I have no complaints on blocking and dodging; they make the game feel more active combat-wise. My bitch is that animation canceling should NOT be a requisite to decent DPS scores. It's sloppy, piss-poor design; intentional or otherwise.
Animation cancelling is a MMO throwback that has no place in a modern triple AAA like ESO, the sooner they put enough of an alterative system in (blocking and dodging is certainly a start) it should be dumped.
I have no complaints on blocking and dodging; they make the game feel more active combat-wise. My bitch is that animation canceling should NOT be a requisite to decent DPS scores. It's sloppy, piss-poor design; intentional or otherwise.
But it isn't. It's only required for the very hardest content (HM trials) and then only if you want to trivialize the content by over-DPSing your way out of having to deal with the mechanics you would otherwise run into.
It's an elitist ESO cultural thing and there isn't much in the game that needs animation canceling.
HM trial no-death speed run achievements? Yeah maybe for those you want all DPSers to pump out 50K+. If that's what you're into, I can understand fretting about it if you can't cancel efficiently.
In any other situation you're just fretting over a non-issue because you've read what the end game trial crowd likes to bitch about.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Combat seems to be the hardest thing to change in MMOs. Number one complaint in TSW was the combat and over the years they've changed everything but the combat, even in SWL. ESO seems the same way. The system they've built is the system they're stuck with.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I hate the weaving aspect; it's just an exploit that they couldn't be bothered to fix so they allowed it and the game is now balanced around it.
How can you have real active blocking and interrupts without the ability to cancel out of whatever else you were doing when you need to do it?
That's where animation canceling comes from. When DPSers figured out they could cancel ability animations by blocking or bashing at thin air and increase their DPS quite a bit by forcing those shorter animations what was ZOS supposed to do? Get rid of active blocking?
And how the heck do you have active blocking in a game with global cool downs?
They built combat around the ability to instantly change your mind and that's why when it's played well, it feels very fast paced.
I quite like it this way and the old style MMOs with GCDs and nothing but roll-dodge for active damage mitigation are the ones that feel clunky to me.
I can understand players having a preference for one type of MMO combat or the other. But I find it amusing when I read all the posts in the official forums from people that want to get rid of animation canceling and have no clue that active blocking would also have to go if they do that.
My advise to DPSers who think animation canceling (and weaving which is part of that) is a lazy kludge, is to roll a tank and L2P a tank properly in ESO. If you do that you'd finally understand why it's there and how it would be a totally different game without it.
ROFLMAO! BOOM!!!!! told the noob to get a tank... LOL!
Sz
You like a 12 year old or something? That wasn't the point of their reply at all.
geez... I just found that funny. what's your deal?
No one is asking to get rid of active blocking/interupts, just stop skills being cast if you cancel them.
That would be a technical discussion about the details of ability affect and animations of different durations that's beyond the scope or understanding of most of us, myself included, who are not action game designers.
ESO is by no means the only game where you can get extra DPS by animation canceling. You can in many other MMOs and single player games. Blade and Soul and Mass Effect to name just a couple.
And believe it or not, each ability in ESO does have a minimum time it needs to play out before it can be cancelled and still apply its effect: cancel it too soon and you get nothing. Try doing a keyboard or mouse macro to do the animation cancelling for you and you'll quickly run into having to introduce delays of different lengths depending on what it is you're trying to cancel. And yes I do have first hand experience with those macros because I did exactly that with my stamsorc several years ago just to see how it could be done. And no I don't use macros while playing because I hardly ever feel a need to animation cancel with the content I normally play and when I do want to pump out that extra DPS on a boss fight I can do it manually easy enough.
When you're developing a game you can set the hit/damage calculation to happen as soon as the key press is detected, at the very end of the animation or anywhere in between. In ESO's case, as well as many other games, that calculation happens close to the start after a short delay. Why they decided to do it that way instead of after a longer delay I don't have the technical expertise to tell you. Maybe they were going all-in on fast pace and the cumulative effect of having all calculations have a longer delay didn't feel right to them... IDK why they went this way but since they're not the only developers who chose to do that for their game I assume there must be some nearly universal reason why short delays are chosen over longer ones.
