Silent Method2

/signed To reiterate what I've said elsewhere: In an unofficial rebooted game with a small, devoted population -- especially within the context of PvP -- originalism (re: what Cryptic wanted to / should have done / what meets the definition of a "bug") is far less important than "does this make the game more enjoyable for those who care deeply enough about it to be fighting for it?" No one at Cryptic is going to give us a gold star for patching up decades-old mechanics, especially when there was already some development work done on Homecoming to make a PvP-specific power (Nullifier). Trying to apply a subjective label like "bug" is less relevant than considering the arguments for / against it from a well informed and devoted playerbase. Not to mention that there's no game completely free of arguable exploits like animation and attack canceling, frictionless bunnyhopping, and the list goes on. Nullifier root canceling also lowers the barrier to entry by allowing newer players to easily make the same use of it that veteran players do, instead of spending hours trying to practice ways to recreate the same mechanic without weapon redraw (i.e. jump canceling), which is just a waste of everyone's practice time. Not to mention, this impacts support classes the most and will have ripple effects on balancing changes later on. Suppose mez is changed in a way that allows Clear Mind / Clarity / Thaw to provide protection, such that teams no longer feel the need to soft-ban long duration mezzes. Emps already have over 2 seconds of rooting on most buffs and heals. Clarity is 1.5 seconds, and Thaw is over 2, all of which will serve to limit set diversity and discourage players from trying out an already underplayed role (support).

Other mechanics to consider beyond disabling the Incarnate grind, either in RV or in a hypothetical cloned version of it (either of which would probably be fine): - adding ability to switch sides relatively easily - whether high tier inspirations should be enabled (as the game wasn't really balanced around leaving and restocking with a full tray every minute) - whether NPCs should exist (or at least, NPCs that use PvE mezzes and webs) - whether emotes should be enabled (disabling would remove emote-style animation canceling) - whether certain temps (Jump Packs in particular) should be enabled - removal of base TP if that still exists in any form Removal of some of these mechanics would steer the game more toward Arena-style combat, at least for one open-fire zone.

Though it depends on what era you recall from Live servers, the removal of -maxrunspeed that @macskull noted is very likely to be the culprit for what you are noticing. Many slows used to also inflict -maxrunspeed, which always mattered far more than the amount of the simple -run speed. Pre-i13, a target with no slow resistances could be slowed to a crawl on the ground simply with one Siphon Speed (which is relatively minor as far as slow and -rchg powers go), because it inflicted -maxrunspeed, and then add a web grenade to prevent jumping or flying. Nowadays, with -maxrunspeed (almost) completely removed from PvP powers, the closest you can really get is messing with people's jump height, which often takes more valuable time than it's worth, or things like Weaken/Benumb + web grenade because you can roughly think of Weaken/Benumb working "negative slotting" for the attributes they effect, so they weaken the strength of someone's Speed of Sound slotting, for example. Beyond that, the removal of PvP movement suppression, the addition of Jaunt, the proliferation of slow resistance as a set bonus, and the increased usage of flight powers have all given targets more ways to deal with movement slows.

With Pistol-style canceling, the main downside is forcibly losing target under most circumstances, requiring the user to go to great lengths to keep/reacquire target or accept that it's the end of their attack chain on a target. This downside is diminished on emps who can easily reacquire target on teammates. Also, the upside is diminished for relatively short animation powers (e.g. 1 second animations) because Pistol-style canceling requires a separate action and cannot be bound to fire subsequent to every ability (in the sense that the traditional bind/macro system does not allow two power users to be strung together). Emote canceling has none of these downsides and can be bound to run immediately after every ability cast (because it's an emote, not a power). So IMO only emote canceling is strictly advantageous, and that's setting aside the important questions of how the developers can fix or how the community can police each of these.

