From the recent developer comment on combat in Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), this is the direction they are looking at.
Here is the fundamental distinction in ESO from other games: What players are currently doing in ESO to achieve what they claim is a "fast-paced" game is actually NOT in the developer's control. I discuss Animation Cancelling at the end in an appendix but for now, it is enough to observe that players discovered and used light attack weaving and the various block cancellations to achieve that "fast-paced" game. And because cancelling actions/animations without cancelling some or all of the benefits is fundamentally counter to common sense, new players don't even think to try it because no reasonable person would expect that it should work.
So now we have two problems: Players in control of combat development using an originally unintended mechanic, and immediate resistance from newer players to learning something that goes against common sense.
Furthermore, the statement "you can’t keep casting abilities or block/roll dodge without the proper resources to fuel those actions" is in fact incorrect and ignores what players are actually doing in the game. They can in fact sustain a lot of abilities and blocking without significant encumbrance of resources. For example, how is the very concept of block cancelling even viable without being able to repeatedly block after every skill?
So how can fast-paced combat be introduced to ESO in a way that is firmly in the developer's control? Obviously, the first step is to put all combat under the control of the developer (see Appendix). Players cannot be in a position to demand that their play style be accommodated. Once that external variable is eliminated, the parameters of combat are wholly in the control of the developer, and real work in balancing content can actually begin.
Second, we can look at stable models of fast-placed gameplay options and try them. For this example, we will use Alacrity, which has been part of SWTOR for a very long time. It's not reinventing the wheel.
For an easy definition of Alacrity (which isn't strictly how SWTOR uses it), let us say that +1% of Alacrity will reduce your global cooldown to (GCD / 1.01); Channels and delays reduce in time to (channel speed / 1.01); and over-time effect ticks that normally happen per-second now happen every (1 / 1.01) seconds. In short, everything happens and animates faster.
Each +1% Alacrity will not necessarily result in a straight +1% damage increase. It is offset somewhat by wasting some of that due to moving and positioning; and it can be more useful than that because the reduction in global cooldown means other utility effects can be enacted more frequently. As Alacrity increases, players will have to think faster and react faster to continuously take advantage of the reduced Global Cooldown.
Finally, we introduce it carefully into the game. It is basically a new, so widely propagating it everywhere, even with initial positive feedback from controlled tests, would be short-sighted.
Step 1: Introduce it into a controlled test environment
Prior to spreading a new mechanic into the game world at large, it is safer to test and gather feedback in a controlled way. We can do this by changing the Minor Slayer and Major Slayer set item buffs from Damage to Alacrity, but still restrict them to the environment of Dungeons and Trials.
Step 2: Introduce it to players in a gradual way
Assuming that the tests point show adding Alacrity is favourable to the game, it can be expanded outside the test environment with Champion Points. By the time a player has Champion Points, they should have a reasonable grasp of combat. And as they slowly spend their Champion Points, putting some in Alacrity (if they wish) is a way to gradually acclimate them to a faster pace of combat.
One way to introduce Alacrity without too much overhaul is to replace Invigorating Bash, Bashing Focus, and Vengeance with something else that increases Alacrity.
By putting it into the pool of options for Champion Points (and various item sets), Alacrity becomes another option, one which players can choose for their personal play pattern / power fantasy instead of feeling forced to adopt.
Appendix: On Animation Cancelling
Light attack weaving and the various animation cancellation tricks are, in basically every other game, unintended and an exploit. Here is an example of a sensible approach to unintended animation cancelling (in Overwatch):
What can be achieved with animation cancelling in ESO compared to playing the game as originally intended without all kinds of cancels is so great that even when someone explains how to stack several things all into the space of a single global cooldown, it still looks like cheating -- especially to a new player, even one who looks at the Death Recap and of course doesn't understand at all how it can be possible without cheating since there's clearly a global cooldown.
Because these out-of-developer-control results can be obtained with animation cancelling, it is no wonder that some players will make any number of excuses why it should continue to be allowed. They can breeze through all the Player Versus Environment content in the game -- content not balanced around animation cancelling.
And in Player Versus Player -- where in all games cheats and exploits commonly surface -- they can destroy any player who doesn't know about it and doesn't use it. New players to PvP are so consistently bewildered by what is happening that PvP in ESO is a non-starter for them. They rightly think the other players are cheating because it clearly looks that way.
Finally we also know that that macros or other automation can be used in ESO from the various bots that are discovered. The particular "play style" of rapid cancelling not only facilitates the possibility of macros being used to perform them, but makes investigation harder ("I can press the buttons really fast") and divides the community as they argue whether someone is cheating or not. Even without macros, the extremely short delay between keypresses -- multiplied by many players doing it -- can overload a server. If more players start to learn it, the situation will only become worse.
