Animation canceling and how it's exploited in pvp

[bama]

Animation canceling is creating an unbalanced risk vs reward environment in this game's otherwise incredibly fun player vs player (PVP).  For purposes of this bug report, animation canceling is when a player purposely performs an action while casting an attack to prevent the attack's animation from stopping the player's movement.  The two most exploitative methods to perform animation canceling in PVP is by using emotes such as "em shocked" or "em liedown" and by using the crey pistol accolade power.  When either of these methods are used, a player's attack, no matter how long the animation should take, will no longer prevent that player for moving around the arena or zone.  For example, "Bitter Freeze Ray," from the ice range power pool, should prevent a player from moving for almost two seconds but delivers a powerful attack; however, due to animation canceling that player can fire, cancel, move, and continue firing.  The intended design of being a powerful attack but having to wait for an animation is negated by this exploit.  Another example, "Absorb Pain," from the empathy support power pool, should have the award of providing a player saving heal but at the risk of pausing the caster and preventing a self heal.  However, due to animation canceling that powerful heal can be activated and the empath player can leave the fight without any movement constraint. 

 

This exploit can be used with any power and is taking away from the enjoyment pvp provides with the intended risk vs reward design.  No one expects that the volunteer developers should redesign how animations function.  Instead, simply adding conditionals to prevent the use of emotes and the crey pistol from being used in pvp could solve this issue.  

Edited August 14, 2020 by bama

[Sovera]

Man, the extremes of cheating to win and feel good are always amusing for an impartial outsider.

[macskull]

So first of all, say hello to the rest of Incursion for me, OP.

 

I can't find the post anymore because the old live forums are long gone, but I very specifically remember a post from Positron saying being able to decouple power cast times from animation/root times was something they really wanted to do for PvP but were unable to because you can't change it in one place (PvP) but not the other (PvE). That being said... animation canceling has been around as long as this game's existed. You've never needed to use emotes or binds/macros with redraw to do it. If you jump and time power casts right, you can do it. Hell, sometimes it just happens without the player doing anything intentional. It has to do with a bug in the animations system that's been present since day one and is probably not possible to fix, or it would've been done a long time ago.

 

You also seem to have a basic misunderstanding of what animation canceling actually does. The only thing animation canceling allows you to do is move around during the time when you'd otherwise be rooted in animation. You can't activate any other powers. If I animation cancel a power with a three second cast time, I'm still unable to defend myself during that cast time. The only difference is I'm not locked in place. For what it's worth, even discounting animation canceling an intelligent player will activate a power with a long cast time at the top of a jump so by the time they hit the ground the animation is finished or almost finished and they can continue moving (and their momentum has been carrying them during the rest of the cast time so they haven't been stationary anyways). In your two points:

• Bitter Freeze Ray: it's got a 2.5-second cast time. If I animation cancel that about the only advantage I have is that I can stick with the target to hit a followup attack, but that's a full 2.5 seconds my target has to move, jaunt, phase, get healed, whatever else. Meanwhile I'm still stuck in a power activation for 2.5 seconds so if I get attacked during that window I can do literally nothing.
• Absorb Pain: did you know AP has the same exact cast time as Heal Other? An intelligent Emp doesn't need to animation cancel that heal because they will be in a good spot when they use the power in the first place or they'll jaunt right afterwards. Additionally, the redraw method of animation canceling causes you to lose target, which is the last thing I want to do when I'm trying to ensure a teammate gets healed.

Does animation canceling provide an advantage? Absolutely, but it will not entirely make up for poor gameplay. A good player or team not using animation canceling will beat a worse player or team using animation canceling. Besides, animation canceling isn't an "exploit" that is only limited to certain sets, or classes, or people - anyone can use it. It also has a possible positive side effect of making melee characters useful in the fast-moving PvP in this game simply because they can keep up with a target and actually get melee attacks off.

 

TL;DR: There's no "issue" here, animation canceling has been around since the game launched, and the OP's suggestions would do nothing to fix it.

 

 

[Silent Method2]

@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.

Edited August 15, 2020 by Silent Method2

[Poned]

hello?

[bama]

@Sovera
Thank you for your comment. 

 

@Macskull

First, you are correct the power still has to finish its timer before continuing on to the next cast. However, what I am reporting is that animation canceling allows the player to continue moving even though by the game's design the player should be stuck. By exploiting that, a player that should have faced a potential death can now leave the fight. 

