Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
When it comes to pve I honestly do not think it matters, bosses will always be immune to the useful CC
How do you feel about CC and CC breaks in MMORPGs?
Hard CC take: Stun, immobilize, fear/forced movement,Knock down/up/back/pull
If they are spammable, then its both unfun to receive and use. Because from both ends there is no interaction in the fight, its not hard to kill someone who cant fight back and make pvp dull
I would say as a rough guess, if I am spending more than 30% of the time under hard CC then the fight isn't fun (In group fights this goes out the window as trying to balance CC around a 5v5 is mindbogglingly hard)
Soft CC take: Slow move/skill speed, Daze/disarm
This one is harder to judge as it depends on duration and intensity
I feel like soft CC should be equal across all archetypes because other wise trying to know what each CC type does for each archetype becomes near impossible
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
Being able to spec into CC break and other forms of CC in general would be nice. A class is all about CC breaking or CCing I feel is a bit overkill but having certain archetypes not having access to CC or breaks does make sense
My preference would be the higher the damage the class can achieve the fewer CC and breaks it can get, as the old adage goes "a dead enemy cant hurt you"
And the lower the damage the better access to CC and breaks they get, looking mostly at Tanks and Healer for this
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
This is great, this allows you to make a build you want, there should be a trade off for choose "I want glass canon" and "I want a pvp build that can counter play" and "I want to make a supporting group pvp build"
I have seen a few posts say no, their points are well put together and to a small degree I see where they are coming from, I do however disagree with them. Part of playing an MMO is making a choice of what you want to play as, there should be variants of builds even within the same archetypes because other wise you know exactly what you are dealing with when you see it, it also ends up creating a meta of "Play x archetype because its the best" whereas with choosing what you want to play it matters a bit less because you chose
I will add though, this game will have 64 classes, so having limited customization is fine because you can pivot to another class to get want you want
CC and their breaks have a place in games but should be balanced against their impact on player experience. A cardinal sin of mechanics is to remove player agency without due consideration. The best CCs should have a cast time or some means of investment to ensure that they are not the default choice. In terms of CC breaks no one wants to use a CC and to have it ignored, even burning a longer cooldown in to regain control of the character feels less like an expression of skill and more weighted on the apm of the CC user. If the defender can not survive, take action, or have a reasonable opportunity to respond they feel cheated.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
I think that all Archetypes should have CC breaks but those breaks should not be uniform. I think that classes that have specific forms of CC should have breaks to similar CC due to their "familiarity" with those disables. However, the same CC break should be able to remove all disable and if it is not covered under the CC that they can remove it should cost them some %health (perhaps 10-30% depending on the tier of the CC).
This would make it "familiar" CC breaks low cost and just on a cooldown, however a desire to remove any disable comes at a cost for the defender if they really want to regain control of their characters. Additionally, CC should have its duration reduced/ended if a % of damage is taken. This would give the attacker "a free shot" or a couple of hits to feel their CC was well used but does not promote a CC and nuke to 0 gameplay.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
You should ALWAYS have to choose to invest into CC. There should be a cost to your build anytime you gain the power to control or deny control to another player's experience.
This is the original post that started the thread
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.
And this is the link to the actual thread
CC is an additional tool the player has that can interact with each of those core combat elements. You can use it tactically to set up opportunities for
1. offensive pressure- like rooting an enemy when they are standing on a damage over time aoe, to make them take more damage. Or, like a knockback that can push an enemy off a cliff and force them to take fall damage
2. defense- like a stun that prevents the enemy from attacking you, thus protecting yourself
3. movement/control- like a tank pulling an enemy up close to use weapon strikes, or a fighter rooting an enemy to close the gap, or a mage blocking the enemys movement using an icicle field
4. sustainability- sustainability is basically just the ability to keep performing the above actions throughout a fight. Theoretically CC could relate to sustain through rewarding efficient CC use with more sustainability (such as having mana or health regen upon successful CC usage), so the better you are at using CC = the more CC you get to use (basically a positive feedback loop linking successful CC usage with combat gameplay). So CC can be another tool for rewarding tactical play and further engaging with the combat loop.