Appendix: On Removing Animation Cancelling
Here is a framework for how to remove Animation Cancelling from ESO, and restore intuitive combat. The goal is that combat should be intuitive and reasonable. What the players see corresponds to what is happening. If a monster used animation cancelling on a player -- drew its bow but didn't fire and instead immediately raised its shield to block -- would a player expect to get hit by an arrow?
Light Attack Weaving / Animation Cancelling
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. It is balanced not with ability cooldowns, but via ability costs and resource pools - you can’t keep casting abilities or block/roll dodge without the proper resources to fuel those actions. We’ve found that players love this freedom and there is always a “button to press” or action to take at any point in combat.Games like SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) in fact have a fast-paced combat option in their ALACRITY stat, which players can choose to focus on and additionally enhance with skills and choosing specific classes that emphasize that play (e.g., the Carnage subclass for the Marauder, Berserk skill). This mechanic is firmly in the developer's control and is intended. Players experience it throughout the character development/levelling process because it is a core attribute every player has.
Here is the fundamental distinction in ESO from other games: What players are currently doing in ESO to achieve what they claim is a "fast-paced" game is actually NOT in the developer's control. I discuss Animation Cancelling at the end in an appendix but for now, it is enough to observe that players discovered and used light attack weaving and the various block cancellations to achieve that "fast-paced" game. And because cancelling actions/animations without cancelling some or all of the benefits is fundamentally counter to common sense, new players don't even think to try it because no reasonable person would expect that it should work.
So now we have two problems: Players in control of combat development using an originally unintended mechanic, and immediate resistance from newer players to learning something that goes against common sense.
Furthermore, the statement "you can’t keep casting abilities or block/roll dodge without the proper resources to fuel those actions" is in fact incorrect and ignores what players are actually doing in the game. They can in fact sustain a lot of abilities and blocking without significant encumbrance of resources. For example, how is the very concept of block cancelling even viable without being able to repeatedly block after every skill?
So how can fast-paced combat be introduced to ESO in a way that is firmly in the developer's control? Obviously, the first step is to put all combat under the control of the developer (see Appendix). Players cannot be in a position to demand that their play style be accommodated. Once that external variable is eliminated, the parameters of combat are wholly in the control of the developer, and real work in balancing content can actually begin.
Second, we can look at stable models of fast-placed gameplay options and try them. For this example, we will use Alacrity, which has been part of SWTOR for a very long time. It's not reinventing the wheel.
For an easy definition of Alacrity (which isn't strictly how SWTOR uses it), let us say that +1% of Alacrity will reduce your global cooldown to (GCD / 1.01); Channels and delays reduce in time to (channel speed / 1.01); and over-time effect ticks that normally happen per-second now happen every (1 / 1.01) seconds. In short, everything happens and animates faster.
Each +1% Alacrity will not necessarily result in a straight +1% damage increase. It is offset somewhat by wasting some of that due to moving and positioning; and it can be more useful than that because the reduction in global cooldown means other utility effects can be enacted more frequently. As Alacrity increases, players will have to think faster and react faster to continuously take advantage of the reduced Global Cooldown.
Finally, we introduce it carefully into the game. It is basically a new, so widely propagating it everywhere, even with initial positive feedback from controlled tests, would be short-sighted.
Step 1: Introduce it into a controlled test environment
Prior to spreading a new mechanic into the game world at large, it is safer to test and gather feedback in a controlled way. We can do this by changing the Minor Slayer and Major Slayer set item buffs from Damage to Alacrity, but still restrict them to the environment of Dungeons and Trials.
Step 2: Introduce it to players in a gradual way
Assuming that the tests point show adding Alacrity is favourable to the game, it can be expanded outside the test environment with Champion Points. By the time a player has Champion Points, they should have a reasonable grasp of combat. And as they slowly spend their Champion Points, putting some in Alacrity (if they wish) is a way to gradually acclimate them to a faster pace of combat.
One way to introduce Alacrity without too much overhaul is to replace Invigorating Bash, Bashing Focus, and Vengeance with something else that increases Alacrity.
By putting it into the pool of options for Champion Points (and various item sets), Alacrity becomes another option, one which players can choose for their personal play pattern / power fantasy instead of feeling forced to adopt.
