PvP and CC

Iskiab

Hello,

I thought I'd chime in about something that's always an issue in every PvP game, and unfortunately I've never seen it done well in a PvP game on release... CC.

In almost every PvP game I've played there's been a lot of ... complaints... about too much CC, so CC immunity gets implemented post release and CC abilities get removed post-launch.

I thought I'd bring this up now to save the forum crying ahead of time. I'd suggest to think long and hard about who should get which CC abilities, will they grant immunity, for how long, will some abilities share immunity, etc...

No one likes losing control of their characters, but without CC PvP becomes an aoe damage/healing fest. So it's necessary, but in moderation imo.

Ace1234

"No one likes losing control of their characters, but without CC PvP becomes an aoe damage/healing fest. So it's necessary, but in moderation imo."

It wouldn't have to be like that if you instead take the same approach to limiting aoe damage and aoe healing. Then you can have the fast pace free and fluid aspect without so much cc, while still being capable of dodging non-aoe abilities and requiring skill to land said abilties.

Veeshan

Darkfall didnt have any hard CC 9Was wall of force that was a gravity pull but there were ways out of it) and it worked reasonably well it was very range heavy but that was probaly more to due with friendly fire so going into melee often got u hit by allies but melee was brutal if you got some good hits off.

Imo Tank classes should get a bunch of hard CC skills since people generaly ignore them in pvp they need to be able to peel off the squishy targets.
DPS - Shouldnt get any hard CC just soft CC like slows and disarms with one exception being rogue classes some of them should have access to a opening Stun attack but they should have more stuns to stun lock people to death
Offensive support classes, can get more crowd control skills too since there dmg will be lower then need to manipulate fight by either debuff opponents or CC/interupting them
Defensive support, Should have CC breaks/immunity buffs this include some tank rolls too

Mag7spy

Cc is defiantly something that needs to be managed in the design phase so it doesn't get crazy. A good cc kind of limit I feel is 2 hard cc and one mini cc. But if you use 2 hard cc in a row you can't use the mini to you have to be mindful of when you use skills and what ones. Helps to add some complexity.

Asraiel

CC ads tactic to PvP without it simply becomes a DPS festival.
AoC has both Tab Target and Non Target skills. so CC are needed or Long range players will overpower closerange players all the time.

limiting the CC's in numbers is bad choise so you only need an additional companion to enlarge the amount of CC.

I belive that the Dev at Intrepid that comeing from for many diffrent Gamestudios that had PvP games in it will do a geart job on CC's so they are Tactical but not OP and that it will not be possible to contain Players in CC locks.

I Think the best way would be afer a CC is applyed to a player the CC resistand is rised up to almost 100% and with every second passing (even while the CC is active) the resistance droping back to normal. so that you can not Root and then Sleep a second later. ALso that it has Mirco CC's in dmg skills that counting as CC even if the duration of the CC itself is less than 1 sec. aplying Cc resitance that may takes 5-10 secs befor its again on the normal resistance.

But you will also have Dispels of maybe skills that blocks the next CC. So it will be vital to gather intel on your oponent befor engadeing so you know what he is capeble of and were his weakness is and monitoring closely to see when he has used a cc blocker or what his cd's are. So that PvP is more than do your standart skillrotar and the enemy is dead.

Iskiab

Veeshan wrote: »

Darkfall didnt have any hard CC 9Was wall of force that was a gravity pull but there were ways out of it) and it worked reasonably well it was very range heavy but that was probaly more to due with friendly fire so going into melee often got u hit by allies but melee was brutal if you got some good hits off.

Imo Tank classes should get a bunch of hard CC skills since people generaly ignore them in pvp they need to be able to peel off the squishy targets.
DPS - Shouldnt get any hard CC just soft CC like slows and disarms with one exception being rogue classes some of them should have access to a opening Stun attack but they should have more stuns to stun lock people to death
Offensive support classes, can get more crowd control skills too since there dmg will be lower then need to manipulate fight by either debuff opponents or CC/interupting them
Defensive support, Should have CC breaks/immunity buffs this include some tank rolls too

Yea, friendly fire gets around the issue, but for large scale pvp without some sort of immunity what usually happens is a group will chain cc an individual until they die. It's a problem without a simple solution, but with open world pvp there will be large groups. CC has always been the number 1 complaint in every pvp game I've played.

