes they don't play. You'r basically asking for a different game.

I can't imagine going into street fighter and asking the developers to rework all the combos so that you can play how you want. Maybe just learn how they intended the game to be played or find 1 that does suit your playstyle?

idk · March 2020

ZeroXFF wrote: »

I'll go through the responses other than just "no" that I find to be particularly off-mark with their criticism.

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

First of all: No.

Second:
Will spammables be changed to account for the several losses of light attacks having to obey the gcd?
Will all spammables be buffed to make up for the Damage loss?
Will all spammables proc glyphs?
Will all spammables give ult gen?
Will all spammables proc poisons?
Will all sets that interact with light attacks be completely reworked or buffed immensely?
Will class abilities or non class abilities that work with light attacks be completely reworked or buffed immensely?

Weapon skills already proc glyphs. Ulti gen can be another thing to account for when designing a rotation. See, gameplay depth right there. As for the rest, in one form or another all of those have to be done already, because LA damage is pretty much irrelevant at this point on the PTS.

LiquidPony wrote: »

Even though I think this is a horrible idea to begin with, supported by flawed "principles", bad analogies, and logical fallacies (I particularly enjoy the petitio principii of "LA weaving is bad design ergo a combat system without LA weaving is good design"), there's one thing in particular that I take issue with ...

The only real argument against it would be "but that's how ESO has been since its inception"

No. Just ... no.

This is a fundamental flaw in so many "arguments". You can't make a truly meaningful argument unless you actually understand all sides of the argument. This is the principle of dissoi logoi.

There are many arguments that can be made for why animation canceling in the form of LA weaving belongs in the game:

1. "Fast, action combat" is not really very fast if you are strictly limited to firing off 1 skill every second.
2. LA weaving is fun, engaging, and actually takes more skill than "mindlessly clicking the mouse button" since its timing is dependent on cast times and channels and decisions about whether to LA before doing some other action like bar-swapping (e.g., many stamina DPS will do a skill-->LA-->barswap-->skill rotation, weaving a Jabs rotation has different timing than weaving a Surprise Attack rotation, weaving during execute with Jesus Beam has very different timing).
3. A number of other game mechanics are built around consistently incorporating basic attack damage into a rotation. Enchant procs, status effect procs, poison procs, numerous gear sets but most importantly arguably the most prestigious item in the game the Maelstrom Inferno staff, ultimate generation, etc.
4. Additionally, the very concept of LA weaving is explained in in-game documentation (loading screens and level-up).
5. LA weaving is completely natural and intuitive and fits the paradigm of a "combo", i.e., "weaving" jabs into a larger "rotation" of punches in boxing.
6. Skills like the Warden's Lotus Flower and the Psijic Mend Wounds are completely predicated on the concept of basic attack weaving.

If I were taking the same approach, I could say ... "the only argument for removing animation canceling is that bad and lazy players want to compete with better players without putting any real effort into it". Now I don't actually believe that, but I believe that mirrors the approach you're taking here.

*Also, I find it pretty obnoxious that the forum moderators are in here cleaning out disagreement when that disagreement has tons of agrees/insightfuls/awesomes. This whole off-cycle PTS thing has been over-policed by ZOS, almost like they're trying to squash dissent.

1. It is, because skills aren't the thing that makes a game feel slow, it's the ability to react to things that are happening on the screen. Besides, as I already said, it doesn't have to be 1s, it can be 0.5s. The point is to make it so that LAs don't feel like they are part of a shortcut for activating a skill if you want to do it right. So this "one skill per 1s" argument is absolutely besides the point. I already addressed that when I talked about StarCraft.
2. It doesn't take any more skill than pressing shift before every letter when you're typing text in all caps. The only trick is to wait out the previous skill's CD/animation. If you want it to be timing sensitive, why not make skills unable to fire when used with wrong timing, why just LAs?
3. This change would allow those mechanics to be deliberately chosen by the player rather than just "be there" regardless of what choices you made. This would achieve what ZOS is trying to do with the off-balance changes, except you would actually have control over those procs. So this in fact promotes gameplay diversity, because different people will prioritize different effects.
4. Irrelevant.
5. If you do a jab in boxing, you aren't also doing another attack at the same time. A jab is treated by a boxer as a way to keep going while waiting for a good moment to do a devastating attack - an equivalent of spamming LAs to restore resources while waiting for a moment to lay down a burst attack.
6. One of them wasn't always like that. ESO changes over the years, so arguments from the status quo are not arguements.