Appendix: On Animation Cancelling
Light attack weaving and the various animation cancellation tricks are, in basically every other game, unintended and an exploit. Here is an example of a sensible approach to unintended animation cancelling (in Overwatch):
A Reminder for those who think animation canceling is a part of the gameThis was written by Geoff Goodman after the Widowmaker nerf for her animation cancel.In the very few games where animation cancelling is actually intended, it is under the control of the developers who planned and programmed for it, and it works in an actually intuitive way. For example, cancelling the animation actually cancels the maneuver. The feedback the player gets corresponds to what is happening, so it's intuitive, they understand it, and therefore they can now choose to properly apply it.
Making the sure game feels responsive and smooth is very important to us. Wherever we can, we make sure that the game responds to player input asap.
However, the one situation where we have to step in and possibly slow things down is when an 'animation canceling' trick is discovered and allows players to significantly increase a characters power.
There are two main problems with just leaving these things in the game as they are.
- This trick becomes the new balance of the hero. Lets say there is a trick that somehow allowed you to instantly complete McCree's roll instead of waiting for it to complete normally. At that point, the character is much stronger, and might suddenly be a balancing problem. The choices then becomes either fix that bug, or allow it to exist and reduce his power elsewhere. If we decide to reduce his power elsewhere, unless you know how to do this special (and often unintuitive) trick, he will never feel correctly powerful for you.
- Learning a hero now has to include learning how to abuse these bugs. This is a huge turn off to a lot of players, and can turn a potential favorite hero into a 'will never pick'.
What can be achieved with animation cancelling in ESO compared to playing the game as originally intended without all kinds of cancels is so great that even when someone explains how to stack several things all into the space of a single global cooldown, it still looks like cheating -- especially to a new player, even one who looks at the Death Recap and of course doesn't understand at all how it can be possible without cheating since there's clearly a global cooldown.
Because these out-of-developer-control results can be obtained with animation cancelling, it is no wonder that some players will make any number of excuses why it should continue to be allowed. They can breeze through all the Player Versus Environment content in the game -- content not balanced around animation cancelling.
And in Player Versus Player -- where in all games cheats and exploits commonly surface -- they can destroy any player who doesn't know about it and doesn't use it. New players to PvP are so consistently bewildered by what is happening that PvP in ESO is a non-starter for them. They rightly think the other players are cheating because it clearly looks that way.
Finally we also know that that macros or other automation can be used in ESO from the various bots that are discovered. The particular "play style" of rapid cancelling not only facilitates the possibility of macros being used to perform them, but makes investigation harder ("I can press the buttons really fast") and divides the community as they argue whether someone is cheating or not. Even without macros, the extremely short delay between keypresses -- multiplied by many players doing it -- can overload a server. If more players start to learn it, the situation will only become worse.
Appendix: On Removing Animation Cancelling
Here is a framework for how to remove Animation Cancelling from ESO, and restore intuitive combat. The goal is that combat should be intuitive and reasonable. What the players see corresponds to what is happening. If a monster used animation cancelling on a player -- drew its bow but didn't fire and instead immediately raised its shield to block -- would a player expect to get hit by an arrow?
Light Attack Weaving / Animation Cancelling
- Have Light Attacks respect the Global Cooldown just like any other skill and not be cancelled into "light attack weaving".
- In any other game, if you told someone you found a way to make an attack that cost nothing and was almost instantaneous that no one could discern it... You'd probably be reported for knowing an exploit.
- When the player presses block, immediately extend all Global Cooldowns by 1 GCD. This is the cost of aborting to a defense.
- When the player releases block, Block goes on cooldown for 1 GCD. This prevents players from rapidly clicking block for no reason. If they are unsure of a combat situation they should hold block to sustain it, instead of being allowed to pull an emergency move all the time. This makes defense SKILLFUL: Players must be aware of their surroundings, watch key enemies for tells, and react accordingly. Frivolous actions are not to be rewarded.
- While holding down Block, a player can still Light Attack (and as mentioned above, it must respect the Global Cooldown).
Bash is deprecated. To interrupt a target, there are three ways:
- Use a skill that specifically says it will interrupt a target. That's what the skill is for, and a player who feels they will need to interrupt quickly should slot that skill.
- Use a Heavy Attack. This is the new default way and one of the distinguishing features of Heavy Attack. A Heavy Attack interrupts where possible, and puts a target Off Balance as a result. Usually an animation tell will show the enemy building up for a big attack, or concentrating to maintain an effect; so it is reasonable for players to deduce that a strong attack will interrupt them during this vulnerable time and put them at a momentary disadvantage (off balance).
- Use a Bash. This is the legacy way. While in Block you can still Light Attack (only). When that is in melee range, the attack automatically switches to a Bash.
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