I love the game and am looking forward to playing it for a very long time!

But to get to the crutch that I think is one of the biggest issues ESO has right now is combat gameplay. It feels quite clunky with either slow animations, not enough animation for some things, and no real feel of impact during some things like using a 2hander.

The sound affects where GREAT tho! I have to say I loved the sorc lighting crackles when it hit. Sounded powerful. Also loved to see sorcs in the far off distance blasting spells.

With that tho, I feel combat gameplay is quite possibly the most important element to a MMO's success and ESO's should be more fluid.

Yeah sadly 2 handers do not feel right atm... sword+shield and dual wield though feel pretty good.

I agree with you. Basically 1) the Animations, which are not that great and 2) that combat is too floaty.

Personally I don't mind the animations that much, but I think its a big issue that combat does not feel like it has any impact.

It does not feel like my character is fighting at all.

In my op the combat hits had alot of connection compared to all other mmos I have seen, other mmos just have more flashy stuff.

eso I think had great hit animation at times, sometimes it did not work but because of other animations and the enemy you are hitting cant just be interrupted by your punch as in TESS and its predecessors.

When you say the attacking animation is slow and sluggish, do you mean in the sense that it look bad or that it is slow in combat?

Oh well, I can't talk about two-handed weapons, I don't like those, but sword and shield felt nice to me.

I'm not even sure it's because of the animations, but just did not feel fluid. As a non-game-designer, I partially blame animations but it could be something completely different. Things just felt clunky/slow, not connected. I'm sure a core component to a game like this will be heavily fine-tuned over time so I'm not worried about it, but that may turn a lot of people off before giving it time. I remember playing WoW for my first time ever (have to use WoW), I played a toll hunter. I thought the game svcked and wanted to return it. But something felt like it clicked and after a day or so I gave it another go and .... well the rest is history.

Whaaat? This combat is awesome! It's one of things I liked best about the game! Blocking works incredibly well. You can shield bash at any time. Sword block then smack them in the face.. You can dive/roll to the side of your opponent then swing around and hit them from behind. Okay.. I wanna play now!

No. Fluid is not the word I'd use. Frankly, it feels too fluid, too liquid, too floaty. Abrupt clunkyness is only visible when you use an abilitiy or immediately attack after using an ability, because abilities have no startups in most cases.

When you look at the animations of say, Dark Souls, using a heavy weapon like a greatsword is slooooow. And there's a pretty huge "cooldown". All of that might seem clunky, far from fluid, but it lets you feel the weight of your weapon.

If you wanted to improve the feel of combat in ESO, you'd have to slow it down at certain animation stages, have longer cooldowns based on your weapon, and root the character in place when using a weapon. The hit effect is actually pretty good, if not even better than Skyrim, I'd say. Melee combat with a greatsword was overall really enjoyable.

I did play sword/board mostly and didn't have the same issue as much as I think with 2h/staff/dual. I'm probably heavily nit picking but I'm also very sensitive to game mechanics....been playing games for 25+ years. Maybe speeding up the staff, adding a flash node to dual on hit and 2hander swing trail would help on the animation side. Dunno. Bow was ok but I often felt like I didn't even shoot an arrow when I did and it was deadspace between abilities.

Its a 2 hander thing, sword+shield imo felt awesome, dual wield was good and two handers well there was something not quite right ^^

But I am sure with some more finetuning it will be good

The shield bash should be a lot faster, it feels like he's gently patting him down.

Should be like in skyrim, a very fast action, not a slow motion that finishes after the interrupt is done.

Yeah I like that though to slow it down, I could not feel that I were hitting faster while dual wielding compared to 2hander, could aswell be I did not hit any faster bcs they were not supposed to be faster but then the use of dual is void(other then in rpg sense) since worse att then 2h and worse def then 1hshield.

Ya I'll agree, it def wasn't as fast as the sword-thrusting animation using sword/board.

I think it was ok. Not the biggest concern.

What annoys me about the combat is the lack of collision. Seriously, whats the point of holding my shield up if enemies are just gonna walk through me....?

What do you guys mean by floaty? I keep seeing that word, but I don't know what it is.. Thanks.

Regarding combat fluidity, I agree that it doesn't feel as smooth as it could.

On the bright side, at least we won't have the immersion of PVP ruined by bunny hopping.

Because you don't block normal attacks, only charged ones, at least on the pve side.

In pvp it becomes a matter of timing.