 

Now you are also correct that the a jump or movement in the right direction could also potentially cause this to occur. The main difference from what I am bring attention to is that the player is purposely deciding to have this cause and effect. Because for emotes and the crey pistol accolade power, the player is abusing the macro/bind system to force their character to animation cancel. 

 

Just because any player can exploit the game does not make it right. No one should be forced to abuse the system just to keep up. 

@Silent Method2

Thank you for your wall of text. While I understand there are differences between using the crey pistol and emotes, I am not bring attention to this for the pvp community and how one is less exploitative than the other. Rather, I am asking that the developers completely eliminate the ability to do either while in a pvp zone or arena. The "bunnyhop" comparison is not valid. If a player can animation cancel by practicing a jump or other movement power at the exact moment needed, I would not be reporting a bug and exploit but rather commend that player on their skill. However, emotes and the crey pistol accolade power are intentionally abusing animation canceling at any moment the player decides. The two just cannot be compared.

@Poned

Hello

[macskull]

4 hours ago, bama said:

However, what I am reporting is that animation canceling allows the player to continue moving even though by the game's design the player should be stuck. By exploiting that, a player that should have faced a potential death can now leave the fight.

First, you seem to have ignored the part of my post where Positron said they wanted to decouple activation and root times in PvP. This is exactly what animation canceling achieves. Next, you're saying that animation canceling is an exploit because a player that should have died can move. You're missing the point - even with animation canceling the player is still unable to do anything except move. They can't heal, they can't phase, they can't jaunt, or anything else - they're still 100% reliant on outside help or luck to survive during that activation window. Is animation canceling a 2.5-second power less risky than not animation canceling it? Absolutely, but using that power in the first place is still risky. Regardless, let's continue on your line of thinking. You are saying animation canceling is an exploit but then you say "oh it's okay if it's being done via jump canceling because that takes skill." So... pick a side here. Emotes, redraw, and jump canceling achieve the same exact result, the only difference is how you get there. You can't say animation canceling is an exploit but then be okay with it if it's done a certain way.

 

There are only a few emotes that allow players to animation cancel. Those should probably be fixed because they don't follow the standard emote rules. The redraw one is harder to work with because it'd require an overhaul of the animations system. Sure, you can ban Crey pistol or whatever, but that doesn't solve anything because anyone with a power that causes redraw can still animation cancel, and those powers are way more common than you'd think. You also seem to be missing the point about whether animation canceling gives a player or team a competitive advantage. Animation canceling isn't going to magically make a player beat another player. All things being equal, the person using animation canceling might come out on top, but since all things aren't equal most times it isn't going to be the deciding factor. I seem to recall a series of 8v8 matches earlier this week in which one team decided to start animation canceling midway through the matches and still lost every match.

[barrier]

First and foremost: Gunrock, please stop trying to hide your identity.

 

Secondly, equating the Crey Pistol to emote canceling is categorically wrong. Crey Pistol canceling effectively benefits support sets above anything else, and anyone who understands this meta, would understand that that is actually not a problem. Emote canceling helps blast sets disproportionally. That is a problem given the meta. Making both equivalent is just wrong. If you can't see that, then you really have no business asking for "fixes" of any sort.

 

Third, please don't bring "designer intent" into this conversation again, the we might as well start playing with Travel Suppression and Heal Decay on because.. well... "designer intent". 

 

Lastly, this is not game breaking. That is exemplified by the events of last Wednesday when your team emote-animation-cancelled against us, even though the broad agreement reached by all captains banned the use of emote-cancelling. Your team still got handily beaten over and over. Your theory-craft needs some work when your "this breaks the game" faces the reality of "we lost over and over when we tried to use it".

Edited August 15, 2020 by barrier

[bama]

@Macskull
I hear you but to try to make a point based off "what could have been" is a hypothetical exercise that would lead in so many directions it's not worth exploring. I am only reporting an issue that the game has today and would like to see fixed. So for the reminder of our conversion, lets take the word intended and replace it with current state. 

 

Once again, I understand that the player still has to wait for the power to finish but seconds matter in COH pvp, which is one of the reasons it is so much fun. Therefore, the problem is still the same. If a player can use a bind/macro to abuse how animations' function, it is an exploit that should and can be fixed. 

 

As for non-emote and non-crey pistol animation canceling, I am only conceding on this because I understand that animations are never going to be rewritten under our current development team. I am only reporting the issue at hand with the idea of adding a conditional statement that would prevent emotes and crey pistol from working within pvp.