Your suggestion that a block always cancels the damage of an ability if the animation is still playing would be something at the total opposite end of the spectrum and would require a post full animation calculation. I can't think offhand of a game that does it that way but I'd bet that would feel much slower than ESO combat.
Yes its a programming issue, but just because it a similar problem may also exist to varying degrees in other games doesn't make it good, nor do I think combat would feel "much slower" if it worked properly.
Don't get the wrong impression though, I'm not one of those people who think ESO combat is terrible because of animation cancelling, I just think it would be much better for various reasons if the animations actually played out properly. All in all its still one of my favorite MMO combat systems.
I would surmise that PvP would highly encourage the behavior, too. It introduces the prisoner's dilemma when you're not fighting programmed AI, but other people.
No one is asking to get rid of active blocking/interupts, just stop skills being cast if you cancel them.
That would be a technical discussion about the details of ability affect and animations of different durations that's beyond the scope or understanding of most of us, myself included, who are not action game designers.
ESO is by no means the only game where you can get extra DPS by animation canceling. You can in many other MMOs and single player games. Blade and Soul and Mass Effect to name just a couple.
And believe it or not, each ability in ESO does have a minimum time it needs to play out before it can be cancelled and still apply its effect: cancel it too soon and you get nothing. Try doing a keyboard or mouse macro to do the animation cancelling for you and you'll quickly run into having to introduce delays of different lengths depending on what it is you're trying to cancel. And yes I do have first hand experience with those macros because I did exactly that with my stamsorc several years ago just to see how it could be done. And no I don't use macros while playing because I hardly ever feel a need to animation cancel with the content I normally play and when I do want to pump out that extra DPS on a boss fight I can do it manually easy enough.
When you're developing a game you can set the hit/damage calculation to happen as soon as the key press is detected, at the very end of the animation or anywhere in between. In ESO's case, as well as many other games, that calculation happens close to the start after a short delay. Why they decided to do it that way instead of after a longer delay I don't have the technical expertise to tell you. Maybe they were going all-in on fast pace and the cumulative effect of having all calculations have a longer delay didn't feel right to them... IDK why they went this way but since they're not the only developers who chose to do that for their game I assume there must be some nearly universal reason why short delays are chosen over longer ones.
Your suggestion that a block always cancels the damage of an ability if the animation is still playing would be something at the total opposite end of the spectrum and would require a post full animation calculation. I can't think offhand of a game that does it that way but I'd bet that would feel much slower than ESO combat.
Yes its a programming issue, but just because it a similar problem may also exist to varying degrees in other games doesn't make it good, nor do I think combat would feel "much slower" if it worked properly.
Don't get the wrong impression though, I'm not one of those people who think ESO combat is terrible because of animation cancelling, I just think it would be much better for various reasons if the animations actually played out properly. All in all its still one of my favorite MMO combat systems.
We'll just have to agree to disagree.
You, yourself said in your previous post that you understand why with an active block system animations need to be interrupted. Your only disagreement with the way it currently works seemed to be that you think that when animations get interrupted the healing or damage or whatever the ability that was interrupted was doing shouldn't happen.
But now you're saying that you want animations to play out. So which is it? You're OK with animations being cancelled by active blocks as long as what was cancelled doesn't happen or do you want blocks to get queued and only happens after the current animation ends naturally? I hope you mean the first one because the second one makes no sense at all if blocks are going to have any use.
Either way yeah... it would be a lot slower.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
No one is asking to get rid of active blocking/interupts, just stop skills being cast if you cancel them.
That would be a technical discussion about the details of ability affect and animations of different durations that's beyond the scope or understanding of most of us, myself included, who are not action game designers.
ESO is by no means the only game where you can get extra DPS by animation canceling. You can in many other MMOs and single player games. Blade and Soul and Mass Effect to name just a couple.