For a long list of examples for each category, please reference my past thread on the topic
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54950/proactive-reactive-offense-defense-movement-options-baked-in-at-various-ranges#latest
2. Choice and depth of well designed CC gameplay
https://crosscode.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_Arts
For working gifs related to the post, feel free to reference the combat art gifs for the spheromancer class on the above page link to my favorite combat system, which details skill effects and cc examples relating to the basic combat actions (ranged attack, melee attack, defense, and dash) at different levels of progression, as well as "augments" for these skills based on the current elemental mode (heat, cold, shock, wave, and neutral), which is basically act like a "combat stance" that can apply ancillary effects to those skills depending on what you are trying to achieve during a fight such as
- wave excels at applying "control" cc effects to your actions (like giving your melee skill knockback)
- shock excels at applying movement effects (like giving your dash skill extra dashes, or stunning the target to allow you to have movement advantages)
- flame excels at applying damage to your actions (like adding aoe, or giving you indirect line of sight access, or just by adding raw damage)
- cold excels at enhancing defensive capabilities (like adding freeze effects or creating defensive obtacles and barriers)
I really like the variety and depth this provides, by giving you lots of options to manage while performing the most basic actions. While you are performing the basic actions of either dashing, attacking, or moving, you can strategically focus on enhacing one of these actions by using skills with added effects that either add damage, provide protection, enhance your mobility, or control the enemy in some way. This makes you think more about every action you take as each action requires a choice of which skill effect you want for that situation, because you know it can affect your ability to manage distances between you and enemy through your mobility and control effects that you apply to any basic action, as well as requiring you to consider the health of you and the enemy through managing the defensive and offensive effects you might want to apply to any of your actions. It also makes you think more about your long term strategy throughout a fight because of how many possibilities there are in terms of combat interactions and positioning, how many factors there are to manage, and the variety of approaches there are for achieving your combat goal, which also creates a large design space for enemy types as well. The strategic aspect also impacts the skill tree design as well, because you have to discover which elemental stances excel at what things, and choose which skills and effects you want to spec into for each stance in the skill tree. On top of adding these aspects to combat, and adding these choices to skill trees, there is also the tactical aspect of switching your stance on the fly, in order to get the desired effect "in the moment", which I really like how engaging that is.
3. Fun, skill, and feel of good CC gameplay (managing movement and cc for distance control)
I like the idea of abilities that change the distance reletive to combatants when they are used properly, such as getting into range to use a signature ability which also has knockback, which forces you to repeat the process of needing to use movement to get into that range to use the ability again. The cc acts as kind of a feedback loop for that type of gameplay. I really like the flow of allowing CC to be used for control, but still requiring skillful movement to be an important part of the "combat puzzle", and your proficiency of movement can affect your proficieny of cc usage (such as using the right movment skill at the right time to get into position to where you can use a control skill to set you up for a damage skill) which creates fun sequences of actions, imo. I like the overall strategy aspects, the tactical aspects, and how engaging this can be when performed at faster pacings.
4. Impactful game-feel, consequential choices, and weapon distinctions/balance
1. it can make hits feel more impactful
2. it provides consequences to choices that are made
When cc is a thing, it can be tuned to provide that "game feel" that is appealing to a lot of people.
From a psychological perpective, cc can also make choices feel more consequential, because you have the risk of your movement being affected negatively by some kind of cc effect, meaning you will want to think more about your actions because they have consequences, its risk vs. reward.
I think it also provides more design space for weapon designs, because you can have meaninful differences between weapons where some can focus more on movement capabilities and some on cc effects.
This can also make weapon strike ranges more relevant as well. It should matter what range you use your weapon strikes at, and you should be required to use them thoughftully and to space them well, so there needs to be some kind of consequence if you space them poorly or use them in the wrong situation, compared to another player who uses their weapon strikes correctly. Both movement and CC boosts/penalties can be leveraged to make these ranges more relevant, since both can be used for managing distance between combatants. This can be used to make players think twice before randomly swinging weapons and make them think more about how they might sacrifice their positioning due to movement/cc effects that resulted from bad weapon usage relative to the enemy's usage. This can also help balance shorter and longer ranged weapons as well, since shorter ranged weapons need some way of defending and closing the gap against longer ranged weapons. CC and other defensives can be a way of protecting against longer ranged attacks, and movement/cc can be used to manage distance to perform that gap closing function so shorter ranged weapons can get into striking distance. I think this all plays a role in adding depth and variety to combat through more distinct weapon niches, more skillful distance management, and more strategic and tactical option management, which CC plays a role in providing.
