Animation canceling and how it's exploited in pvp

[Teh_Artic]

1 hour ago, Silent Method2 said:

 

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.

Thats NOT what i was exactly referring too but thats on the table too. Theres alot you dont know, and i will not say here but ask your captain if u wana know more. 

[Teh_Artic]

1 minute ago, barrier said:

Do you want me to buy you a grammarly subscription?

Halloween

[barrier]

42 minutes ago, Troo said:

It's an exploit.

 

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

 

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

See, the thing is: that line of argument assumes that design intent is relevant in PVP. That is the most naive take on PVP ever and just suggests that you haven't played many competitive games. In most competitive games, Devs constantly update games based on performance metrics. We literally have no one other than a couple of teams generating those performance metrics right now. We don't have paid devs. We don't have access to whatever internal metrics NCSoft had. We actually vote on rulesets based on our metrics. Unless you can actually have someone come in and show an actual analysis suggesting that the meta without redraw cancels is somehow better than the meta with it, you have very little to standing to say intent is relevant.

[hp]

22 minutes ago, barrier said:

Do you want me to buy you a grammarly subscription?

HE HAS A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

[hp]

21 minutes ago, Teh_Artic said:

Halloween

Christmas

[Poned]

oh hey hp. didnt see u there

[Teh_Artic]

49 minutes ago, hp said:

Christmas

Nah All Saints' Day

[Troo]

19 hours ago, barrier said:

See, the thing is: that line of argument assumes that design intent is relevant in PVP. That is the most naive take on PVP ever and just suggests that you haven't played many competitive games. In most competitive games, Devs constantly update games based on performance metrics. We literally have no one other than a couple of teams generating those performance metrics right now. We don't have paid devs. We don't have access to whatever internal metrics NCSoft had. We actually vote on rulesets based on our metrics. Unless you can actually have someone come in and show an actual analysis suggesting that the meta without redraw cancels is somehow better than the meta with it, you have very little to standing to say intent is relevant.

So you disagree with macskull's assessment; "Does animation canceling provide an advantage? Absolutely,"? At least be honest with yourself.

 

I appreciate your position, though it does sound like you are trying mostly to convince you.

 

That leveraging this quirk in game mechanics is a topic of discussion with your organized 'competitive games' is telling.

Folks leveraging a quirk in game mechanics purposely to gain a competitive advantage, is by definition, an exploit.

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Troo

[macskull]

6 hours ago, Troo said:

It's an exploit.

 

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

 

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

Hey, way to take my quote entirely out of context. You conveniently left out the part where I said that it would not make up for poor gameplay and how a good player who is not using it will still beat a bad player who is.

 

EDIT: I don't think anyone here is trying to argue that animation canceling is not an exploit (even though it happens accidentally sometimes), but rather that it isn't a big deal. The competitive PvP community at large has agreed to limit emote canceling because that disproportionately benefits offensive characters in a meta that already disproportionately benefits offensive characters and because it's extremely easy to police. The competitive PvP community at large has also agreed that redraw canceling is fine because provides more benefit to support characters that already have a more difficult job and because it's of limited utility and because it's next to impossible to police. If the devs decided to overhaul the animations system to make animation canceling impossible, well, that's fine and we'd move on with our lives, but I highly doubt that's going to happen.

Edited August 16, 2020 by macskull

[xhiggy]

10 hours ago, Teh_Artic said:

EVERY SINGLE match against rare ( for example ) last tuesday they collectively used crey pistol over 500 times each round as a whole group.

500. Incredible. Well done, HP.

 

To correct this: HP and I are the only people on the team that really use the root cancel in a significant capacity, averaging about 60 per match each (~6 per minute). Everyone else on the team doesn't really use it at the moment, on average ~6 per match per person for everyone else (or a whopping once every 90 seconds). On top of this, drawing the pistol doesn't mean the animation root is necessarily cancelled, the actual number of successful uses will be lower than this. An unsuccessful crey timing will still cause you to lose target, but leave you in the full animation root. Hitting a crey bind when not in an animation will still show up in a demo, but doesn't correspond to any cancelled animation.

 

I want to reiterate what's been said several times since there still seems to be some confusion: this does not cancel out of the power animation duration, only the root. Using the crey pistol on the healing aura animation which you've used as one of your examples would do nothing for the emp.

Edited August 16, 2020 by xhiggy

[barrier]

5 hours ago, xhiggy said:

Using the crey pistol on the healing aura animation which you've used as one of your examples would do nothing for the emp.

Oh xhiggy, don't you know? Artic understands this game better than anyone. As of 12 hours ago, he actually thought healing aura rooted you.

 

But yeah, your numbers don't differ much from what we see on our side. Arctic (fixed that spelling for him) is clearly exaggerating.

