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The Obstacle of Combat - Elder Scrolls Online Columns
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Obstacle of Combat - Elder Scrolls Online Columns
My time in The Elder Scrolls Online has been an odd one this week because despite my random adventuring across a variety of zones, I’ve begun to grow incredibly frustrated at how a AAA title, and arguably one of the last MMO giants, got something as fundamental as combat so spectacularly wrong.
Comments
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
It's not only that the moves vary from "awkward" to "horrible", but there also isn't a lot of variety of animations altogether.
I personally like to see that someone is bringing this up in an official article here and i grew a bit tired of constantly reading "what's wrong with it??", "it must be you, animations are top notch" whenever somebody mentioned this on the forums here.
So take this deniers!!!11
PS: clicking on the first pic doesn't enlarge it for me, while the 2nd one works.
It's unfortunate Copernicus failed because I'd like to believe the combat from Kingdoms of Amalur would have made it into the final product. I'd surprised other games haven't capitalized on and expanded their style of combat.
On the other hand, Amalur's 5 different animated poses do remind me of ESO.
1. You could dodge anything coming at you: Arrows, spells, blows, thrown objects.
2. For Melee, there was a setting in your combat screen for High, Medium, Low attacks: and different Mobs were weak in different areas of their body.
3. Your character felt grounded in the game world, and combat strikes felt more real. My first double strike Obsidian dagger gave me a feeling of real damage being done with each strike.
4. You had more control of your character during combat.
5. All aspects of armor, skill, or weapons damage was either buffable or debuffable.
ESO's combat includes Blocking, Dodge Rolling, Heavy and Light Attacks, Weapon Ability use, and Skill Ability use and in my opinion is one of the best active combat systems in any MMO. I say this because it is not over active bouncing everywhere, but deliberate.
Each time you use any of the above (block, dodge roll, heavy or light attack, weapon ability, skill ability) you make a choice because of the amount of time it takes to animate that skill/ability/attack. But there is no global cooldown like other games. Smooth combat comes from knowing your attacks and which ones you will execute and when to do so.
Others will mention animation canceling and what they are saying is basically that some attacks can be followed up with another type of attack and when you do so it executes faster than having to wait for the full animation. If there is any flaw in the combat it's not shorting the animation of these few attacks to reflect what's actually happening. However as you play and become more comfortable with your attacks, you just inherently know when to hit your next attack because of familiarity with it.
Once you complete Veteran Maelstrom Arena, please re-review combat. At that point, I will surely consider your perspective more than a first impression.
This is the perfect example of what I was talking about above. Combat becomes "smooth feeling" so to speak when you know and understand how long it will take to execute the attack you just used. If it doesn't feel responsive, use a different type of attack that feels good to you. It's like comparing the use of Surprise Attack and Wrecking Blow. One is a quick assassin strike and one is a huge swing of a two handed sword. They feel and act differently but both have their places. The difference in the speed of attacks are spread out just like this over all abilities and attacks in game. You can have a character who uses nothing but quick darting attacks that execute quickly or a character who uses nothing but long execute hard hitting devastating attacks with a slower pace of combat. The choice is yours as a player.
I dunno, I don't share this opinion, but I hear it a lot so it must be an issue.
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I love when people post stuff like this.. Come back after you have sinked XX amount of time into the game or done raiding before you opinion matters. Like people are really going to wait tell endgame to say if a game is bad or not. You know within the 1st hour or so if something feels good or not. You can make the call at that point rather you enjoy the combat or questing or whatever else. There is no need to go play endgame combat and then come back. Cause really if the combat is not fun right out the bat that is not going to change in XX amount of time.
Fair enough?
This is the reason i quit the game too. Lately i'm finding the cooldowns and delays in mmo combat really annoying and is just put in to gimp the player.
Age of Conan did it quite well imo.
nice combos with a good reward at the end of it (BAM!)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I like ESO's combat and I love the bow for my Nightblade and in general it's my fun weapon I use to enjoy combat as it just feels natural to use a bow. The bow was really great at first but because people used it to one or two shot players in PvP (rear head shot from stealth gave wicked damage) it got badly nerfed in PvP which means PvE also, and has once received a small damage increase since.
GW2 is the best in combat mechanics to me.
"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 sure do see a lot of new players dying or almost dying in extremely easy fights doing nothing but light attacks (short LMB click) with the odd heavy attack (LMB hold) and no ability use at all or just random ones not used nearly often enough. Maybe it's a failure of the game's intro and tutorials that don't emphasize enough that those things in ESO are what other MMOs call auto-attacks and do for you while you focus on using real abilities that matter.
I mean. if you're an experienced MMO player, doesn't a light bulb go off somewhere and you rub your hands in anticipation when you realize that ESO has no global cool down and you can choose to spam any thing you want instead of having to manage coold-owns and watch auto-attacks while you wait? IDK... maybe people miss auto-attacks and they feel compelled to simulate them even when you don't have to just to feel at home. Or is it just that clicking the LMB is so much easier than reaching for the 1-5, R and ~ key? I don't really know why - I use a gaming mouse so for me it's just a matter of thumb vs. index finger.
Why all this stuff seemingly unrelated to combat animations? Because IMO what you experience in ESO combat and your own character's animations and how that feels to you is intimately tied to what you choose to do and how often and in what sequence.
And then there is the bow. Every new player's favorite weapon it seems. I'm not saying that everyone who uses a bow is a bad player but bad players invariably choose the bow as their first and sometimes (it seems) only weapon. It's educational to run a 4-man instance as a healer and watch that guy who is never where the AOE ground healing is happening kiting something he aggroed away from everyone, around corners or even into other rooms... you know that guy? Well in ESO 99.9% of the time he'll be doing it with a bow, pew-pewing light attacks while everyone else in the group does something useful. They should require special licenses and skill-testing questions before players are allowed to use bows, especially in 4-man dungeons... but I digress.
The point is that every weapon and every skill has different animations. Some of those are very quick and satisfying (almost everything a sorcerer does, DW attacks and skills, etc.) and others very slow (wrecking blow or just about anything else with a 2-HD) and awkward.
Generalizing, the least satisfying animations in ESO are the basic LMB weapon attacks and the most satisfying are the abilities on your hot bars and ultimate abilities. A big, no VERY BIG, part of how you perceive the quality of ESO combat animations is your own play style.
I deliberately play using very few LMB attacks... to a fault I shpuld weave and animation cancel more for that extra bit of DPS. I have to actively remind myself to weave some in while fighting so I can regenerate my ultimate resource pool. I favor efficient abilities and passives that reduce my magicka or stamina use and regenerate it faster so I can do that. It works for me.
But I have plenty of visual evidence playing with and near others to know that many don't play like I do. Is that what's happening with those who are bothered by ESO's animations and those like me who have never, even before they improved them, been bothered by them? IDK... it's all I got. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
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