And believe it or not, each ability in ESO does have a minimum time it needs to play out before it can be cancelled and still apply its effect: cancel it too soon and you get nothing. Try doing a keyboard or mouse macro to do the animation cancelling for you and you'll quickly run into having to introduce delays of different lengths depending on what it is you're trying to cancel. And yes I do have first hand experience with those macros because I did exactly that with my stamsorc several years ago just to see how it could be done. And no I don't use macros while playing because I hardly ever feel a need to animation cancel with the content I normally play and when I do want to pump out that extra DPS on a boss fight I can do it manually easy enough.
When you're developing a game you can set the hit/damage calculation to happen as soon as the key press is detected, at the very end of the animation or anywhere in between. In ESO's case, as well as many other games, that calculation happens close to the start after a short delay. Why they decided to do it that way instead of after a longer delay I don't have the technical expertise to tell you. Maybe they were going all-in on fast pace and the cumulative effect of having all calculations have a longer delay didn't feel right to them... IDK why they went this way but since they're not the only developers who chose to do that for their game I assume there must be some nearly universal reason why short delays are chosen over longer ones.
Your suggestion that a block always cancels the damage of an ability if the animation is still playing would be something at the total opposite end of the spectrum and would require a post full animation calculation. I can't think offhand of a game that does it that way but I'd bet that would feel much slower than ESO combat.
Yes its a programming issue, but just because it a similar problem may also exist to varying degrees in other games doesn't make it good, nor do I think combat would feel "much slower" if it worked properly.
Don't get the wrong impression though, I'm not one of those people who think ESO combat is terrible because of animation cancelling, I just think it would be much better for various reasons if the animations actually played out properly. All in all its still one of my favorite MMO combat systems.
We'll just have to agree to disagree.
You, yourself said in your previous post that you understand why with an active block system animations need to be interrupted. Your only disagreement with the way it currently works seemed to be that you think that when animations get interrupted the healing or damage or whatever the ability that was interrupted was doing shouldn't happen.
But now you're saying that you want animations to play out. So which is it? You're OK with animations being cancelled by active blocks as long as what was cancelled doesn't happen or do you want blocks to get queued and only happens after the current animation ends naturally? I hope you mean the first one because the second one makes no sense at all if blocks are going to have any use.
Either way yeah... it would be a lot slower.
I don't think an active block system NEEDS to always interrupt skills; if I was designing a game I would probably have players commit to whatever action they planned to take with only limited recourse to cancelling their actions, perhaps depending on class/weapon type/training etc.
However, in ESO's case where the game is designed around the idea that you can block/etc to cancel skills, I think the animations should at least play out in full for a skill to fire its effect (ie: if you interrupt a skill mid-animation by blocking etc, then that skill should not fire).
The main issue I have with the way animation clipping works in ESO is that it reduces or eliminates the animation tells, and reading/reacting to those tells is part of what makes pvp interesting. Since ESO is an online game this problem is compounded when you add in a bit of lag. It is also far more prevalent and has a larger impact on combat than similar issues in games like GW2 (which is why you rarely see anyone talking about animation clipping/cancelling in GW2).
Imagine this from a pve perspective: How do you think players would feel if boss mobs started animation clipping? Instead of a relatively long animation of a skill that would oneshot most nontanks, the boss now casts three skills that hit almost simultaneously and does not have the regular animation tell (light attack, cancelled into oneshot attack, cancelled into interrupt). Then when players point out the glitch the devs say "its a feature not a bug".
I hate the weaving aspect; it's just an exploit that they couldn't be bothered to fix so they allowed it and the game is now balanced around it.
How can you have real active blocking and interrupts without the ability to cancel out of whatever else you were doing when you need to do it?
That's where animation canceling comes from. When DPSers figured out they could cancel ability animations by blocking or bashing at thin air and increase their DPS quite a bit by forcing those shorter animations what was ZOS supposed to do? Get rid of active blocking?
And how the heck do you have active blocking in a game with global cool downs?