Edited August 16, 2020 by barrier

[Sovera]

On 8/15/2020 at 8:22 AM, Silent Method2 said:

• "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"?

Man, I don't do PvP, but, between people abusing the base macro to not die in PvP and the animation canceling I think my previous words stand.

[bandofhorses]

Redraw animation cancelling creates a larger skill ceiling so I can see why some people want to remove it. It only gives an advantage if you're good at it. We've seen people that can't reach the higher levels of the skill curve say things like "Melee is dead" "Bring back travel suppression" and this chirping sounds very much the same to me. If you dont understand what you're talking about it's probably best to actually get educated on the topic first.

[Troo]

14 hours ago, macskull said:

Hey, way to take my quote entirely out of context. You conveniently left out the part where I said that it would not make up for poor gameplay and how a good player who is not using it will still beat a bad player who is.

 

EDIT: I don't think anyone here is trying to argue that animation canceling is not an exploit (even though it happens accidentally sometimes), but rather that it isn't a big deal. The competitive PvP community at large has agreed to limit emote canceling because that disproportionately benefits offensive characters in a meta that already disproportionately benefits offensive characters and because it's extremely easy to police. The competitive PvP community at large has also agreed that redraw canceling is fine because provides more benefit to support characters that already have a more difficult job and because it's of limited utility and because it's next to impossible to police. If the devs decided to overhaul the animations system to make animation canceling impossible, well, that's fine and we'd move on with our lives, but I highly doubt that's going to happen.

I thought you made some excellent points and I said so. I don't think I took it out of context. I just didn't rephrase that part as "so.. all things being equal it provides a competitive advantage".

 

I agree. It is what it is.. address it or leave it as is. I totally appreciate that you were on the level about it.

 

If the game were only pvp or pvp was totally segregated, then maybe it could be a generally accepted exploit. Really so few are involved in pvp matches, what happens there doesn't affect the majority..

[mean_gene]

10 minutes ago, Troo said:

then maybe it could be a generally accepted exploit.

It already is a generally accepted exploit. One team just doesn't like to use it out of the five major teams. 

[Troo]

@mean_geneI get that it may be a generally accepted exploit among the few involved in organized team pvp matches. But that is not the entirety of pvp in this game.

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Troo
added 'organized team'

[barrier]

46 minutes ago, Troo said:

@mean_geneI get that it may be a generally accepted exploit among the few involved in organized team pvp matches. But that is not the entirety of pvp in this game.

 

It’s probably 99.9% of it...

[MJB]

2 hours ago, bandofhorses said:

Redraw animation cancelling creates a larger skill ceiling so I can see why some people want to remove it. It only gives an advantage if you're good at it. We've seen people that can't reach the higher levels of the skill curve say things like "Melee is dead" "Bring back travel suppression" and this chirping sounds very much the same to me. If you dont understand what you're talking about it's probably best to actually get educated on the topic first.

maybe you dont consider me on the higher levels of the skill curve, but imo animation skipping macros are bad for the game. yes they theoretically increase the skill ceiling, but they reduce the skill gap between good and bad players, a poor player using animation cancelling will be comparatively closer to a better player, regardless of whether or not the better player is using the same macros. positioning is a major skill in this game, or at least it was, animation skipping macros are literally "never worry about positioning again with this 1 weird trick".

 

you press 1 button and you are magically a better player, imo the game is easy enough mechanically without such things.

 

and yes, i am well aware enforcing such a thing as banning them all would be next to impossible, so really i suppose im just arguing for argument sake at this point (though i seem to remember no one had a problem with banning emote cancelling on an honour system before we knew we could detect it through replays...)

 

p.s. please dont use "bad players are bad lol" as a defence for anything, its a lazy argument

Edited August 16, 2020 by MJB

[Silent Method2]

6 hours ago, Sovera said:

Man, I don't do PvP, but, between people abusing the base macro to not die in PvP and the animation canceling I think my previous words stand.

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.

 

1 hour ago, Troo said:

I get that it may be a generally accepted exploit among the few involved in organized team pvp matches. But that is not the entirety of pvp in this game.

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."

[bandofhorses]

3 hours ago, MJB said:

maybe you dont consider me on the higher levels of the skill curve, but imo animation skipping macros are bad for the game. yes they theoretically increase the skill ceiling, but they reduce the skill gap between good and bad players, a poor player using animation cancelling will be comparatively closer to a better player, regardless of whether or not the better player is using the same macros. positioning is a major skill in this game, or at least it was, animation skipping macros are literally "never worry about positioning again with this 1 weird trick".

 

you press 1 button and you are magically a better player, imo the game is easy enough mechanically without such things.