Strevi

CC is good.
Improves the fight.
Pulling down players from the walls in a siege is fun. For them too
Letting them hit invisible walls while running or retreating is another fun mechanic.

Savic Prosperity

its entirely possible that a lot of the hard will have to be aimed where as the tab target cc would be more like slows and stuff for the balance
but im also thinking in the very large scale fights having some sort of building short term cc immunity would be nice or at least same type of cc immunity

Voxtrium

Limited CC, if theres 40 players and 20 of them have hard cc that last for 1 second than the ability to completely neutralize multiple players without letting them move is high, so there needs to be a CC cap that prevents chain cc on a single player. Otherwise like people stated above, cc needs to be limited. Slows, AOE, DOT are all abilities that should be the standard, displacement abilities like a hook or grapple are good forms of cc. The more damage your character has the less CC you should have to prevent winning a dual before it even begins.

novercalis

In terms of CC, AoC should look into MOBA games and how they try to balance around CC and the types of CC they get.

But to get started - a list of CCs should be known and determining their definition in Intrepid Studios
Here are a list of CCs

Soft CC

- Blind - Decrease atk/accurary
- Cripple - prevents movement abilities
- Deafen - decrease atk/acc
- intoxication - move weirdly
- Slow - move slowly
- Tremble - mouse / targetting moves weirdly
- Vortex - player is being pulled in. movement abilities can get you out of it.



Hard/True CC - This is usually something that is considered a physical action that takes X amount of time.
If you fall - its gonna take you a second to get up.

- Banish - Removed from combat for X seconds
- Grab/Grapple - Held in place by another opponent for X second
- Knockback - Pushed back and fell prone, takes X second to get up
- Knockup - Lifted into the air for X second
- Polymorph - physically turned into something else for X second
- Pull - something physically grappled you and is pulling you in, Distance = Time
- Knockdown - Takes X seconds to get back up.

Most of these - prevents you doing any action until you recovered / gotten back up.


Medium CC - You are still able to do some actions - have some player agency while under these effects

- Disarm - Can't attack for X second
- Disorient - wobble camera effect
- Madness - Visual Distortion for player
- Mesmerize - Can't do anything for X second or until you take a hit (inlcuding dot dmg)
- Sleep - Same as Mesmerize
- Root - Stuck in place but still able to do stuff
- Silence - cant cast spell but still can do other stuff
- Slippery/Slide - lose control of direction of movement but can still attack/cast
- Stun - cant do anything for X second or until you get hit
- Taunt - Change targetting and movement toward the Taunter but can still attack or do other abilities


unknown CC type

- Fear (Can be VERY Hard CC like World of Warcraft, or a Medium/Hard CC like in Smite which last for 2 seconds only)

Sapiverenus

I like getting ideas from other games @novercalis
Hopefully the CC is more literal, such as Blind actually blinding the screen like in Crowfall and Deaf turning off headset/speakers.

A bunch of different wounds can cause different CC; this allows classes like Tank and Fighter to be more resilient when suffering physical wounds (lower effect) and have less chance of receiving them, and allows Cleric to have specific wounds they need to heal.
Rogue and Ranger would have some greater resistance and reduced effects compared to Magic archetypes; keeping the theme going.
Specific weapons causing certain wounds.
I like having a power balance too so a lot of thought and ideas would have to go into it.

Stagger and stagger-resistance could be a big thing, with smaller moves possible during it
((Rogues less affected by Stagger I guess due to their small moves and high Agility, Tanks simply having less chance to Stagger or Knock, Fighters having a lower chance to stagger & knock and a bit lower stagger time, and Rangers being well-rounded with less stagger time and reduced change to be staggered))
Stagger would just lock out big moves that require complete control of one's character to execute and affect movement. If you try using a movement ability while staggered or staggered mid-execute one might veer off course and wind up knocked down (recovery depending on Agility I guess).
It would be the CC tier before Knock effects.

