The Elder Scrolls Online

Utnayan · Jul 28, 2015

Rescorla_sl said:
Thanks for the input. In your opinion,for all those things you criticize TESO over, what MMOs do you think do meaty/weighty combat well?

In my opinion, right now, none.

To be clear, and I think I should point this out to you - It doesn't matter if a combat system is more interactive and fast paced when the interactivity is neutered with technical flaws related to the bullet points I listed.

About the closest to having a "somewhat" better experience than all the others would be WoW, but that is simply because they designed the game with that at the forefront. Making the UI and combat responsive, so it satisfies all the factors. Animations are also cancelled upon ability activation when needed.

With that said, TESO is one of the worst offenders - however, rated with SWTOR's ability delay which still plagues that game 4 years later, there are others that rival TESO's shortcomings. TESO is more in the spotlight because it is heavily influenced by action based combat rather than a cycle of button presses, so it is infinitely more noticeable. So to be fair, TESO will stand out more directly as a result of that. But it isn't just the combat. TESO still suffers from unresponsive environment behavior. Mashing E or hitting X on a controller to open a door and having to fire off that button a few times because for whatever the reason, it didn't respond the previous attempts within that 3-5 second time frame.

hodj · Jul 28, 2015

Yeah ESO's problem is the entire package is an insult to mediocrity.

Kedwyn · Jul 28, 2015

Tera had excellent action combat. I'd put just about any MMO that has launched over TESO combat feel wise with the exception of maybe LOTRO. Including duds like Vanguard, Warhammer and NeverWinter.

TESO's combat is pretty horrendous for many reasons. All of which have been exhaustively listed. TESO's lore is also terrible. Hard to get into a game when that is the case regardless of anything else.

Felmega_sl · Jul 28, 2015

Yeah. the TESO lore is all over the fucking place. I stopped reading side quests because it has become ridiculous. There has to be a better way for players to get involved in story besides hundreds, if not thousands, of stupid little quests that do not relate to each other nor have any affect on the world.

Of course, there is the possibility that we are all just getting old and our patience is worn for MMO questing.

Kedwyn · Jul 28, 2015

Felmega_sl said:
Yeah. the TESO lore is all over the fucking place. I stopped reading side quests because it has become ridiculous. There has to be a better way for players to get involved in story besides hundreds, if not thousands, of stupid little quests that do not relate to each other nor have any affect on the world.

Of course, there is the possibility that we are all just getting old and our patience is worn for MMO questing.

True. In addition to that there was no relief for it. The game was so linear you had no choice but to buck up and trudge through all the shit. At least in an actual Elder Scrolls game you can just say "hey this area fucking blows I'm going to go do something else" and that works fine enough. The quests are also shorter and over quicker in the single player games so things don't get drawn out nearly to the same extent. So you can deal with some of the bad stuff easier. Not too mention its entirely optional, unlike in TESO which forces you to endure the torture.

Utnayan · Jul 28, 2015

Felmega_sl said:
Yeah. the TESO lore is all over the fucking place. I stopped reading side quests because it has become ridiculous. There has to be a better way for players to get involved in story besides hundreds, if not thousands, of stupid little quests that do not relate to each other nor have any affect on the world.

Of course, there is the possibility that we are all just getting old and our patience is worn for MMO questing.

Lawrence Schick should have never been appointed to that role. A guy who hadn't done anything writing related since a D&D module in 1979 when the Hippity-Hop was popular. He buddied in with Rolston (The only reason why he was hired) before Ascendant was turned into KoA and re-branded. How the hell he even became employed at Zenimax Online and put in charge of the writing and lore for the entire game is one of many miss-steps in the hiring practices over there. And ultimately showed in the final product from A to Z. It's also where Zeb Cook came from (From what I am told Cook had influence in hiring Lawrence) The guy that was fired and was replaced by Paul Sage. Had that been Lambert instead replacing cook, as the entire company wanted from what I am told, I am guessing we would all be playing TESO as we speak. But back to the lore...