The reason I put it there at the end, because all of what I just described, in one way or another, was already addressed by what was written before. So yeah, you could make that argument, but that would only make you look like you didn't read or didn't understand what I was saying.

usmcjdking wrote: »

This would only work in the event there was cooldowns, and in that case, there would be an entire rework of the combat system from the ground up.

No thanks.

Nope. We have resources to manage, and this would work very well with this paradigm, no cooldowns beyond those that arlready exist would be necessary. In fact the existing ones could even be shortened.

StrangusMaximus wrote: »

No. Even though I'm tempted to leave it there, I'm going to try to address at least some of your points so that others reading understand why so many are responding with, "No."

- Light attacks do not represent a choice that you have to make, you must do them, or you're just performing incorrect actions for achieving the results that you want.

Where is this coming from? You certainly have the choice to use skills without light attacking in-between. Will you do less damage? Yes, but light attacks might make up around 20% of your DPS with an optimal rotation. You can certainly complete a ton of content without light attacks if that's how you choose to play.

Your keyboard shortcut analogy also doesn't work for this reason. You don't have to use keyboard shortcuts when typing. Is it optimal to do so? Yes. Can you function perfectly fine without them? Also yes. Should we put a limit on how fast people type and what shortcuts they're allowed to use to make everything equal?

If you want to play a game that has auto attacks, then go play one of those other games. There are many mechanics in this game where you shouldn't be auto attacking a boss - ie. Assembly General when he's in the middle of the arena, Calefactors' reflecting damage shield (I've been doing a lot of vHOF lately). It does require "strategy" and "choice" to know when to attack and when to not attack.

It is simply more intuitive that actions of the same type are treated the same, which currently is not the case with LAs. Putting LAs on the GCD will fix that problem.

First off, LAs already have a GCD. I'm not sure where this narrative that they don't is coming from. If they didn't, then light attacks would be happening at the speed that you click your mouse, which they don't. Anyone who actually knows how to LA weave knows it isn't about how fast you click - it's about timing your light attack with your skills.

Secondly, why create inconsistent design by allowing AC for some abilities and not others? Why is it "more intuitive" to allow for interrupting an animation to roll dodge or block, which you refer to as "defensive AC," than it is for "offensive AC?" Either allow AC for all abilities or none (which we seem to both agree would make combat slow) - inconsistency is unintuitive.

Nobody who is playing "correctly" will be mindlessly clicking the mouse button any more.

Again, not sure where this narrative comes from that "mindlessly clicking" is how DPS is done. To be a good DPS, you need to make sure your dots are recast at optimal times and you're being strategic about your buffs, which is a challenge particularly for classes where they all have different durations (ie. magblade). For instance, in a fight, channeled acceleration has a cast time - are you casting it at a time when all your dots are placed, or are you going to lose dps because you're casting it when you don't have any dots applied? On a magblade, are you using your soul harvest/incap ultimate when you can stay on your front bar as much as possible to do the most damage, or are you going to have to lose a little bit of dps during the 6 sec duration to switch to your back bar? Is it worth it to maybe let your wall/twisting path fall off for a few seconds in execute? What skills are you choosing to drop in execute and what are you replacing them with? How are you managing the timing to make sure you cast your merciless resolve immediately once it procs, and that you aren't accidentally stuck on the back bar instead? How are you placing your ground aoes so that they hit as many targets as possible? In a raid, are you using your ultimate as much as possible when running a set like Master Architect to buff the group, or are you saving it to use at the optimal time so the group doesn't get overwhelmed by adds?