 

I also agree with you that it isn't some magical button. Yes you can lose and still do it. It doesn't excuse the fact there is an issue. 

@barrier
I am not "Gunrock." The fact that you resorted to name calling and claiming superiority because you won a match for once, doesn't negate the fact that animation canceling through binds/macros is a problem. 

[Silent Method2]

7 hours ago, bama said:

@Silent Method2

Thank you for your wall of text.

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:

 

Quote

The main difference from what I am bring attention to is that the player is purposely deciding to have this cause and effect

Quote

If a player can animation cancel by practicing a jump or other movement power at the exact moment needed, I would not be reporting a bug and exploit but rather commend that player on their skill.

 

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.

[bama]

@Silent Method2
Sometimes a person just has to brain dump. Never change.

 

I think we are on the same page that emotes should be fixed, so, lets focus on the crey pistol problem.

 

I tried to clarify my stance above where I mention the developers probably don't have the time nor desire to fix animations. I don't think a team should practice trying to animation cancel, and at the same time I understand without an overhaul animation canceling can occur without crey pistol. Hence, if you somehow perfect jumping to cancel your animations then you have created a "bunnyhop" of sorts. We all know the game isn't perfect, powers like strangler not doing its full animation is disappointing but there is only so much that can be done. 

 

However, one thing that can be done to eliminate mass animation canceling, is to remove emotes and the crey pistol from being used in pvp. Will it stop all animation canceling until the game is gone? Of course not, but it would be a huge step forward in removing a broken mechanic from pvp. 
 

Edited August 15, 2020 by bama

[Teh_Artic]

First and foremost: Thank you silent and mac for being civil or at least trying to be in ur replies of what the OP posted

 

Second: I dont think u quite understand.

In my team literally 9/11 players from it do not like the idea of using the crey pistol at all and it for sure not using it would handicap teams vs using them, take what eva said for example during the meeting after our practice night which max /silent /eva / spec were present for, she does not even wana think about NOT using it becuz she does not wana use healing aura get stuck in a 2 sec animation and miss the range needed to use heal other or AB on the person getting attacked and watch them die. she probably has NOT used it since last year which is super sad to me becuz this just highlights how much OTHER people use it on ANY AT but especially on healers. i use weaken alot its a  long animation and i NEVER use animation cancel. Its super risk for using a power like that like any long animation but we do it still knowing the risks and we make it work. same with my healers, same when we use nukes on buff gathers, same with ANY power we have used, were still able to survive spike off the skill of just learning how and sure we still pull wins all the time. Take this example used against the number 1 team rare, look at us beating 7 rare members plus max the other day as prime example and we didnt even really attack max and he was a blaster. You can say what you will about lineups or max or whatever but the point is its NOT impossible to still do good WITHOUT USING animation cancels AT ALL. 

 

Now lets go into another example. One of my members has been using a program silent gave me few months ago and has been using it every practice since then when he used silents program that night and EVERY SINGLE match against rare ( for example ) last tuesday they collectively used crey pistol over 500 times each round as a whole group.

and in a 10min match of ANY team using the animation cancel ways of any kind vs a team not using it yes they could still lose but they have SO many more chances of varing different scenarios to either get in range for next spike quicker, get in range for next heal quicker, get in range of the healer quicker, get out of range of the attacks from enemy team quicker, use a power they need to use to move away from enemies that are telegraphing, use a power they would like to use on the spike and break off of it incase they miss read the telegraph and thinking they were the target when it really was not,  etc etc

and that is where my team does not like that at all.

 

Now we DO NOT interact with other groups aside from a extremely select few becuz we simply enjoy ourselves and our own more then others so we did not realize to the extent that animation cancelling was being used, by basically almost everyone outside of our own team at this point. RARE admitted to us during our own meeting with them following our practice night with them as all of the members use crey pistol and other animation cancels now all the time, ( as example ) and heres yet another example that spec had told me a very large percent of his own team Renegades uses it ( im sure its closer to all as well ).

 

Let me use some other examples now

 

During our meeting with rare, I offered rare to ban doms and blasters ( two AT WHOLE CLASSES ) in exchange for only wanting ALL animation cancelling of any emotes/power intended to do it like crey pistol and they said NO

even though they claimed that crey pistol is so minimal

they would rather play against blasters and doms ( which they HATE ) vs giving up something they think is " minimal "

it for sure is NOT minimal but rather VERY important if the PERFECT deal is denied to protect ONE thing.