5. Integrating agency into cc based gameplay
6. CC as a tool for storytelling and experiences
CC is another way for players to interface with the game, so its another way that stories can be experienced through the gameplay as a result. If you have a specific story that involves pushing a character out of the way to save them from a runaway caravan or something like that where you want to give the player the opportunity to push the character out of the way themselves, having CC abilities makes that kind of experience possible.
If you want to have a quest where its about surviving a monster horde where the enemies are too tough to kill with raw damage, CC can give you a different way of solving the problem, such as stunning the enemys to buy time, or pushing them into hazards to kill them.
This was something that I thought was really fun about the high level survival missions in Warframe. The enemies would scale in toughness the longer you survive, to where they were pretty much imposible to kill once you make it to a certain point, and rely on CC to get out of an intense situation. This created some fun and intense moments for me, because you might have spent a couple hours farming stuff in the mission and want to keep pushing things to see how long you can survive, but then you risk losing everything if you die. There were so many nail-biters I had where I thought I could survive another wave instead of making my way closer to the exfill location, so I had to scramble all the way through the level using my movement and cc to dodge and stun massive hordes of practically indestructable enemies, only to barely make it to the exfill location alive. This is a very unique experience that I enjoyed in Warframe, because you would really have to be in the zone if you want to survive those types of situations. There was nothing really like using a Rhino stomp ability with like 1hp left so you can pop your iron skin to have invulnerability for a couple seconds, so you can survive long enough to be able to stomp again to suspend enemies in the air for a couple seconds, so you can bullet jump past 100+ enemies who are suspended in the air from your stomp, as you barely dive into the exfill area while the enemies are standing back up and ready to slaughter you. It was a cool flow-state feeling where the fluidity of the movement, the strategic cc usage, the timing of the skills, the utilization of the map knowledge and line-of-sight, the "feeling of living on borrowed time", and many other things had to come together in order to survive an intense situation, which made for a fun experience imo. This is not representative of most of Warframe, and is kind of a vertical slice from late game survival missions, but it was still pretty fun to me and cc is a part of the reason why. (The stalker enemy was also a cool Warframe enemy as well, who would pop up in missions to assasinate players who made certain decisions in previous missions)
7. CC and the zerg problem
8. CC in Pve vs Pvp
9. The role and effect of CC breaks
This eliminates those range-based "play and counterplay" type of interactions and gameplay, and this is super annoying when you have fun and well designed cc in combat but you can't actually utilize it, due to having cc breaks or immunities that make cc usage obsolete, for both pve bosses and pvp
- I don't see why cc breaks are even necessary for balance or to solve other cc related problems like stunlocking and such.
I think that if you balance the existing cc options correctly then there won't be the need to just invalidate them through cc breaks for "balance reasons", because why even include them at all at that point, its way less skillful to use a cc break than to have to think around countering cc in other ways.
I might be okay with CC breaks if they function similar to "getup options" in Super Smash Bros, where you have a limited set of options once you enter a specific disadvantageous combat state. This means you would still have the interplay of CC in a neutral combat state, but if you enter a different combat state like "knocked down" or "stunlocked" or whatever, then maybe you are now in a disadvantageous position where you options are more limited and you can use a cc break in that circumstance (I think Dragon Nest's combat had something like this), but I definitely don't agree with being able to just pop a cc break at any time during combat just because you got CC'd.
- If cc break needs to be a thing, I would either prefer it be done the way I just described as only available during disdavantageous combat states, or if you can use it any time then it would need to be a very limited use type of thing where you can only do it once in a blue moon (which would make it kind of a "comeback mechanic" in a way, which generally doesn't favor the more skilled player and would need to be balanced carefully)
10. Potential problems with mishandled cc
CC should be strong enough to where it makes a difference and requires tactical choices, but weak enough to where you still have to make those movement and cc based choices repeatedly throughout the fight instead of "one and done cc usage, easy button, I win".
If the pendulum swings too far in either direction between overtuned and undertuned CC, both can oversimplify the combat into more basic, boring, or static gameplay.
CC can be extremely annoying if the duration is too long. Stuns should NEVER last over 5 seconds, and 5 second stuns should have an extremely high cost to them (not just 1 long cd). Other forms of CC shouldn't last more than 12 seconds, and if they do last over 5 seconds, it should be something that can be dispelled by someone else. This CC dispel should be available to a decent amount of archtypes, not just clerics and bards.