Seriously. If you are making pen and paper games in 1979, it's time to hang it up. Retire already. It's one thing if they move with the industry changes and adapt, it's another when they are hired over and over again based on the buddy system with inept failures on their records. IN the case of Schick, he did retire in 1999. 10 years later he is hired to lead up the entire lore process at ZO.

Face... Palm...

I mean seriously....

Rescorla_sl · Jul 28, 2015

Imperial City PVP DLC patch notes:

PTS Patch Notes v2.1 - Elder Scrolls Online

Utnayan · Jul 28, 2015

That is nice of them to make that DLC pack 2500 crowns, when crown purchasing options will force a player to purchase the 3,000 crown package for $24.99 and have 500 crowns they basically may not ever care about.

Someone should test out the imperial city and see if it is even worth it.

Rescorla_sl · Jul 30, 2015

Utnayan_sl said:
It may help if Rescorla understands the definitions and what is meant by Floaty combat, and meaty/weighty combat. The latter being the ultimate goal for a developer.

Floaty combat can be a mixture of many things. I'll try to bullet point them the best that I can.

* Inherent lag in an animation system causing a swing to go through, but the impact of the NPC's animation reaction happens half a second/a second later. This is an impact deficiency in the animation system (Which TESO has never fixed - and other games suffer from this as well)

* User Interface response times. When a user presses a button to activate a spell/swing/combat action, and there is a delay between hitting the button and the reaction of the character they are controlling. This is also still prevalent in TESO and has been addressed, but not to the point where it needs to, or possibly even can be at this point. Sometimes a player still has to click an action multiple times for it to go off because the animation is locking the ability until it completes. This can be fixed by breaking animations when a user initiates an action. This impacts the weight of the action/reaction game flow.

* Sound/Spatter: In combination with the first bullet point, the reaction of an NPC getting hit usually has a nice sound effect letting the player know they connected, whether it was blocked, all sorts of varying sound effects in combat along with possible blood spatter as a visual cue they just did some damage and a hit got through. Sometimes the sounds in TESO queue normally, sometimes they do not. Meaning that hits can hit, the swing goes right through the NPC they are battling, and the visual and/or audio reaction from the NPC doesn't match up to the action just performed by the player.

There are obviously more but this is a good reference point. A good combat system takes into account all three of the above at a minimum and focuses on it's quality and performance. If done correctly, it makes way for a weighty/meaty combat system - if any of the spokes in that wheel fall apart, it creates floaty/weightless combat and the feeling of not making in impact on said combat within a game.

TESO suffers from all three of the above in varying levels of poor quality development.

I spent about 15-20 minutes last night testing your three factors for weighty/meaty combat criteria. The only conclusion I can come up with is that you are making shit up again.

User interface response times. There is zero delay when you press a key and the animation firing off. This is just a Learn To Play issue on your part. You can't sit there and spam press keys as fast as possible. The animation of the first ability has to finish before you press another one. That is how the game is designed to work. With that said, since there is no GCD and some abilities like Block have higher priorities than regular abilities, that becomes a moot point once you learn all the nuances of animation canceling. A skilled player can fire off abilities at an extremely fast rate if they know how to take advantage of animation cancelliNg.

Sound splatter: There is no blood splatter in TESO but in regards to sounds all those things you say should be occurring are indeed occurring with no delay. Not once did an expected combat sound fail to play.

Inherent lag....Impact deficency: No idea what your complaint is here. When the game is suffering from real lag (high ping rates) then sure there is a noticeable delay between using your abilities and it registering on the mob you are attacking. When there is no lag its instant. If the game is truly doing what you are complaining about even when there is no lag, then whatever it is isn't significant enough for me to notice it.

hodj · Jul 30, 2015

Utnayan_sl said:
Seriously. If you are making pen and paper games in 1979, it's time to hang it up. Retire already. It's one thing if they move with the industry changes and adapt, it's another when they are hired over and over again based on the buddy system with inept failures on their records.

Jeff Dee's amazing awesomeness forces me to disagree with this statement.

I hope he never retires and lives forever.

Utnayan · Jul 30, 2015

Rescorla_sl said:
I spent about 15-20 minutes last night testing your three factors for weighty/meaty combat criteria. The only conclusion I can come up with is that you are making shit up again.