They built combat around the ability to instantly change your mind and that's why when it's played well, it feels very fast paced.
I quite like it this way and the old style MMOs with GCDs and nothing but roll-dodge for active damage mitigation are the ones that feel clunky to me.
I can understand players having a preference for one type of MMO combat or the other. But I find it amusing when I read all the posts in the official forums from people that want to get rid of animation canceling and have no clue that active blocking would also have to go if they do that.
My advise to DPSers who think animation canceling (and weaving which is part of that) is a lazy kludge, is to roll a tank and L2P a tank properly in ESO. If you do that you'd finally understand why it's there and how it would be a totally different game without it.
I was in the first closed beta and beyond. Animation canceling was brought to zeni attention in the one of the first couple closed betas and was also listed in the known bugs/exploits way back then. Nothing was ever done about since they would have to change way to much to actually fix it so they took the easy way out.
I could do it just fine, but didn't simply because it does nothing but add a level of busy work, not skill to my rotation. If people find it enjoyable then that's great. All that matters is people are having fun with it. Those who don't enjoy it though will never be invited to harder content though since it's required along with the current FOTM build.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
I specify: The one that the character can attack while moving.....it seems that the character is split in half, that from waist to top does some things that do not correspond to the one below. He slides like he's skating all the time, and that totally takes me out of the game.
As a TERA combat system, it seems to me to be an example to follow.
And it's a shame, because the content of TESO (which is where TERA crashes, which has no endgame beyond spamming the same dungeons all the time) calls me so much.
So I HATE TESO's combat system, it's extremely "unreal" for you to run around like a headless chicken with your head blown off in the air.
I've already given up hope that they'll change it for a new one.
i never could find much liking in the ESO combat system..
until.... i did some research...
there is definately some skill in the combat.. weaving light and heavy attacks into your rotation knowing how and when to cancel annimations switching skillbars on the fly knowing how and when to counterattack offcourse the dodging..
i used to just stand there and use my skillbars skills just like on wow or other Mmo’s and yes thats kinda slow and boring but now i have found the true depth in the system, and i love it, i really do..
actually the combat has grown so much on me over the past 2 months that it is currently on top of my list for all MMO’s strange isn’t it, how with a few small online lessons, the feeling totally changed.. it actually feels like real combat now to me.. lots of reactional things to do.. and i think skill really sets the good players apart..
Animation canceling is not a combat feature, it is crappy design.
Well, if you ever seen a real life sword fight, the opponents are definitely moving non stop. If you stay at one place, you are dead meat.
Seems to me it's with the animations you have a problem, not the combat.
PS: I found Tera's combat terrible, very static and boring, specially compared to both GW2 and ESO.
How about Blade and Soul then?
Interesting from what I have heard, currently we have four options; trinity, trinity+, zergfest, something new like B&S. Either trinity+ or something new please.
I like Dynasty Warrior combat where I kill 100's of newbs with one combo, that includes like 5 or 6 button presses and two buttons, so I'm a horrible judge of MMORPG combat!
How was Wildstar combat at endgame and dungeons/raids? I never made it that far.
Well, if you ever seen a real life sword fight, the opponents are definitely moving non stop. If you stay at one place, you are dead meat.
Seems to me it's with the animations you have a problem, not the combat.
PS: I found Tera's combat terrible, very static and boring, specially compared to both GW2 and ESO.
No. Try to do some sicko (in the air...) and run at the same time, to see how long you last.
In sword fighting you move FEWLY, just enough to dodge some swords and little else, you don't run like a chicken without a head, that's ridiculous.
In TERA or Neverwinter Online you move, but not like a meaningless madman running around while you're hitting the air.
No matter how you look at it, it's RIDICLE and it totally takes me out of the game.
Neverwinter Online probably has my favorite implementation of an action combat system in an mmo, its both fluid and impactful. Somehow I almost find it strange how well the devs pulled off that particular aspect of the game.
Well, if you ever seen a real life sword fight, the opponents are definitely moving non stop. If you stay at one place, you are dead meat.