CC on mobs can last as long as you designers want them to last.
CC breaks are a good thing and an item or universal class ability to break a cc every 1-3 min is a must for PVP content.
I think it's best to have 3 options for CC break:
1. Break a cc manually once every 1-3 minutes.
2. Break the first cc put on you automatically once every 1-3 minutes.
3. Reduce duration of all CC's by x% (20% or so)
Normally from these, the manual CC break is the best to pick, but requires skill to use. the other options help people that want to be lazy (like me).
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
Absolutely yes, everyone should have access to a cc break. Some archtypes can have 1-2 extra perhaps, especially the more fragile ones.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
Cookie cutter builds will inevitably suggest to get a CC break since they are incredibly valuable over any kind of other dps or defense skill point, so it's best to just not have the option at all to reduce how much balancing is needed. This may also encourage players to use CC breaks more often in PVE, while adding a dps alternative skill would lead them inevitably picking the dps increase. Getting players used to their CC break in PVE while leveling could be pretty helpful to players that don't PVP often.
- I believe that Crowd Control and breaks are essential for MMORPGs, but only if it gives a purpose to have them. In PvE CCs should be a crucial part of dealing with mobs and coordinating your group/raid to work together. In PvP it should be beneficial to know who you are trying to CC (this will tie into my next answer), because if you CC the wrong person it could change the course of the fight.
2. How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
- I do not believe all archetypes should have CC break or CC in general. It's my personal opinion that only 2-3 main archetypes should be able to use CC to build a good foundation for team/group dynamics. I also say that 2-4 should have the ability to have a CC break. How it plays out in my mind is that a group is fighting and one "mage" CC's a archetype that has a CC break, and now they counter each other out and it is a battle of attrition due to poor call out. On the other side lets say the CC was used on a cleric who should not have a CC break. Now that teams must do what it can to either protect its healer to ensure the parties survival. Now on this note the CC cannot have a short cooldown because it would be overused and would not have the same effect emotionally of using it at the right time to turn the tide.
3. What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
- I think that if you are able to implement CC and CC breaks to certain classes you would not have to worry about the damage portion. I think that they should be able skill nodes to increase duration/effectiveness for CC and for CC breaks to reduce cooldown of skill/or reduce duration of being CCd if a passive skill is introduced.
I just learned about AoC a week ago and from what I have seen from creators and read through it seems like it was made to be community driven. I think something like this would bring groups/guilds more close knit and creating parties would bring that decision making to how the group should look for certain encounters and brings in the need to communicate because someone may identify which archetypes they are fighting to be more precise on who can be CC'd to turn the fight in their favor.
I know I'm late and apologies if this has been shared before, but just dropping my "popular" comment from a while ago.
To answer the question
1. I personally love being able to break CC, but it should come at a cost related to how much the CC caster has specced into CC, or how much the class is specialised for CC.
2. See 1, just having classes be better or worse at breaking, to me, is better than not being able to at all.
3. Love this idea.
Now, there are a lot of good things about the current system, I’m not saying there isn’t. But overall, the direction of how much CC is available and the tools implemented in the game to ensure CC is not oppressive are pushing CC design in a poor direction.
I originally wrote this a while back, before A2 launched, and I intended to put it with a series of other posts. I have since changed my mind, it belongs here, but my quick edits of this may not be perfect, so I might have some innaccuracies here and there, but my main points still stand.
The Goal of CC Within An MMO
Of course, a discussion about CC requires that first we understand how CC fits into an MMO, and more specifically, Ashes of Creation. Though ultimately the best definition for what CC should do is decided by the vision of the devs, generally, CC is a tool in combat that is used to intentionally disrupt the flow of combat at a crucial moment in order to gain an advantage.
Of course, CC often has different roles and impacts in PvP versus PvE. And one big difference between the two is that in PvP, being on the receiving end can be oppressive. However, Ashes of Creation is a PvX game, so CC needs to be able to fill the role of being useful in PvE without becoming oppressive in PvP.
CC implementation is also super dependent on the style of combat, whether it be tab-target, action or hybrid combat. The combat style massively changes how positioning, manoeuvrability and timing function, and all of these then greatly change how much impact CC has on the flow of combat. Other combat considerations such as time-to-kill are also a hugely important factor in implementing and balancing CC.