Not to get too far off on a tangent here, but if I understand, you're saying redraw/Pistol-style canceling increases the skill ceiling because good players can use it mid-chain to work in longer animation attacks, correct? If so, then I mostly agree with mjb that BFR is one of the only examples in the current offensive metagame where using it mid-attack chain is potentially useful, but even then, the utility of doing so is pretty questionable based on what I've seen from the tiny handful of players attempting to do it (and only succeeding part of the time), as well as how sloppily the damage often lands. This would've been a different discussion for Beam Rifle in the pre-Jaunt days, maybe, though as we both know, Beam/TA blasters never had problems staying in range anyway. Based on actual usage data though -- i.e. the fact that not many supports have been going crazy with it in the first place, especially 1+ month ago -- I think many other factors are affecting match scores more greatly than emp animation canceling. I do think this discussion matters a lot more on the offensive side of smaller-scale PvP, as mjb said... where the targets are fewer and the advantage of sticking on the same target becomes stronger. I don't really have any clever solutions there, as something like a Crey Pistol ban would just nudge players to use other powers that can do the same thing. Teams that use it will be at an advantage over teams that don't, much more so than for pet-heavy 8v8 matches. But this is a fact of life IMO, with no obvious way to fix, ban, or police it. At least emote canceling, which puts this dynamic into hyperdrive, can be policed accurately and banned via that enforcement. Finally, this is more of a general note to anyone looking at match data... this was my #1 reservation in releasing analytical code for Arena match demos, i.e. please remember the context for the numbers. Anyone can run the data and see that someone used Crey Pistol 100 times in a match, but anyone who takes an even slightly closer look can see that a lot of the most frequent Crey Pistol users are either spamming it unnecessarily or using it to cancel 1 second animation powers where it has little impact. "We did not win this match and someone on the other team used Crey Pistol 100 times" isn't causality; those 100 uses might've only amounted to 20-30 meaningful uses, and I have my doubts as to whether that's often the deciding factor in the match's outcome.

Those are two different things, though (and part of why I don't even bother with zone PvP, as it has about 10 items on the list of "what makes the game unfun to play" that need to be dealt with before even reaching animation canceling). Speaking as someone who does do Arena PvP, I can assure you that Pistol-style animation canceling isn't some miracle path to victory in the same way that many aspects of zone PvP are -- at least, if you define "victory" in zone PvP as getting kills and never dying. It's the genesis of this complaint, which is why most of the discussion has been geared toward Arena -- which also happens to be the PvP game mode where things like "a level playing field" make the most sense (i.e. people agree ahead of time to a set of rules, which already exclude emote canceling and certain AT limitations, and obviously play with the same number of players on both teams)... zone is more "anything goes."

You can say the same about wavedashing in Smash, but good luck trying to find anyone willing to play competitively without it. The fact that it can't be fixed simply by banning Crey Pistol or easily policed (because other, more "legitimate" powers can do the exact same thing) is extremely relevant to this discussion. It's not as black and white as "features are good, exploits are bad."

My primary issue with that is a practical one, not one of principle. Most builds could fit in Experimental Injection, Entangle, or any other number of powers that can do the exact same thing -- and never have to worry about practicing how to do it without a macro. Since it's impossible to eliminate or police, I'd rather just let people do it with an accolade instead of forcing them to respec into 1 power to continue doing it in a way that can't be policed. I think you oversell the value of Pistol-style canceling on offense. Setting aside situations where players are practicing reacquiring target / using camera not to lose target -- and I don't think those are common for the most part -- the loss of target means it can't just freely be used, and using it on any power under 1.5 sec animation has always felt to me like it's barely worth the effort. I can't speak for other teams, but most of Renegades' offense barely uses it in the first place. On poison, half the time when I use it, it's for Ice Storm, which surely isn't making our offense overpowered. Beyond that, being able to move but not use any powers/inspirations is not that great of a defensive advantage for non-emps. Just to be clear, "we don't use it that much on offense" is not equivalent to me saying "it isn't beneficial at all" (it is, mildly on offense) or "it's so low benefit that we're fine with not using it." That's mostly because of the practical considerations I mentioned above: it can be done with many other powers or no redraw powers at all, both intentionally and by accident. But it's also because of a subjective argument. Unlike emote canceling, I feel like Pistol-style canceling is generally more beneficial to supports. In a metagame that is supercharged with damage, I'm okay with that, especially if they can just do it with other powers anyway. With a relatively small competitive team playerbase, I think we're all aware that we might be on borrowed time, but it won't be Crey Pistol that killed it. Player attrition was bound to happen, and there isn't a lot to draw new players in, aside from your efforts with your Community team and the efforts of a few others like Poned and Spec, all of which are awesome. But at the very least, let's not root for the outcome you describe.