User interface response times. There is zero delay when you press a key and the animation firing off. This is just a Learn To Play issue on your part. You can't sit there and spam press keys as fast as possible. The animation of the first ability has to finish before you press another one. That is how the game is designed to work. With that said, since there is no GCD and some abilities like Block have higher priorities than regular abilities, that becomes a moot point once you learn all the nuances of animation canceling. A skilled player can fire off abilities at an extremely fast rate if they know how to take advantage of animation cancelliNg.

Sound splatter: There is no blood splatter in TESO but in regards to sounds all those things you say should be occurring are indeed occurring with no delay. Not once did an expected combat sound fail to play.

Inherent lag....Impact deficency: No idea what your complaint is here. When the game is suffering from real lag (high ping rates) then sure there is a noticeable delay between using your abilities and it registering on the mob you are attacking. When there is no lag its instant. If the game is truly doing what you are complaining about even when there is no lag, then whatever it is isn't significant enough for me to notice it.

Meanwhile... In the Zenimax Online Studios Ministry of Information office...

This is all well known and complained about regularly. If anyone is making anything up, it's you.

The console versions are far worse.

One last thing:

The animation of the first ability has to finish before you press another one. That is how the game is designed to work.

Yes. I know. This is also called piss fucking poor design.

Blackwulf · Jul 30, 2015

Eh, I dunno - I have my issues with the developers being assholes in this game, but I never had a problem with the way combat felt, other than when I was in Cyrodiil and shit was laggy. (in itself this was a huge issue, and one of the reasons I stopped playing.) Not sure if that's improved at all. I just watched one of Sypher's recent videos, and I don't see what the issue is - it's MMO fighting. They are swapping bars a lot, and rolling around, and nothing seems to have strange delays or whatever you guys are talking about.

bixxby · Jul 30, 2015

Haven't noticed a SWTOR/WHO mythic seconds type shit in this game. The main weirdness with combat is playing first person and mobs not responding to how they're getting wacked like they should. It's kind of jarring.

Rescorla_sl · Jul 30, 2015

Utnayan_sl said:
Meanwhile... In the Zenimax Online Studios Ministry of Information office...

This is all well known and complained about regularly. If anyone is making anything up, it's you.

The console versions are far worse.

One last thing:

Yes. I know. This is also called piss fucking poor design.

Well known and complained about by who? People who never played the game or played it back in beta when problems like that actually existed? Well no shit Sherlock, things have changed a lot in the past 18 months.

Lastly, you got no clue what you are talking about if you think a game with no global cooldown is going to allow players to spam abilities without allowing for the animation to complete. For someone who is a self-proclaimed expert on MMO design, it boggles my mind that you aren't aware that other MMOs use global cooldowns to give their combat animations enough time to complete. Everyone likes to complement WoW's animations (which are good) but they only look smooth because you can't do jack shit until the GCD is over. It's no different in TESO. By design, you can't do jack shit until the animation completes. That is by design because most of the time the amount of damage the ability inflicts factors in how long the animation is. Now you can get around designed behavior with animation cancelling (which is how the game separates the skilled versus unskilled players). Animation cancelling makes the combat more fast paced so the only people I've seen actually complain it are the players who are losing in PVP to players taking advantage of animation cancelling. Animation cancelling in TESO is like bard twisting in EQ1. It's not how the devs envisioned how the game would be played but they are not going to do anything to prevent players from doing it.

Rescorla_sl · Jul 30, 2015

bixxby_sl said:
Haven't noticed a SWTOR/WHO mythic seconds type shit in this game. The main weirdness with combat is playing first person and mobs not responding to how they're getting wacked like they should. It's kind of jarring.

I never play in 1st person so can't speak to that. Curious to know how you know you are standing inside the telegraph of whatever ability your target is about to use? Situational awareness in 3rd person just seems like it is so much simpler, especially in PVP. Do you find yourself getting knocked down a lot from mobs who are beside or behind you and you can't see their heavy attack animations?