Seems to me it's with the animations you have a problem, not the combat.
PS: I found Tera's combat terrible, very static and boring, specially compared to both GW2 and ESO.
No. Try to do some sicko (in the air...) and run at the same time, to see how long you last.
In sword fighting you move FEWLY, just enough to dodge some swords and little else, you don't run like a chicken without a head, that's ridiculous.
In TERA or Neverwinter Online you move, but not like a meaningless madman running around while you're hitting the air.
No matter how you look at it, it's RIDICLE and it totally takes me out of the game.
If you want a combat simulator, a MMORPG isn't really a good choice. I haven't yet seen people launch fireballs from some body cavity in combat in real life.
As I said, it's not the combat you dislike, but the animations. That's ok to me. I dislike the Tera animations a lot, Neverwinter isn't bad though, too bad the rest of the game sucks (to me).
Apparently, you haven't seen a fight with someone that ate White Castle's the night before....
Well, if you ever seen a real life sword fight, the opponents are definitely moving non stop. If you stay at one place, you are dead meat.
Seems to me it's with the animations you have a problem, not the combat.
PS: I found Tera's combat terrible, very static and boring, specially compared to both GW2 and ESO.
No. Try to do some sicko (in the air...) and run at the same time, to see how long you last.
In sword fighting you move FEWLY, just enough to dodge some swords and little else, you don't run like a chicken without a head, that's ridiculous.
In TERA or Neverwinter Online you move, but not like a meaningless madman running around while you're hitting the air.
No matter how you look at it, it's RIDICLE and it totally takes me out of the game.
If you want a combat simulator, a MMORPG isn't really a good choice. I haven't yet seen people launch fireballs from some body cavity in combat in real life.
As I said, it's not the combat you dislike, but the animations. That's ok to me. I dislike the Tera animations a lot, Neverwinter isn't bad though, too bad the rest of the game sucks (to me).
No need to look for a combat simulator, there are some MMORPGs that do well their combat system (which by the way, is where you spend the most time in an MMO), like TERA, Neverwinter or Final fantasy XI (I don't like 14 at all, it looks like a skating rink all the time).
But TESO should be asked for much more in its combat system, a real pity.
Well, if you ever seen a real life sword fight, the opponents are definitely moving non stop. If you stay at one place, you are dead meat.
Seems to me it's with the animations you have a problem, not the combat.
PS: I found Tera's combat terrible, very static and boring, specially compared to both GW2 and ESO.
No. Try to do some sicko (in the air...) and run at the same time, to see how long you last.
In sword fighting you move FEWLY, just enough to dodge some swords and little else, you don't run like a chicken without a head, that's ridiculous.
In TERA or Neverwinter Online you move, but not like a meaningless madman running around while you're hitting the air.
No matter how you look at it, it's RIDICLE and it totally takes me out of the game.
If you want a combat simulator, a MMORPG isn't really a good choice. I haven't yet seen people launch fireballs from some body cavity in combat in real life.
As I said, it's not the combat you dislike, but the animations. That's ok to me. I dislike the Tera animations a lot, Neverwinter isn't bad though, too bad the rest of the game sucks (to me).
But TESO should be asked for much more in its combat system, a real pity.
While I'm no fan of the animation cancelling, has the ES series ever really had relatively top-notch RPG combat? In my opinion: no.
I mean, even in Skyrim, you couldn't parry while dual-wielding without mods. You literally were locked into wailing away frantically in a race to zero health with the mob.
Don't get me started on the Wards; there was no good use for them that couldn't be achieved by merely strafing instead.
I played those games in spite of their combat systems, not because of it. The same goes for ESO.
I wish I could get into the combat of ESO, because it looks like a good game. I just plain suck at action combat.
I don't think its that much different from other mmos in pve since the mobs don't move around a lot. Do you have any specific examples of what makes it hard or difficult to "get into"?
I do find it quite different in group pvp situations though because you can't lock onto targets as easily as in tab targeting games.
Comments
It's an elitist ESO cultural thing and there isn't much in the game that needs animation canceling.