But even with all of these different factors in mind, CC always remains a tool that is designed to tactically disrupt the flow of combat. Whether this be to give yourself some breathing room, or to set up a devastating attack, safely reposition in a fight, catch an opponent out of position, etc, these common goals exist across all video games that utilise CC. As such, the design for CC needs to keep this in mind at all times.
The Current State of CC In Ashes of Creation
Before we dive into the deep nitty gritty of the issue, let’s cover the surface level context of things. Currently, there’s a problem within PvP concerning the amount of CC that players encounter, and even the devs have acknowledged it. People are being CCed too much.
The devs, in the Bard showcase, verbally acknowledged that players spent too long being CCed in the Node War Livestream. I quote, “game was a bit unbalanced when it came to crowd control” amidst complaints that one of the players was rooted for 30 seconds and that the level of CC in the node war livestream was simply not fun. This is a direct statement that a problem exists. Currently, this issue isn't run into much in the Alpha testing, but I'm willing to bet that this is because people simply have not unlocked many of their CC skills and fights aren't big enough.
Adding on top of this, is that the devs have implemented a fix for this problem, this fix being the temporary CC immunity after being CCed too much. The existence of a fix itself is an admittance that there is an issue facing players.
So, main takeaway here, players are being CCed too much in medium-scale PvP scenarios. (And yes, this is medium-scale given how large the devs intend on some of their PvP events being. So this issue can still get worse.)
Issues with the Current CC Immunity Implementation
So we’ve established that there is a problem for players, they will be spending too much time being CCed. But why am I bringing this problem up when there’s already a fix in place for it? The negative interactions players will encounter have been patched up by the temporary CC immunity. It’s at this point that it is important to realise that temporary CC immunity is not a healthy fix, it will have negative gameplay effects.
If players are being hit with an excess of CC and then have periods of CC immunity, you run into an issue where the game starts to feel like a pendulum swinging between you being CCed and you being immune to CC, with middle ground only occurring in smaller fights. This is not good gameplay. No longer is CC tactically disrupting the flow of combat, now CC and CC immunity are instead dictating the flow of combat.
To describe in detail how excessive CC and temporary CC immunity dictate the flow of combat too much, I’ll give an example. Starting with how gameplay should go, as a Tank/Warrior in a PvP scenario, my job is typically to dictate when and how a fight happens. This is done by using my durability to stay on the front lines and using my engage tools to force a more heavily committed fight once I believe my group has some sort of advantage (opponent blows an important CD, moves out of position, etc). This is how the tank should ideally work with their own group, allowing group PvP to be interesting and an expression of skill in both teamwork and personal play.
However, if we look at what is likely to happen in AoC group PvP, my main gameplay loop will be toeing the line with the opponents, slowly eating CC outside of too much danger, up until I get CC immunity to some prominent group of CC. Only after this happens will I feel confident forcing a hard engage on the opponent in order to try and lock them down in an advantageous position. I’m not waiting for a tactical error from my opponents or a tactical boon from my allies, I’m waiting for CC immunity to line up properly. This is a demonstration of how CC and CC immunity will dictate the flow of combat, my plan and the timing of my actions are going to, at least partially, revolve around me and/or my warrior buddies getting CC immunity.
This method of waiting for CC immunity is much less interesting and greatly reduces opportunity for skill expression. Obviously I’m still going to have to look for some advantages in the fight, even with CC immunity shenanigans, but the point stands that this is one example of how excess CC and temporary CC immunity will negatively affect gameplay by dictating combat flow too strongly. The general effect is that gameplay will change very significantly depending on whether or not you have CC immunity, rather than just natural combat effects determined by player actions.
Root Cause of CC Issues Still At Large
At the heart of this entire post is a very simple logic statement:
Players are being CCed too much, therefore, there is too much CC in the game.
This is an important statement because it tells us that there is a root cause to the issue of players being CCed for too long. The gripes of players in the Node War livestream is not some isolated incident, there is a reason for it happening. The reason is that players have access to far too much CC.
In terms of design direction, using CC immunity is essentially putting a bandaid on the symptom of the root cause, rather than actually trying to deal with the root cause itself. This is bad. To analyse why this is bad, we can ask a few questions that cannot be answered well.