All of these are just some examples for one class's decisions they have to make in a split second when doing damage. Granted, the magblade example I used is demonstrating a true dynamic rotation, but most mag and some stam rotations are dynamic in some sense. I wouldn't call dynamic rotations "mindless." Even on a dummy with no mechanics, you still need to think about many of these choices to do as much damage as possible.

In a fight, you also need to be following mechanics when making these DPS decisions. I stated examples above of choices for when/how to attack vs. when to not attack. More examples: Olms in vAS jumps - excellent time to "choose" to HA for resources, vMOL backroom - avoiding attacking the dancing cats, even the world boss in Southern Elsweyr where you need to avoid doing aoe attacks and single target focus the boss. In vCR, you need to ensure you're on the right bar when the barswap mechanic happens so that you don't lose out on more damage than necessary, which is, again a decision you have to make to adjust the way you attack. I could go on and on.

d) The "weavers" who weave more than LAs will still have an edge over everyone else.

Literally no one wants bash weaving. People who bash weave don't even want bash weaving. Having bash weaving in the game as is with the proposed changes slaughters magicka users. So now we have (even more of) a gap between magicka and stamina users. How does that make sense? Where's that gameplay diversity? Why allow for bash weaving but not LA weaving? This goes back to my inconsistency comment earlier.

Putting LAs on the GCD:
1. Is good design.
2. Achieves the stated goals of the devs much better than anything that was proposed to date.
3. Allows more flexibility in future development.

Your proposed changes would not achieve any of these goals. Damage in raid groups would go down significantly not because of the loss of LA damage itself, but because of how enchantments work, how buff sets work, the amount of damage that skills do, ulti gen, poisons, etc. Even bash weaving, which you're for whatever reason in favor of, will not do nearly enough damage to mitigate these losses. For achievements like vSS HM that demand a really high DPS threshold, you're just further ostracizing people from being able to complete this content.

Just once more for emphasis - LAs already have a GCD. You always have a choice with what skills you use and when - nothing in the game is preventing this behavior. If you don't want to LA weave, then don't do it. But don't punish everyone because some people are better at the game than others.

Where is this coming from? You certainly have the choice to use skills without light attacking in-between. Will you do less damage? Yes, but light attacks might make up around 20% of your DPS with an optimal rotation.

This fits right with the analogy I made with typing text. You want to type in all caps? Don't worry, type in all small letters, people will still understand what you wrote, even if you didn't achieve what you set out to do. Yet we still have a caps lock for some reason.

As for putting limits on how fast people type, I addressed this multiple times, both in the original post, in previous responses, and even in this response. It's not about limits, it's about doing away with unnecessary keypresses that have to always be done to achieve what you set out to do, regardless of any circumstances.

There are many mechanics in this game where you shouldn't be auto attacking a boss

I didn't argue in favor of auto attacks, I proposed that they are a better solution than LA weaving the way it exists in ESO, but ultimately inferior to treating LAs like skills. But if we are going this route, name me a game where you can't control auto attacks? In those games auto attacks are the same as a caps lock - you can turn them off any time you want, so your argument with raid mechanics is absolutely besides the point, both because I didn't argue in favor of auto attacks, and because you don't know how auto attacks actually work in other games.

LAs already have a GCD

They do not. They have a cooldown, they do not have a global cooldown. You can't use a LA as fast as you want because it has a cooldown, but it doesn't lock you out of using anything else, because the cooldown is "local" as it were. Skills have a global cooldown, because once you use a skill, you can't use another skill. So you arguing that it would make anything inconsistent is purely a failure of understanding the terms being used. Putting LAs on the same GCD as skills would make LAs equal to skills, reducing inconsistencies.