Hey, that's my calling card. I think what got lost in the wall of text is that "easy, on-demand" animation canceling will still persist if Crey Pistol is disabled in the Arena. Pistol-style canceling is highly beneficial for emps -- do you think they won't take Experimental Injection and do the exact same thing? I'm also not clear on why you're okay with Pistol-style canceling as long as it's not "easy, on demand" but rather takes a little bit of training to do. Where do you draw the line in terms of the difficulty required to do Pistol-style canceling before you're okay with it? You seem to be contradicting yourself here: It's a purposeful decision to exploit animating canceling in both of those situations. The only difference seems to be that you favor the route where people spend more time practicing animation canceling instead of practicing spikes and evasion, which doesn't make a lot of sense given your assertion that animation canceling is an exploit. And I actually wasn't kidding about Strangler and its lack of animation .FX, if you take issue with on-demand canceling. It's supposed to be a 2 second animation power -- which also does high damage -- but doesn't actually root users for that long. It's a built-in, instant, easy on-demand animation cancel for itself that allows users to keep moving. To be clear, I'm fine with both Strangler and Pistol-style canceling, but based on my understanding of your argument, Strangler shouldn't be permitted because it's bugged as well.

@macskull already covered a lot of it, but I'll add my two cents here regarding Team Arena PvP -- I am not speaking about zone PvP here -- since I've had this same conversation with a few separate people on Discord lately. First, to reiterate what mac said, no form of animation canceling allows you to skip activation times and use powers when you otherwise shouldn't be able to. You cannot Jaunt, Phase, use another attack, etc. until (e.g.) that 2.5 second Bitter Freeze Ray is done. Risk vs. reward is still very much present; I've seen excellent defensive players get blown up while stuck in Bitter Freeze Ray's animation because they cannot Jaunt or Phase. What you can do is move. That's a mild advantage -- no one is saying it isn't -- for a handful of long-animating powers and in a few other situations. But depending on which form of animation canceling we're talking about, there are also drawbacks. Second, please decouple the discussion of Crey Pistol-style canceling (which I'll just call Pistol canceling) from the discussion of emote canceling. There are large differences between what you can do with each, and how each could be fixed or prevented. The A vs. B of it is: 1a) Pistol canceling causes the user to lose target unless the current target is the nearest target. Functionally, what this means is that in order to get the advantage of Pistol canceling an animation, the attacker needs to either accept the loss of their target, or try to quickly reacquire target, or work some nifty camera angles to ensure that they don't lose target. In the current PvP metagame, trying to counteract the loss of target (i.e. keep firing on the same target after Pistol canceling) is both somewhat difficult and rarely worth the effort. If leading spikes with something long like Bitter Freeze Ray and then trying to follow up with additional damage was the norm, I might change my opinion on that bolded portion, but the current metagame favors leading with attacks that animate quickly anyway. 1b) Emote canceling does not cause the user to lose target and works faster (in part because users can bind every attack to have an emote cancel afterward; this cannot be done with Pistol canceling). As I imagine zone PvPers can attest, this makes it possible to chase someone indefinitely and never lose movement speed -- a dynamic that turns free-for-all roguing into an extremely easy exercise, and that's a strategy that is currently both discouraged and difficult to pull off well in Team Arena. 2a) Pistol canceling can easily be done with any weapon draw, including bows and even the syringe from Experimental Injection. As mac said, fixing this from a developer standpoint would be difficult, and banning Crey Pistol from Arena matches won't solve the problem. You also don't need any weapon draw at all in order to Pistol cancel. It's more difficult to pull off, but it can be done. It also happens frequently by accident -- for example, my Bitter Ice Blast here, for which I did not use any weapon draw like Crey Pistol. 2b) Emote canceling should be comparatively easier to fix from a developer standpoint. It's only the new Homecoming emotes that created this issue; one cannot animation cancel with older emotes. 