What is the reason for giving players access to all of this CC in the first place if players are just going to be immune to it for a significant period of time?
Now, this is difficult to answer in the context of a PvX game, because there may be different intended uses of CC in PvP versus PvE. In PvE, lots of CC isn’t oppressive, so you can get away with a lot of CC. However, just because you can get away with it, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea if it comes at the expense of PvP.
Okay then, so next question. Is there a good reason to have lots of CC in PvE that makes the damage done in PvP worth it?
Simply put, no. Some tab-target games require lots of CC use because it’s the only way a PvE battlefield can be effectively manipulated. In a hybrid combat game like Ashes of Creation though, positioning, timing and maneuverability come into play (or it certainly should) to indirectly manage the crowd of mobs. You don’t need a boat-load of CC because small amounts of CC transfer much more strongly in hybrid combat games.
And there are other benefits as well to reducing the amount of CC in the game rather than needing to implement such drastic countermeasures. The first is that it’s simpler. Though there is definitely a decent amount of thinking involved, it’s so much easier to just reduce the availability/severity/duration of CC than to need to carefully balance the over-oiled scales of overdone CC and drastic CC countermeasures with all of the intricacies of different CC types and variety of scenarios that need to be considered. This also applies to future balancing issues with updates, not just an initial balance standpoint.
Furthermore, leaving the root cause of the problem alone and patching up the symptom means that the root cause can potentially create even more issues down the line, or create ripple effects that are also unwanted. An example could be having the PvE meta just becoming a CC fest with little requirement for good movement, tanking, DPS and healing. And there’s almost certainly many other ripple effects that I can’t think up.
To sum up my point, why implement such a strong intrinsic CC counter instead of just reducing CC?
Understanding Diminishing Returns as a Problem Solver
Diminishing returns is a feature in multiple MMOs, and it is not an inherently bad thing. But, it is important to realise that diminishing returns is only present because there is a problem that needs solving. Diminishing returns is just a problem solver. This problem is the same problem noticed in AoC, players are being CCed too often.
However, just because you have a problem solver does not mean you can just let the problem run rampant. In any real situation, the first step for any hazard/problem is to first try and eliminate the problem, and then successively reduce the impact of the problem with problem solvers. This is because using solutions to try and mitigate the problem is never as effective as simply removing the problem in the first place. The problem solvers are there as a backup in case the problem still appears. This still holds true for a video game like Ashes of Creation. You cannot allow temporary CC immunity to be some crutch for the game’s CC design when you could implement a better CC system. It’s just not as good.
Now, in a realistic scenario, you cannot always remove the problem entirely. It will still occur every now and then. This is also true for Ashes of Creation, even if the CC quantity was at an appropriate level there would still be times when players are being CCed too much, it’s inevitable. And this is when you want diminishing returns to start kicking in. The problem solver is there for when the problem, which has already been minimized in occurrence, appears anyway.
But there’s a proper way to implement diminishing returns. Currently, using temporary CC immunity as the diminishing returns is going from 0 to 100 instantly with no in-between. The returns on using CC aren’t diminishing at this point, they just disappear.
Diminishing returns should ideally be incremental rather than instantly at the maximum, specifically, the strength of the diminishing returns should ramp up over time in relation to the increasing impact of repeated applications of CC. Going back to the ideas of CC being oppressive and CC being bad once it is stopping the flow of combat rather than disrupting it, diminishing returns should scale with how far along the CC impact is along the spectrum from dirsupting to stopping. Only once it is stopping flow AND is oppressive should it ever kick in strongly.
But this doesn’t change the fact that there shouldn’t be so much CC that these scenarios happen too often.
What This Means for AoC’s Design Direction
Ultimately it comes down to thinking of what the best design direction for CC is. Ashes of Creation wants to single-handedly revive the MMO genre and become the next big thing. But if it wants to do this then there is no room for sub-par design. It cannot afford to copy what previous games did and become another clone, AoC needs to be better than all of the current MMOs by a significant margin. AoC cannot just look at other games like WoW and say “well it has plenty of CC and diminishing returns” and then do a bad job of copying it, AoC needs to be better.