Again, not sure where this narrative comes from that "mindlessly clicking" is how DPS is done. To be a good DPS, you need to make sure your dots are recast at optimal times and you're being strategic about your buffs

All of those things would still have to be done with the system I'm proposing, but without mindlessly clicking the mouse button before every single one of those actions. That entire part is a strawman argument, so this is all you get in response to that.

Literally no one wants bash weaving. People who bash weave don't even want bash weaving

As someone who LA weaves I can say that "people who LA weave don't even want LA weaving". And unlike with LA weaving that has to be done all the time no matter what, bash weaving is more situational, and I also describe how to make sure it remains situational. I literally addressed this very point in my original post. As for the difference with mag - mag can bash weave too under the proposed system, since they have to be in melee range already for the best DPS.

Besides, it's not inconsistent, because bashing is a defensive action. If you find the solutions I propose in my original post unsatisfactory, removing all damage from bashing is also an option - one I have no issue with at all. There you go, absolutely no inconsistencies.

For achievements like vSS HM that demand a really high DPS threshold, you're just further ostracizing people from being able to complete this content

Uhm... Buff skills? Not like ZOS isn't doing extreme "balance" passes every 3 months already anyways. I'm tired of this argument being brought up again and again, because this is based on misunderstanding of the cause for it. The problem is not that people do little damage, the problem is that you can't make it challenging for the top players without making it impossible for literally everyone else when there is a big disparity in the performance of various players. If everyone does less (or more) damage, the content (or the damage) can be adjusted to that, but if you have a group where everyone does 50k+ DPS, and another where nobody gets beyond 20k, you can't adjust the content in a way that it works for both groups. This is the very reason they want to shrink this difference, and this is exactly what my proposal would do. Once that is done, adjusting the size of the health bar on bosses and mobs or adjusting the base level of dps is an easy task.

Just once more for emphasis - LAs already have a GCD

Just one more emphasis - LAs have a CD, not a GCD. Big difference.

T3hasiangod wrote: »

As everyone else has stated: no.

I don't understand where this misconception that people just spam their light attack button comes from. Surprise we don't.

This is what a typical end-game player does with their mouse. We don't "mindlessly click" the mouse and keyboard.

Excessive clicking may actually hurt your ratio and DPS more than mindful clicking.

"Excessively" and "mindlessly" are different things. Just because you mindlessly sleep-walk doesn't mean you're sprinting everywhere you go. It means that no mental effort is expended on it, and that's exactly what this change would fix. You'd actually have to think about whether you want to do that LA rather than mindlessly doing it every time regardless of the situation.

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Normally I don't like to immediately discount ideas or brush aside concepts, especially without seeing all sides of the argument, but in this case, no. Most end-game players aren't spamming. No one wants a bash weave meta. Bash weaving is even more toxicly exclusive and demanding than LA weaving. Putting LAs on the GCD wasn't a good idea when you brought it up like a week ago and honestly, it's aged like milk.

Everyone here from Strange to Asian has given you all the sound, logical reasons why this would be a horrendously bad idea, and if you still can't grasp why this would absolutely destroy the core functionality of this game, I can't help you. Just say no.

Everyone who responded negatively so far, including Asian, just entirely missed the point, same as you. It hasn't "aged like milk", because there isn't a single argument I heard so far that contradicted the fact that this change would achieve the stated goals much more efficiently and elegantly than anything that was proposed to date, including Code's suggestion (especially considering that he conveniently ignores the biggest "low APM" group that would be disadvantaged the most by his suggestion). If anything, it ages like Nicolaus Copernicus - I'm being burned at the stake by the religious pro-LA weaving lobby that will end up complaining a couple more times about rollercoaster changes that make no sense (i.e. repeat of the Summerset LA buffs after the current nerfs, and then a nerf again, because both changes are supposed to help the same people, but somehow something never fits) until enough people realize that the underlying system is the very cause of the problem.

idk wrote: »

1. The "thesis" ignores that basic attacks already have a control. It is redundant and pointless to add a second control which is exactly what OP is suggesting.
2. It reduced gameplay choices. Who in their right mind would waste a GCD on a basic attack if it did less damage than pretty much everything else in the game? OP's idea would literally only bad players would use a LA. Pure math would say this is a fact.
3. The entire suggestion ignores what sets ESO apart from most games and Zos' statements related to the changes they have us testing on the PTS which verifies that Zos is not interested in slowing down combat in the manner OP wants to see.