3a) Because of 2a, Pistol canceling is difficult for us to "police" as a PvP community. Sure, we can see when someone's using the actual Crey Pistol, but are we going to count bow draws? Syringe pulls? And how to police players who spend a few weeks practicing how to cancel without any weapon at all (an exercise that frankly would be a waste of time that everyone could spend scrimmaging instead)? 3b) Emote canceling is incredibly easy to police via demorecord. People are already doing it. 4a) Pistol canceling in my opinion mostly helps support classes whose "targets" are generally their teammates. On offense, it's useful for Inferno, certain nature buff/heal powers, Bitter Freeze Ray, a handful of other powers, and generally at the end of attack chains -- but even then, Pistol canceling any 1.0 to 1.5 second animation power barely confers any benefit at all. I could care less about Pistol canceling my Dominate or Bitter Ice Blast. 4b) Emote canceling by contrast is a much bigger benefit to offensive classes, especially if sticking / roguing, because it can be bound to every attack and does not cause target loss. Given how damage-heavy the metagame is... do offensive players really need an additional tool? TL;DR on Pistol canceling vs. emote canceling: Pistol canceling is impossible to prevent from happening (gameplay-wise), is difficult or impossible to police, and benefits offensive players only in certain situations (to the point where many offensive players currently Pistol cancel between 0-20 times per match... often when casting buffs rather than attacks). Emote canceling could likely be prevented by the developers, is extremely easy to police, and would be used dozens of times per minute by every offensive player, opening up damage roguing strategies in a metagame that is already overloaded with damage. These two forms of animation canceling are not the same. Beyond that, calling it a bug and asking for the solutions you've proposed would not solve what you consider to be the deeper problem; animation canceling will still exist unless the developers rebuild animations from the ground up in a more airtight fashion. Those sets of differences alone are enough for me to accept Pistol canceling but not emote canceling as an unavoidable side effect of a development oversight. But if that's not enough for you, there's the philosophical side of things: Most games have is-it-a-bug-or-feature mechanics like this. First-person shooters have ways to bunnyhop, despite mechanics designed to prevent it. MOBAs and RPGs have attack canceling / resetting that actually does allow players to take another action -- not just move -- when they're supposed to be animating. Pro-level fighting games are practically built around exploiting mechanics like these. To the extent that the developers can easily get rid of these mechanics, or that competitive communities can and want to police them, they do. To the extent that they cannot, they accept them as part of the game. Or, I guess, they quit to go search for that mythical perfectly developed game that works exactly as intended 100% of the time. Allowing Pistol canceling is more of an egalitarian solution than banning it. Crey Pistol is extremely fast and easy to acquire (and I know many players are willing to help others get it) and easy to use for everyone. Banning it just creates a dynamic where the players who benefit the most are the ones who figure out and train situations where they can animation cancel without a weapon draw. Given that your argument is already against animation canceling, I'm guessing you don't want to create a situation where people are devoting practice time to animation canceling workarounds like this. "cheating to win and feel good" as @Sovera said, isn't really what's at stake. Pistol canceling confers a mild benefit, but teams who play better and don't use it will generally beat teams who play worse but do use it. And to be blunt, given that it 1) is unlikely to be removed or policed, 2) has been known and accepted as part of the game for over a year of competitive PvP now, and 3) is extremely easy to use for all... how exactly is it "cheating" except in some abstract sense of "yeah everyone's using it, but the game isn't supposed to work that way"? ...speaking of which, if that's your argument, remove Strangler from your tray (or propose that we ban it from PvP), and don't play Beam Rifle ever again. Neither of them fully roots players like they're supposed to -- in fact, Strangler doesn't even have an .FX animation. Team Arena players already dealt with emote canceling a few months ago by agreeing to ban it in team matches, and then by policing it moving forward (which has been very effective). Pistol canceling, by contrast, has been known and used freely for over a year. These are the players most impacted by this discussion, and by and large, they've already reached a solution that they seem to find acceptable through community measures without needing to get the development team involved.