Some diminishing returns is necessary, otherwise there will always be instances where someone just eats a bunch of CC from many sources, and this isn’t fun. But right now, the current availability of CC and the methods of dealing with this CC do not look fun or engaging in any way. There is an evident CC-availability issue at hand and the fixes seem like they will have negative gameplay impacts, rather than tackling the real problem.
And the most concerning thing is that A2 is only just coming out and it looks like the devs are already putting out fires caused by poorly implemented CC (by needing the CC immunity). Testers complaining about too much CC in medium sized fights and rushed fixes with little to no explanation as to why they’re good. For there to be trust in the CC design in AoC’s combat system, there needs to be strong understanding and then explanation of reasoning behind the dev’s decisions behind the current CC system.
And you know what, maybe they can, I could be completely wrong and the way they’re going about CC is great. They just need to present their reasoning why and show that it is good. And the A2 will also shed a lot of light on what works and what doesn’t work with the current CC system in place, and leaves a lot of room to change, which is a good thing. And maybe the current CC system is just a placeholder and there will be big changes. Who knows? After all, this is what an Alpha period is for.
But right now, the direction CC design is going in is one of the largest causes of trepidation I have.
Appendix
These are just some little extras that are relevant but don't really fit into the main argument.
Diminishing Returns Should Never Hit 100%
This one is a bit more of a subjective, personal belief, but as the title says, diminishing returns should never reach the point of CC immunity. The reason behind this revolves around the idea of reliability and not wasting precious time.
Skills have an intended function and they should do at least some of this function. And this is because if they do not fulfill any of this intended function, then they are instead a detriment because they waste time. This is true for any skill, but is especially true for CC. This is because, as mentioned, CC is a tool used to disrupt the flow of combat. Normally this means interrupting your opponent, but all of a sudden, if there’s a cast time (even just a small animation) and no effect, now you are only interrupting yourself. It is directly counter-productive as it has the exact opposite effect of what it is supposed to.
Given CC is used to give yourself breathing room or lock down a target, if all of a sudden this doesn’t help and you suddenly have less breathing room or your target gets out for free while you sit there momentarily, that’s bad. And this all happens because the diminishing returns become too strong.
To balance this out, there essentially needs to be a cap on the effectiveness of diminishing returns. And this cap reduces the effectiveness of CC such that it is only as effective as it is time consuming. The value of the time spent using the ability should match up with how impactful the CC is. This essentially puts a cap on diminishing returns where you can say “well that didn’t work” instead of “well, trying to do that just screwed me over”.
Bard CC Combo
This is a quick example of people having access to too much CC. In about half a minute, my brother and I came up with an easy 21 second CC combo for the bard. This example was more prominent in an earlier version I made for this post, but doesn’t appear in the main body anymore. But it’s still a good demonstration of how people have access to way too much CC, because 21 seconds is a huge amount of time for one person to be able to do.
Oh, and the temporary CC immunity doesn’t even help.
Mesmerising Dance opens with a 10 second sleep. Not too difficult to land if you combine this with Flourish. You can’t hit your opponent during this time, but you could heal/buff freely.
Then use Dark Lullaby, which deals damage and Stuns the Sleeping enemy for 6 seconds. During this 6 second window you can freely deal damage to the target. Importantly, use Discordance during this time frame to Stagger the enemy.
Once the Stun ends, use Get Off The Stage. Due to the Stagger already applied, this will apply a 5 second Disarm along with the knockback and Snared. During this 5 second window, continue to beat your enemy while they can’t use a weapon to fight back.
And that’s the combo. Obviously doesn’t work as well against a spellcaster, due to Disarm being much less effective against them, but it will certainly ruin the day of any Warrior or Rogue who wants to get in melee, or any Ranger that gets too close.
Too Much CC Means Not Enough Anti-CC Tools
Now, my logic statement of players being CCed too much implies there is too much CC does technically have another potential cause. This is that, instead of there being too much CC, it is instead that players have a lack of anti-CC tools.
Except then combat just becomes a back-and-forth of using CC and cleansing CC, and at that point, you ask the question of “why do we even have all of this anyway?”. And frankly, combat consisting of lots of CC applications and CC cleanses just sounds boring, I’d much rather be tactically using and avoiding CC by using actual skill and strategy.
Furthermore, a LOT of people got kind of freaked out by the idea of the Warrior having their CC immunity buff. Giving people access to more anti-CC tools may have a similar effect in people claiming it’s all OP, or it might just make it so that the Warrior’s big CD buff is now just kind of average. Both of these options aren’t great either.