1. Please explain, I don't know what you mean.
2. People who need resources. People who decided to build for less sustain to have higher burst, and would benefit from a lower cost rotation when the fight takes longer than they anticipated. People who have always done it (i.e. part of the group that the PTS changes were supposed to help in the first place). People who want to activate the Ulti regen. People who don't have a weapon skill slotted, but would like to activate the enchant. PvPers who would suddenly have the option to control when their enchant procs so that they can line it up with their burst combo instead of having it wasted on reapplying DoTs. There are a lot of people who would use LAs for very different reasons in very different gameplay situations. Something that isn't true when you always have to do LA weaving, because otherwise you're doing it all wrong.
3. I'm not interested in slowing down combat, and this change wouldn't do it, it would just simplify the controls. I explained it at length. If you want to reduce the GCD to 0.5s, I have no problem with that, but I don't want to have to press the same button with every GCD regardless of what I'm trying to do.

EDIT: write-out the term "auto attacks", because for some reason the abbreviation of the term gets censored.

You seem to make this much more complicated than it is or needs to be.

1. The controls should be kept as simple as possible. - and there already is a control based on how long we hold down the button.

That control is simple. Just because you do not like it does not mean it needs to be changed and your logic is very much lacking.

2. Animation cancelling in general is an evil that is only sometimes necessary. - The animation is irrelevant as there is a control on what a basic attack does based on how long we hold down the button. Its beauty is in the simplicity.

2. Gameplay diversity. - Who in their right mind would waste a GCD on a basic attack if it did less damage than pretty much everything else in the game? OP's idea would literally only bad players would use a LA. Pure math would say this is a fact.

Let us not forget that Zos recognizes that "Combat in ESO is one of the things that truly separates our game from others like it. It’s action oriented, fast-paced, and gives you a lot of freedom over its various mechanics/interactions." Your idea would kill that and make this game's combat as boring as WoW/FF14 and SWTOR.

Conclusion. Basic attacks do not need a GCD and based on Zos' statement it will not get one.

OP recently indicated they no longer play this game. They stated

the proposed changes will not make my return any more likely, but putting LAs on the GCD would

. Granted, this thread is discussing the very reason they claim to not play this game anymore but I am just pointing this out so everyone understands the full picture.

BTW, from serious competitive raiders to very casual players I have never heard of anyone quitting the game because they want a different control on basic attacks than the one we have.

ForzaRammer · April 2020

I cleared all the hm trials on a tank without worrying about any LA weave.
whatever zos do with LA weave, not my concern, but quit nerfing HA sustain

ZeroXFF · April 2020

idk wrote: »

OP recently indicated they no longer play this game. They stated

the proposed changes will not make my return any more likely, but putting LAs on the GCD would

. Granted, this thread is discussing the very reason they claim to not play this game anymore but I am just pointing this out so everyone understands the full picture.

BTW, from serious competitive raiders to very casual players I have never heard of anyone quitting the game because they want a different control on basic attacks than the one we have.

You should quote the rest of that message, otherwise you're just spreading fake news.

I didn't quit because of it. But I know people who were trying out the game, but didn't want to continue because of this clunky mechanic. The quitting because of LA weaving doesn't happen for "raiders", it happens for those trying out the game and seeing how broken it is.

Dusk_Coven · April 2020

Barbaran wrote: »

LA weaving while staying on target I'm between attacks is an acquired skill.
CAN you stay on target long enough to get both attacks off. If Yes, then you deserve added damage.

Can you elaborate on how this would be more than Tab Targeting and keeping them in range?