 

Heres another example, 

when i offered to NOT allow ANY crey pistol or emotes vs you guys ( Renegades )

ur team ALSO DECLINED with HUGE hesitation before Eva spoke over spec saying no way, which then allowed spec to speak after her saying NO officially.

so its is SUPER important to all other teams except us becuz we do not use it at all and have not thru entire YEAR.

 

we have learned to simply play thru ALL our animations of any AT we play on the field

and now that we know all teams of almost every player using it NINE of my 11 players in Incursion main feel disgusted at the way the game is but more so that people would refuse to give up on it and simply play thru the animations.

 

That is were we stand on it. An before ANYONE tries to say why not just use it,

think of asking yourself would you be truly willing to play against ANY team for the rest of ur life playing this game using it while you and the rest of your team DOES NOT use it at ALL, and would you feel handicapped at that point. I for sure would. 

 

Third:  Barrier, that was not Gun. Im not going to reply to you the way i want as ill get banned on the fourms if i do but i will say the way this is going is i TRULY HOPE u like playing this game in pvp for team arena, i really really really do, becuz im 50% sure  it wont be for much longer i can tell u that.  Your not smart enough to understand what i mean by this now, but you will start to see what im referring too in the coming weeks as you slowly watch it all fade away.

 

Four: stfu db

Edited August 15, 2020 by Teh_Artic
Poned felt left out

[barrier]

https://www.grammarly.com/

[macskull]

If you don’t want redraw canceling to be a thing, bring it up for a vote. If you’re going to play the “I’m taking my ball and going home” game, then congrats, you’re causing a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ve been pretty doom and gloom about PvP in this game and so far every other team is still playing and having fun.

[Teh_Artic]

2 minutes ago, macskull said:

If you don’t want redraw canceling to be a thing, bring it up for a vote. If you’re going to play the “I’m taking my ball and going home” game, then congrats, you’re causing a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ve been pretty doom and gloom about PvP in this game and so far every other team is still playing and having fun.

Lol if u only knew

[macskull]

[Citation needed]

[macskull]

Also if @bamaisn’t Gunrock it’s definitely Ciro, who was caught using emote canceling several times after teams agreed to ban it.

[Silent Method2]

14 minutes ago, bama said:

However, one thing that can be done to eliminate mass animation canceling, is to remove emotes and the crey pistol from being used in pvp. Will it stop all animation canceling until the game is gone? Of course not, but it would be a huge step forward in removing a broken mechanic from pvp. 
 

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.

 

19 minutes ago, Teh_Artic said:

how much OTHER people use it on ANY AT

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.

 

35 minutes ago, Teh_Artic said:

i TRULY HOPE u like playing this game in pvp for team arena, i really really really do, becuz im 50% sure  it wont be for much longer i can tell u that.  You not smart enough to understand what i mean by this now, but you will start to see what im referring too in the coming weeks as you slowly watch it all fade away.

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.

[Troo]

It's an exploit.

 

If it wasn't, there would be no harm in addressing it.

 

@macskullyou made some good points.. then you wrote:

17 hours ago, macskull said:

Does animation canceling provide an advantage? Absolutely,

Edited August 15, 2020 by Troo

[Dan Petro]

What if I told you there were pool powers that literally everyone no matter the build can take and do the exact same thing as crey pistol. 

 

What if I told you that the "crey pistol" mechanic can be done with a decent number of primary, secondary, and epic  powers as well.  The earliest evidence of this was on live when people figured out (and took videos) how you could essentially skip every animation using either Katana or TW, I forget which.  It doesn't actually affect the DPS of any set, just the freedom of movement you get.   

 

 

[Troo]

I think you might be better off waving your hand and saying "this is not the bug you are looking for".

 

Maybe stick with "pvp is small and this doesn't effect many.. it's not worth the effort"

[Silent Method2]

18 minutes ago, Troo said:

It's an exploit.

 

If it wasn't, there would be no harm in addressing it.

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."

[Troo]

Thou doth protest too much..

[Teh_Artic]

10 minutes ago, Troo said:

Thou doth protest too much..

His a nice guy he just writes alot. You will get use to it if u keep coming back to this thread.

[barrier]

Just now, Teh_Artic said:

His a nice guy he just writes alot. You will get use to it if u keep coming back to this thread.

Do you want me to buy you a grammarly subscription?