HM trial no-death speed run achievements? Yeah maybe for those you want all DPSers to pump out 50K+. If that's what you're into, I can understand fretting about it if you can't cancel efficiently.
In any other situation you're just fretting over a non-issue because you've read what the end game trial crowd likes to bitch about.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
geez... I just found that funny. what's your deal?
mental
Sz
Yes its a programming issue, but just because it a similar problem may also exist to varying degrees in other games doesn't make it good, nor do I think combat would feel "much slower" if it worked properly.
Don't get the wrong impression though, I'm not one of those people who think ESO combat is terrible because of animation cancelling, I just think it would be much better for various reasons if the animations actually played out properly. All in all its still one of my favorite MMO combat systems.
You, yourself said in your previous post that you understand why with an active block system animations need to be interrupted. Your only disagreement with the way it currently works seemed to be that you think that when animations get interrupted the healing or damage or whatever the ability that was interrupted was doing shouldn't happen.
But now you're saying that you want animations to play out. So which is it? You're OK with animations being cancelled by active blocks as long as what was cancelled doesn't happen or do you want blocks to get queued and only happens after the current animation ends naturally? I hope you mean the first one because the second one makes no sense at all if blocks are going to have any use.
Either way yeah... it would be a lot slower.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I don't think an active block system NEEDS to always interrupt skills; if I was designing a game I would probably have players commit to whatever action they planned to take with only limited recourse to cancelling their actions, perhaps depending on class/weapon type/training etc.
However, in ESO's case where the game is designed around the idea that you can block/etc to cancel skills, I think the animations should at least play out in full for a skill to fire its effect (ie: if you interrupt a skill mid-animation by blocking etc, then that skill should not fire).
The main issue I have with the way animation clipping works in ESO is that it reduces or eliminates the animation tells, and reading/reacting to those tells is part of what makes pvp interesting. Since ESO is an online game this problem is compounded when you add in a bit of lag. It is also far more prevalent and has a larger impact on combat than similar issues in games like GW2 (which is why you rarely see anyone talking about animation clipping/cancelling in GW2).
Imagine this from a pve perspective: How do you think players would feel if boss mobs started animation clipping? Instead of a relatively long animation of a skill that would oneshot most nontanks, the boss now casts three skills that hit almost simultaneously and does not have the regular animation tell (light attack, cancelled into oneshot attack, cancelled into interrupt). Then when players point out the glitch the devs say "its a feature not a bug".
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
I specify: The one that the character can attack while moving.....it seems that the character is split in half, that from waist to top does some things that do not correspond to the one below. He slides like he's skating all the time, and that totally takes me out of the game.
As a TERA combat system, it seems to me to be an example to follow.
And it's a shame, because the content of TESO (which is where TERA crashes, which has no endgame beyond spamming the same dungeons all the time) calls me so much.
So I HATE TESO's combat system, it's extremely "unreal" for you to run around like a headless chicken with your head blown off in the air.
I've already given up hope that they'll change it for a new one.
Interesting from what I have heard, currently we have four options; trinity, trinity+, zergfest, something new like B&S. Either trinity+ or something new please.
In sword fighting you move FEWLY, just enough to dodge some swords and little else, you don't run like a chicken without a head, that's ridiculous.
In TERA or Neverwinter Online you move, but not like a meaningless madman running around while you're hitting the air.
No matter how you look at it, it's RIDICLE and it totally takes me out of the game.
How was Wildstar combat at endgame and dungeons/raids? I never made it that far.
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
But TESO should be asked for much more in its combat system, a real pity.
I mean, even in Skyrim, you couldn't parry while dual-wielding without mods. You literally were locked into wailing away frantically in a race to zero health with the mob.
Don't get me started on the Wards; there was no good use for them that couldn't be achieved by merely strafing instead.
I played those games in spite of their combat systems, not because of it. The same goes for ESO.
I do find it quite different in group pvp situations though because you can't lock onto targets as easily as in tab targeting games.