 

and yes, i am well aware enforcing such a thing as banning them all would be next to impossible, so really i suppose im just arguing for argument sake at this point (though i seem to remember no one had a problem with banning emote cancelling on an honour system before we knew we could detect it through replays...)

 

p.s. please dont use "bad players are bad lol" as a defence for anything, its a lazy argument

Completely disagree on this. I'd go as far as to say you're wrong. A good player using redraw animation cancellation vs a a bad player using redraw animation cancellation is a far bigger gap than both not using it. With the abilities being used currently there isn't a huge benefit to using it on say strangler or dominate your ending attacks in a spike. With it you add in the option to use things like BFR etc as extras or fit it in a chain that you normally wouldn't, now when it comes to good players using BFR vs bad players the bad player is still going to get himself/herself killed or be off target. A good player can relock onto a target enhancing the skill ceiling, the skill floor goes up but not at as high a rate as the ceiling does.

[MJB]

9 hours ago, bandofhorses said:

Completely disagree on this. I'd go as far as to say you're wrong. A good player using redraw animation cancellation vs a a bad player using redraw animation cancellation is a far bigger gap than both not using it. With the abilities being used currently there isn't a huge benefit to using it on say strangler or dominate your ending attacks in a spike. With it you add in the option to use things like BFR etc as extras or fit it in a chain that you normally wouldn't, now when it comes to good players using BFR vs bad players the bad player is still going to get himself/herself killed or be off target. A good player can relock onto a target enhancing the skill ceiling, the skill floor goes up but not at as high a rate as the ceiling does.

you have neatly cherry picked pretty much the only example where animation cancelling macros do actually increase the skill ceiling massively (re-targeting after bfr/shout/whatever), however you neatly ignored the fact that pretty much no one actually does that because why would you when there are far easier ways to do way too much damage. you also neatly missed out people skipping the animation for blazing bolt, which i know you and your team dont tend to use anymore, but pretty much every other team still relies on it for a serious chunk of their damage. 

 

however as many people have pointed out, animation cancelling is in fact of marginal benefit to offence in 8v8s, however for emp/support characters it absolutely reduces the skill gap. i would go as far as to say that the biggest contributor to kill scores being lower now than they were 6 months ago isnt actually jaunt, but more emps using animation cancelling macros (i can absolutely see the argument for this being a good thing, but i disagree in the method of achieving lower scores). it used to be that positioning yourself not only to get a heal off on target on time was a skill, but positioning yourself so that you can do a followup heal was too, now the latter is completely trivialised by pressing 1 button with no downsides. on top of that it used to be a risk to buff people in between spikes, as the root might get you too far away from your teammates as they chase someone, now this is entirely not a problem. i remember commenting often that every time i would fort someone, someone on my team would die because i was then out of position. imo, this made me a bad emp, good emps never seemed to have this problem, now i press 1 button and one of the distinguishing factors between me being bad and good players being good is no longer existent. hell its gone far enough that now it is perfectly normal to just throw out spirit ward on someone you think might be the next target, with absolutely no downsides to doing so. i dont feel like im exaggerating when i say a team with emps cancelling their every animation has a massive advantage on one that doesnt, it doesnt make up for everything (you still need to be on time for the first heal after all) but it absolutely reduces the skill gap between good and bad emps, purely by adding 1 button to your tray, no downsides.

 

its gone far enough that emps are now almost expected to also do more than just heal/buff, like playing a semi disruption role throwing out confuses and thunderous blasts, or helping the offence by throwing out ssj on target to hold spike people, and they can always do this while easily still being on heal target. it used to be just the good emps that could pull off such feats, now its normal.

 

and all of that is completely ignoring the fact that there is more to pvp in this game than just 8v8s, i understand that its pretty much the only format you are interested in, but this isnt the "8v8 rules forum". i mean theres a 2v2 tournament happening soon, you may not care about it, i dont know, but i know of quite a few people who are quite looking forward to it. i honestly cant see an argument for how animation cancelling doesnt trivialise movement in 2v2 matches, suddenly you never need to time your jumps or anything while chasing that emp around for 10 minutes, just spam 1 button. its even worth cancelling super fast attacks like char or bib, so what if you lose target? they are the only target in your fov anyway... i would be surprised if whatever team ends up winning the event plays a single animation, other than drawing crey pistol of course.

 

i remember when attacks like shout and bfr were high risk high reward powers in smaller team matches, now there is no risk.

[Silent Method2]

17 hours ago, bandofhorses said:

With it you add in the option to use things like BFR etc as extras or fit it in a chain that you normally wouldn't, now when it comes to good players using BFR vs bad players the bad player is still going to get himself/herself killed or be off target. A good player can relock onto a target enhancing the skill ceiling, the skill floor goes up but not at as high a rate as the ceiling does.

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.