Spamming 'Effort' to reduce overlapping CC sounds good to me though. . . max effectiveness softlocked at 2 clicks per second/ hardcapped 3 clicks per second for magic classes and 5/10 for physical ones. . . magic classes requiring some sort of magic to deal with CC rather than 'Effort' which physical classes would use.

TheDarkSorcerer

I actually kinda enjoy CC'ing people in PvP. It makes me feel like a sorcerer Dominatrix "Get on your kneesssss peasant!"


I'm quite known in ESO PvP on console for spamming Rune Cage on people. People get so mad.

RUNE CAGE "Imprison an enemy in a constricting sphere of dark magic. After a short duration they are stunned for 3 seconds. Deals 1799 Magic Damage if the stun lasts the full duration. This stun cannot be blocked."

maouw

I also want to point out that League has learned a neat trick that makes hard cc feel less punishing on the receiving end:
- cc animations that climax

For example:

• Nami Q puts you in a bubble that rises and eventually pops
• Taric E spreads a short beam of light that stuns you

Both these abilities are 1.5s of hard cc, but for some reason Nami Q doesn't feel as frustrating as being stunned by Taric's E and just standing there stunned.
Similar thing with knockups - they don't feel as bad as straightup stuns - even though they ultimately achieve the same purpose.

If you keep some sort of motion happening with hard CC, it tricks our brains into being less salty - especially if the animation gives a strong indication of when the cc will end (like with knockups, you know the moment you hit the ground you can start moving again)

Veeshan

Tanks should be the only ones that get hard CC (Stuns/Knockdowns) with some small exception maybe rogue gets 1 stun as a stealth openers for example but should have stun locks.

Dps classes should get soft CC so ur roots and slows basicly the cc that doesnt lock everything u can do like a stun or knock down can u retain some form of being able to do something.

Offensive support rolls can have some hard CC too but have lower dmg.

But yeah any DPS class should relay get solid CC options.

Some classes could have hard CC but it breaks/despel if u take X amount of dmg too so ucan stun somone from 100% to like 40% hpo cause it break after taking say 1k dmg

Voxtrium

An additional thought is having tenacity for characters as the base limiter to cc, 0 tenacity = no cc resistance, 100 = complete cc resistance, Classes could be given base tenacity stats, Tank can have 60%, scale back from there, more dps = less base tenacity. Idk i feel like the probably already implemented something like this or at least considered it.

Sapiverenus

@Veeshan
No one wants Main Character Tanks lol.

Players already occupy physical space; whenever Intrepid adds Inertia/ Push (make the right decision Sharif) then Tank can be pushed less/ have high Inertia, thus being a great Shield and Wall.
Attacks should hit the First person then knock one into other characters for lower damage (if they are knocked); Tanks would knock into others less.

Tanks can absorb hits and physically get in the way; that should be more than enough to not hand them the only Hard CC in the game as well.

LordPax

I will say this here, and it will be my hill to die on, the BEST mmo PvP game that ever existed was Guild Wars 1. It would be an absolute pipe dream to get that same level of variability and balance.
- CC is fine, not as common, but it existed and didnt punish
- skills cost mana. Mana management was HUGE
- Mesmers used skill interrupts and various hexes to drain mana or make attacks/spells damage the caster
- limited amount of skill slots(8 total with 1 being an elite and 1 being a res, so about 6) BUT in a game with 8 classes(and the option for secondary similar to AoC), and with over 3,500 skills........ variety and style was the name of the game.

I might be living in the past, sure, but GW1 will forever reign king of *instanced* pvp. The one flaw it had was no open world. GW2 failed spectacularly at that(WvW is a joke).

Intrepid, I beg of you, please use GW1 as a reference when balancing cc and skills!