Utnayan · Jul 30, 2015

Rescorla_sl said:
Well known and complained about by who? People who never played the game or played it back in beta when problems like that actually existed? Well no shit Sherlock, things have changed a lot in the past 18 months.

Lastly, you got no clue what you are talking about if you think a game with no global cooldown is going to allow players to spam abilities without allowing for the animation to complete. For someone who is a self-proclaimed expert on MMO design, it boggles my mind that you aren't aware that other MMOs use global cooldowns to give their combat animations enough time to complete. Everyone likes to complement WoW's animations (which are good) but they only look smooth because you can't do jack shit until the GCD is over. It's no different in TESO. By design, you can't do jack shit until the animation completes. That is by design because most of the time the amount of damage the ability inflicts factors in how long the animation is. Now you can get around designed behavior with animation cancelling (which is how the game separates the skilled versus unskilled players). Animation cancelling makes the combat more fast paced so the only people I've seen actually complain it are the players who are losing in PVP to players taking advantage of animation cancelling. Animation cancelling in TESO is like bard twisting in EQ1. It's not how the devs envisioned how the game would be played but they are not going to do anything to prevent players from doing it.

I am not going to get into another endless debate with you as to why the game sucks and this is one of the reasons which you defend blindly without recourse. All you have to do is google UI unresponsiveness, sound impact issues, and ability delay and read it all for yourself. Seeing you defend this and try to scapegoat it reminds me of the time everyone complained about delay with switching weapons which you said never happened to you and everyone was making it all up, only to see ZO come out publically and state it would be fixed in a patch and you had mysteriously vanished from that portion of the debate.

With that said, I find it hilarious that you think GCD's are used to give time for animations to complete rather than for normalization of standard abilities, inconjunction with a way to give other more powerful abilities balance while off of the GCD. Which all cancel animations upon activation. You know, the way it is meant to be because it is fluid and transparent.

Rescorla_sl · Jul 30, 2015

Blackwulf_sl said:
Eh, I dunno - I have my issues with the developers being assholes in this game, but I never had a problem with the way combat felt, other than when I was in Cyrodiil and shit was laggy. (in itself this was a huge issue, and one of the reasons I stopped playing.) Not sure if that's improved at all. I just watched one of Sypher's recent videos, and I don't see what the issue is - it's MMO fighting. They are swapping bars a lot, and rolling around, and nothing seems to have strange delays or whatever you guys are talking about.
]

Yea there are plenty of legit criticisms you can make about TESO (all well documented on the official forums) but IMO the combat isn't one of them. If you are a fan of fast paced action combat in MMOs then it functions well and their are almost unlimited options available to you to create your build. If you don't like fast paced action combat and instead prefer gameplay that relies on tab targeting, global cooldowns, skill rotations, playing Dance Dance Revolution to scripted encounters, etc then go play a game whose combat mechanics are designed to support that. It's all a matter of preference.

BTW the cause of Cyrodil lag was traced directly to the heavy usage of AOE abilities. Lag in the non-vet campaigns (where you don't have access to most of the AOE abilities) is almost non-existent. There were changes put in this new patch that changes the algorithm in how the game handles AOEs. No idea yet if it is working.

bixxby · Jul 30, 2015

Rescorla_sl said:
I never play in 1st person so can't speak to that. Curious to know how you know you are standing inside the telegraph of whatever ability your target is about to use? Situational awareness in 3rd person just seems like it is so much simpler, especially in PVP. Do you find yourself getting knocked down a lot from mobs who are beside or behind you and you can't see their heavy attack animations?

Not really, I downloaded some SCT mod that says BLOCK NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!! sos I just block. Character is too ugly to play in third person, more fun/immersive first person.

Felmega_sl · Jul 30, 2015

I, too, play in first person. It's much more immersive for me. I do well enough in Cyr, have no problems with situational awareness. I agree with Bixxby that there is not enough feedback when you melee someone, especially with the hard bash.

I enjoy the game but the lag in Cyr is game killing. I'm really curious how well this new DLC will be received.

Quaid · Jul 30, 2015

I also play in first person. It's one of the best things about this game. Getting hit with telegraphs is a small price to pay.

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