Try to limit the amount of braindead and anti-fun CC that is stuns. There are better alternatives.

As the title says, stuns are a net negative in PvP. Whatever enjoyment someone can get from stunning a player is minute compared to the frustration stunned players feel at loss of agency.

Any reason for adding a stun can be countered via an alternate form of CC that doesn't completely remove player agency.

You want to give an ability a stun to stop people from kiting and running around? Use snares/roots/slows instead.
The players movement is impeded but they can still act/react and keep their agency, even if limited.

You want to give an ability a stun to stop interrupt a spell cast or stop a player from casting spells or using abilities? Implement silences/disarms/etc.
The players actions are impeded but they can still act/react by moving.

Not relying on the uninspired all-encompassing "stun" state only adds more depth to combat, meaning you have to use the right CC for the right scenario.

Stuns are just a lazy way to balance combat in my opinion, and completely invalidate the entire concept upon which playing games is built upon, which is playing games. You're not playing the game when you don't have control of your character, you're just watching your character get his shit kicked in for 5 seconds with zero agency.

You might be thinking, "Well what if both scenarios go off at the same time, isn't that effectively a stun?"
Sure, but that would (ideally) require at least two abilities. More if you delegate different effects to multiple abilities. For a full lockdown of a character, make it require a silence spell, a disarm, and a root, and whatever other creative idea you may come up with. Don't fall back on the 1-click-stop-playing effect.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I fully believe stuns are the easy way out of game balancing. (In PvP. Stunning non-players is fine, because no one loses agency)
Sure some people will probably think I just hate being stunned... and yes, that's exactly my point. Getting stunned isn't fun at all, and I believe games without stuns or at least minimal stuns are all the better for it.

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Dygz

LMAO
I expect Ashes will have stuns.

CROW3

My favorite stun is the sword-hilt-to-face move. Classic!

Azherae

I'll second this, and I 'speak for 8' in doing so. And by 'second' I mean 'basically echo everything Dreoh said exactly'.

The first thing many players do, the first thing those many consider 'skilled', is 'figure out how best to prevent the opponent from getting to play'.

A Sleep can stop an attack or movement but at least it breaks under some circumstance. A Bind/Root can stop an advance, depending on what you allow from 'prone' even a Knockdown can happen without completely removing the opponent's options. Stuns are just an annoyingly stackable 'win button' that operate entirely by removing most interplay between characters.

Why even worry about that balance nightmare when we could just use the dozen other CC options that require adaptation to use of one of your other options instead of 'welp, guess I'll die'.

Dreoh

Dygz wrote: »

LMAO
I expect Ashes will have stuns.

I also do, I'm just putting my probably unpopular and never usually considered opinion out there lol

I'll play it even if it has stuns, but I think stunless is just better game design as I described

Noaani

To me, a stun should last fractions of a second, while other forms of CC can last up to two or even three seconds.

If done this way, stuns can still be super powerful tools, without being too powerful.

Dreoh

Noaani wrote: »

To me, a stun should last fractions of a second, while other forms of CC can last up to two or even three seconds.

If done this way, stuns can still be super powerful tools, without being too powerful.

I agree, ministuns aren't too bad as they are essentially just interrupts and there is minimal loss of agency

BaSkA_9x2

I think stuns aren't the problem, however perma-stun is. I wouldn't mind if they implemented a cooldown on stuns, meaning you can only be stunned again after X seconds of the last one in PvP.

In any case, it's all about balancing, but I quite dislike perma-stun: it's boring for both parties IMO.

Aerlana

BaSkA13 wrote: »

I think stuns aren't the problem, however perma-stun is. I wouldn't mind if they implemented a cooldown on stuns, meaning you can only be stunned again after X seconds of the last one in PvP.

Yes, the real problem is perma stun. But GW2 for example got only short stun ("mini-stun" like dreoh called them), a class can not spam it. It remains a situationnal skill when your weapons/utility skills offer one.

A stun immunity of degressiv effectivness could also help (first stun is 1 second, second in the next 30 sec is 0,5 sec, etc etc)

AidanKD

Just want to chime in to say I agree and like your idea. I am accustomed to playing WoW so it feels normal - but always brings me back to recent times where you are stunned by a stealthed rogue and in some cases they have the means to kill you within this stunlock. Part of that is a balance issue of course and is definitely niche, but I agree that it's not enjoyable and doesn't encourage counterplay.

Vhaeyne

@Dreoh

You may or may not like what Wildstar did with stuns, but I always liked Wildstar's PvP stun mechanic because of your chief complaint. You can't play the game when you are stunned.

This short video from the Wildstar devs shows things better than I could describe them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2G_8c-u2qc

What is important is that CC was just temporally changed your gameplay objectives instead of outright removing you from the game. Being able to react well to CC was just another player skill that was rewarded with shorter CC durations.

What do you think of this?

Dreoh

Vhaeyne wrote: »

@Dreoh

You may or may not like what Wildstar did with stuns, but I always liked Wildstar's PvP stun mechanic because of your chief complaint. You can't play the game when you are stunned.

This short video from the Wildstar devs shows things better than I could describe them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2G_8c-u2qc

What is important is that CC was just temporally changed your gameplay objectives instead of outright removing you from the game. Being able to react well to CC was just another player skill that was rewarded with shorter CC durations.

What do you think of this?

Wildstar (RIP) was one of my favourite games, the combat was phenomenal and just outright enjoyable to play. It was in fact my favourite MMO combat to date.