 

6 hours ago, MJB said:

i would go as far as to say that the biggest contributor to kill scores being lower now than they were 6 months ago isnt actually jaunt, but more emps using animation cancelling macros

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.

 

6 hours ago, MJB said:

i mean theres a 2v2 tournament happening soon

 

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.

Edited August 17, 2020 by Silent Method2

[Galaxy Brain]

On 8/15/2020 at 7:20 PM, Silent Method2 said:

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."

Wavedashing is a movement OPTION and is not always the best option in any given circumstance as it still requires a bit of time dedicated to moving a certain way + different characters have radically different WD physics / uses beyond that.

 

Animation Canceling as described seems to strictly be advantageous as it removes the rooting of power activation and it doesn't seem like there would be any reason not to do so?

[bandofhorses]

10 hours ago, MJB said:

you have neatly cherry picked pretty much the only example where animation cancelling macros do actually increase the skill ceiling massively (re-targeting after bfr/shout/whatever), however you neatly ignored the fact that pretty much no one actually does that because why would you when there are far easier ways to do way too much damage. you also neatly missed out people skipping the animation for blazing bolt, which i know you and your team dont tend to use anymore, but pretty much every other team still relies on it for a serious chunk of their damage. 

 

however as many people have pointed out, animation cancelling is in fact of marginal benefit to offence in 8v8s, however for emp/support characters it absolutely reduces the skill gap. i would go as far as to say that the biggest contributor to kill scores being lower now than they were 6 months ago isnt actually jaunt, but more emps using animation cancelling macros (i can absolutely see the argument for this being a good thing, but i disagree in the method of achieving lower scores). it used to be that positioning yourself not only to get a heal off on target on time was a skill, but positioning yourself so that you can do a followup heal was too, now the latter is completely trivialised by pressing 1 button with no downsides. on top of that it used to be a risk to buff people in between spikes, as the root might get you too far away from your teammates as they chase someone, now this is entirely not a problem. i remember commenting often that every time i would fort someone, someone on my team would die because i was then out of position. imo, this made me a bad emp, good emps never seemed to have this problem, now i press 1 button and one of the distinguishing factors between me being bad and good players being good is no longer existent. hell its gone far enough that now it is perfectly normal to just throw out spirit ward on someone you think might be the next target, with absolutely no downsides to doing so. i dont feel like im exaggerating when i say a team with emps cancelling their every animation has a massive advantage on one that doesnt, it doesnt make up for everything (you still need to be on time for the first heal after all) but it absolutely reduces the skill gap between good and bad emps, purely by adding 1 button to your tray, no downsides.

 

its gone far enough that emps are now almost expected to also do more than just heal/buff, like playing a semi disruption role throwing out confuses and thunderous blasts, or helping the offence by throwing out ssj on target to hold spike people, and they can always do this while easily still being on heal target. it used to be just the good emps that could pull off such feats, now its normal.

 

and all of that is completely ignoring the fact that there is more to pvp in this game than just 8v8s, i understand that its pretty much the only format you are interested in, but this isnt the "8v8 rules forum". i mean theres a 2v2 tournament happening soon, you may not care about it, i dont know, but i know of quite a few people who are quite looking forward to it. i honestly cant see an argument for how animation cancelling doesnt trivialise movement in 2v2 matches, suddenly you never need to time your jumps or anything while chasing that emp around for 10 minutes, just spam 1 button. its even worth cancelling super fast attacks like char or bib, so what if you lose target? they are the only target in your fov anyway... i would be surprised if whatever team ends up winning the event plays a single animation, other than drawing crey pistol of course.

 

i remember when attacks like shout and bfr were high risk high reward powers in smaller team matches, now there is no risk.

You neatly cherry picked... nevermind

Offensively it creates a higher skill ceiling.
Blazing bolt, if you're using this you already have a flatter skill curve.
Im not going to go into all of rares strats current/old/and future just to try to convince a contrarian of something. Yes it is useful for more than just BFR (to Silent Method as well).

 

Emps using it increases the skill ceiling as well, because emps can actually do more now and impact the game harder. Which in a meta with this stupid levels of damage, that's awesome. There's a reason why people cry when Xhiggy rings against them. I don't see heal timings being better now, but we don't have empirical evidence to support that, just my feeling from ringing and kickball. There are a lot of aspects to a good emp that people seem to just completely not understand. Crey only enhances that. Doing more is more impactful.

 

The lower the team size the flatter the skill curve. I have no interest in debating 2v2s.

[Xanatos]

/bind backslash "e shocked"

 

*open up gaming mouse macro options*

 

*Create a toggle that autofires #*

 

Press a button once at the start of the match to turn off animations.

 

Insane.

 

(Crey Pistol animation cancelling is legit, though. It's Shocked and Liedown that need fixing.)