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

Dreoh wrote: »

I just think at any time you have no agency while playing a video game, you are not "playing a video game" until you get your agency back.

I guess we're not playing a game while dead so MMORPGs should not have death.

Dreoh wrote: »

I just went into the nuance of the difference between death state and stun state like 3 comments above yours

Walls of text.
I finally found it.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

I guess we're not playing a game while dead so MMORPGs should not have death.

Since the only thing we are doing while playing an MMO is playing an MMO, this logic would result in the only viable MMO being that of us all playing a character that is playing an MMO, and in order for that MMO to be realistic, the MMO that the character we are playing is playing would also need to be an MMO of their character playing an MMO.

This would result in a never ending Inception type scenario.

Aerlana

hum, average 5 sec duration :
https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=1833/cheap-shot
https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=8643/kidney-shot
Also there was the "PvP trinket" to get rid of one of those...
The kidney shot to 6 sec was 4 skills (in vanilla, nearly no attack speed to reduce GCD)

As i said, stun is not a problem. the duration, and the CD can make it a problem.

Stun just have to be short (no more than 1 or 2 skill time) and get some decent CD (30-45 sec would be good basis. because they aim to a time to kill of 30 second)

CROW3

@Aerlana - you have to factor DR into that equation as well.

Cypher

Stuns can very easily be abused into stunlocking which is absolutely terrible gameplay. Unless you’re a major control freak that gets off on giving your opponent a bad experience and/or preventing them from fighting back, then you won’t support stuns. Relying on preventing your opponent from playing the game in order to win instead of beating them outright is cowardice. It would be like forcing your opponent to skip their turn in a game of chess because you couldn’t beat them on pure merit.

Dygz

It's possible to support stuns and not support stun-locking.
Also, it's possible to design countermeasures to stuns.
In Ashes, we have a stat for Disable Chance, so we should expect there might be Passives and gear with stats that mitigate/counter Disable Chance.

At Level 1, it's not uncommon for my Cleric to get stunned by a Scalerunner.
At Level 9, my Cleric is almost never stunned by even a Level 15 Scalerunner.
And also always withstands the tailslap.

CROW3

Cypher wrote: »

Stuns can very easily be abused into stunlocking which is absolutely terrible gameplay. Unless you’re a major control freak that gets off on giving your opponent a bad experience and/or preventing them from fighting back, then you won’t support stuns. Relying on preventing your opponent from playing the game in order to win instead of beating them outright is cowardice. It would be like forcing your opponent to skip their turn in a game of chess because you couldn’t beat them on pure merit.

Your analogy for chess is kind of silly. For a few reasons,
1. It assumes that there are only two players in a fight. If I'm fighting three players in pvp, I'm absolutely using everything in my kit (including stuns) to control the fight so I can survive.
2. It assumes that the players have equal tools in their kit, e.g. the same pieces on the board (a mage is not going to just stand toe to toe with a fighter, and one player may have twice as many abilities as the other)
3. It equates using an ability that's not in chess in chess to using an ability that is in MMOs in MMOs, then drawing some sort of judgement.

Chess fixes resources for both players evenly so that it emphasizes strategic play of those resources. But it's an academic, isometric exercise. Giving your opponent equal footing in actual combat is just silly.

Dreoh

Dygz wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

I just think at any time you have no agency while playing a video game, you are not "playing a video game" until you get your agency back.

I guess we're not playing a game while dead so MMORPGs should not have death.

Well to be fair none of the MMO's I've played have the kind of death state you have in FPS's and such. Usually you can just revive at a nearby waypoint or walk back to your corpse lol.

If you got stuck sitting there for like 30 seconds dead before you could do either of those that would suck too lol

Dygz

Because an RPG is not an FPS.
In Ashes, I haven't been stuck in Stun for 30 seconds.
Sounds like the issue is not so much being stunned, but the length of time stuck in stun.
Which I think most people in this thread agree with.

Dreoh

No I have an issue with stuns themselves, but I also am not so extreme as to say the simple existence of stuns makes a game bad, just not as good as it could be.

Dizz1

I think now hard CCs are better than previous as I see in video and wiki.

I am okay with skills eventually able to develop to be a hard CC or less hard CC example grounded in a limited area, but not at the beginning, for example rank 1 to have soft CC , rank 2 extend duration or damage even maybe hard CC, rank 3 definitely hard CC for an enough duration.

But I don't know how many skills will be in Ashes and while reach max level how many hard CC we can have and still have a good heath damage, if will be hard to have good damage it's definitely okay to have some adjustment.

Follidus

I can really appreciate long cc chains in WoW, but it can definitely be frustrating to play against even with dispels and other cc removal.

I'd be ok with stuns, but as long as 1) they're not instant cast so there's the ability to react to it, and 2) stuns don't last more than 2 seconds, which is more than enough time to coordinate a burst into.

Fairtale

CROW3 wrote: »

Stuns are a classic board game mechanic called: "you lose a turn"

Then go play a board game.

Stuns are lazy coding, feel bad and look bad. We need a "hero falls on the floor" animation and make it last for as many seconds as the "stun" would last.

Noaani

mr n0body wrote: »

Stuns are lazy coding

No stuns is lazy coding, as there is no coding involved.

Adding stuns is more coding than not adding stuns. The only thing lazy is your statement.

Dreoh

Noaani wrote: »

mr n0body wrote: »

Stuns are lazy coding

No stuns is lazy coding, as there is no coding involved.

Adding stuns is more coding than not adding stuns. The only thing lazy is your statement.

That's an incredibly bad faith thing to say because you're missing the point hard by misrepresenting the argument of the thread.

This entire thread isn't "No stuns!"

It's "Alternative to stuns!"

Nothing lazy about doing the alternatives. In fact as I've stated in the title and original post and most of my replies, stuns are extremely lazy compared to the alternatives.

Noaani

Dreoh wrote: »

Nothing lazy about doing the alternatives.

I think you missed the point of the comment.

It wasn't a point about stuns at all.

Fairtale

Dreoh wrote: »

This entire thread isn't "No stuns!"

It's "Alternative to stuns!"

How is a throw not an alternative to a stun? Does your hero NECESSARILY have to be standing there in the mortal combat "finish him" pose for the duration of the stun?

Or is it just not the alternative you want? then just say that.

Dreoh

mr n0body wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

This entire thread isn't "No stuns!"

It's "Alternative to stuns!"

How is a throw not an alternative to a stun? Does your hero NECESSARILY have to be standing there in the mortal combat "finish him" pose for the duration of the stun?

Or is it just not the alternative you want? then just say that.

What? I wasn't talking about your comment at all, what are you going on about lol?

Noaani

Dreoh wrote: »

mr n0body wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

This entire thread isn't "No stuns!"

It's "Alternative to stuns!"

How is a throw not an alternative to a stun? Does your hero NECESSARILY have to be standing there in the mortal combat "finish him" pose for the duration of the stun?

Or is it just not the alternative you want? then just say that.

What? I wasn't talking about your comment at all, what are you going on about lol?

You'll have to forgive him, he is still working out how forums work.

CROW3

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