And yea, I've had some debates with friends and others about what would make stuns acceptable. Mashing out of stuns was one of the things I would bring up as an acceptable level of agency. This has a problem though, people can just create hardware-side macros to insta-break out of them, and the only to fix that problem is to set a minimum stun time, and when you do that you just end up right back where you started, with a no-agency stun duration.

Wildstar's CC's were perfect, because they were immersive, unique, served a distinct purpose and you never lost your agency.

Dygz

Dreoh wrote: »

I'll play it even if it has stuns, but I think stunless is just better game design as I described

Blind and Fear
Are they better, worse or the same compared to stuns?

Aerlana

Dygz wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

I'll play it even if it has stuns, but I think stunless is just better game design as I described

Blind and Fear
Are they better, worse or the same compared to stuns?

Stuns are "absolute" : your character can't move, and can't act, during the time you are stun you do nothing.

Blind, effect vary, for the worst : you can't target (sometime game even hide other characters/mobs). on some games it only reduce a lot (or to 0) your chances to touch. But at least in any situation, you can move, you can try to hide behind a tree to break Line of Sight (LOS) and avoid the bowman/mage to attack you. running helps to avoid getting hit from melee also

Fear : the target runs everywhere randomly, it can make some bodypull on monsters. also most of time, fear can quite easily break with the victim gets hit by any attack/spells

stun is clearly the stronghest of all CC

but balancing the CC is also about time... a 20 second blind is far less fun (for the victim) than a 2 sec stun. for example.

A way to do balance between cc is to gives them a rate depending on how they are dangerous.
And then you just try to have for all cc the same value of product "rate x duration"

Tyranthraxus

If all of the classes are NOT to have a self-heal, it only stands to figure that many of those classes *should* have 1 or even 2 CC moves - one longer stun, and one mezz (short stun). In addition, crowd control and stuns are typically a good "puzzle-fight" mechanic, in longer raids, wherein the fights between bosses are often made to be challenges, in-and-of themselves.

I know that the game isn't aiming to be a solo-play game, but I'm sure there WILL be the occasional fight that skilled players will WANT to be able to solo - especially in the wilds. Gatherers/Harvesters could greatly benefit from being able to take 1 enemy out of a group, while finishing off the rest.

/Support CC

Veyrah

Stuns are possibly a necessary evil. Depending on the amount of mobility people will have, a stun usually sets up a combo which is necessary in assasination attacks on a healer in pvp for instance.

I am fine with stuns personally, as long as they don't stack and have a decent cooldown.

Another option is to make stuns dependent on effects so they are predictable. For instance, maybe a mages spell only stuns the target if the target is already burning/chilled etc.

Wokal

An option is to makie every type of CC taxing on the user as well. 'This and that type of cc' requires a tremendeous amount of force and focus making the caster/user unable to either use dmg enchancing cd's, or preventing defensive cd's, or reducing their dmg for a time after using CC.

Instead of the diminishing returns apply a big debuff (even stacking) to caster of CC. Will make the use of cc far more tactical than spammable. Also while in groups it can be used more, but than other team will have players aroudn to saviour the situation.

Azherae

veyrah wrote: »

Stuns are possibly a necessary evil. Depending on the amount of mobility people will have, a stun usually sets up a combo which is necessary in assasination attacks on a healer in pvp for instance.

I am fine with stuns personally, as long as they don't stack and have a decent cooldown.

Another option is to make stuns dependent on effects so they are predictable. For instance, maybe a mages spell only stuns the target if the target is already burning/chilled etc.

But the argument is that they're an unnecessary evil.

Arguing 'well other CC are troublesome too and also need to be balanced' isn't a proper argument for stuns. Games don't need stuns for basically any reason. Even if they were 'a reward for good gameplay' and had to be built up (through some means other than stacking other CCs until it was equivalent), there's just... no need for them.

What combo is there that can't be set up with a different method? Even if you brought stuns down to 'close range only, user takes longer to recover from it than the target so that it is fair in 1v1', the game isn't supposed to be balanced 1v1 anyway.

The game has already showed us what happens when something even similar to a stun is available in a group vs group combat situation, and though that wasn't balanced, it's still not an argument that 'stuns need to be in'.

I for one am tired of games making poor design decisions because 'people are used to them' or 'they always have this mechanic', so until someone justifies 'yes we need exactly this ability that fully stops everything', no matter how short you set it to, there will be people who ask 'but why did you need it to be full Stun'?

CROW3

Azherae wrote: »

I for one am tired of games making poor design decisions because 'people are used to them' or 'they always have this mechanic', so until someone justifies 'yes we need exactly this ability that fully stops everything', no matter how short you set it to, there will be people who ask 'but why did you need it to be full Stun'?

Stuns appears in games because stunning an opponent is an effective martial tactic. Boxing someone's ears, hitting them with the butt of a rifle, or using a taser are all forms of stunning an opponent. So arguing that stuns are some gaming anachronism isn't a winnable position.

In game, balancing one type of cc versus another is a different story.

Dygz

Yeah, I don't understand why we we not include stuns as a staple of combat. It's reflective of real life combat.

Maezriel

I advise anyone in favor of abilities that utterly stop you from playing the game to go give Overwatch a whirl. The sheer amount of stuns, knockbacks, etc is insane and absolutely not fun in any way.

I agree w/ OP there's better ways to handle CC.

Edit: I do feel I should further clarify, I can understand the use of stuns for someone to disengage from a fight...but being attacked while stunned or being stunned as long as a Rogue's Sap in WoW is just infuriating for the guy who's now just twiddling his thumbs.

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