CC is a fundamental aspect of PvP combat, allowing for tremendous expressions of skill in dealing out, mitigating and avoiding CC. For instance, the concept of 'trinketing' in WoW, where you have a 2min CD to break all CC. Sometimes you hold it, because you can safely sit the CC you are under without losing the game.
That said, CC in PvP can be very frustrating, because it can make PvP feel like the ultimate goal is making the other team unable to play the game. On melee classes, I gravitate towards classes with root/snare breaks more than any other CC break type, because I find those the most frustrating to play against. Balancing Diminishing Returns and CC duration is an impossible task I don't envy of the developers of any game. Of the MMOs I have played, I think its worthwhile looking at how WoW has developed CC and DR categories over time. Their current Wiki page gives a neat snapshot, showing WotLK-era DR categories vs. War Within DR categories.
In PvE, many WoW players will wax poetic about the "good ol' days" of needing to use a polymorph spell to remove a mob from a dungeon pull, but with open world dungeons and what I have seen on Alpha 2 so far, this isn't the direction that Ashes combat is moving in, and I am happy for it. It looks like it will matter more for solo/small group players, where large groups will be able to bash their head against mobs with plenty of support from tanks/healers to deal with any NPC trouble.
This adds a lot of depth to combat, because I imagine not all CC breaks will be personal, and they will break different types of CC. It changes how every class approaches every other class, and how players approach picking out their class, Eg. me preferring melee with a root/snare break. I don't think there's anything wrong at all with every archetype having some form of CC break.
Initially, I wanted to say that CC is better presented as a choice vs. defensive/healing utility. But after thinking more, damage vs. CC is a very valid choice to be presented with. It allows groups to have some players who specialize in dealing with CC in one way or another while engaging in PvE OR PvP. It also disrupts the ability for the community to form a meta, when there's an obvious choice of how to deal the most damage- But everyone also knows that being able to dish out and break CC is also very important.
I noticed ashes doesn't have a "clump" ability. Something that pulls players towards each other to allow follow up from teammates. Things like Orianna in League, or camlann mace in albion online. I think even new world had something like this. It seems like in the current setup you have to either use natural clumps or try and create then with tank walls or something.
Game should definitely have CC, I don't think every class needs hard CC though. Wow has gone a bit overkill on every class having something. Multiple somethings tbh.
Personally like when cleanses (CC breaks) come from supports. Feels good as a support player.
In pvp you would always take the CC break.not even a choice You'd have to be super confident you are going to stomp them if you didn't.
- within the trinity system we have DPS, Healer, and Tank all filling their own rolls within combat. CC and CC breaks kind of fill a utility space. in this frame DPS could have more CC breaks than CC, Healer could have a balance of both, and Tanks could have more CC than CC breaks.
- using this as a framework i think there should be trade offs available for each corner of the triangle. for both forks of the utility tree. heals/buffs against utility for healers, resistance/hp against utility for tanks, damage/mobility against utility for DPS.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
- i think every class should have an option for at least one cc break. You should have the option to trade some potential damage/Resistances/heals (depending what Trinity identity your character falls into) for escape(s). One CC = death, is never fun. Also no CC is just a damage race, and the game would lose the very expansive strategy element that CC offers. Having CC enables terrain based strategy (Chokepoints etc.).
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
- i would expand the definition for what is up to trade against a cc break. damage/mobility for DPS, heals/buffs for healers, resistances/hp for tanks
- trades = good. risk vs reward. and offer skill expression opportunities. take one or two less cc breaks in exchange for more damage, thereby putting the pressure on your positioning.
Misc thoughts:
I kind of gave the same answer for all the questions, but I think the framework stands.
(I am in the alpha tests, and the game feels pretty great already. Best wishes for the remainder of the development)
Wildstar had a arrow pressing minigame to break CC. It allowed you to still "play" the game while CCed.
I think it would be worth the time to look into something to actively break CC for ashes.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
1. CC and CC breaks are an integral part of any MMO, especially those with a large focus on PvP. The timing of using CC and CC breaks should be a strategic resource in any players toolbox that they can use to gain the upper hand in a conflict.
2. I feel that not only should all the Archetypes have a form of CC break, it should be similar to games like ESO where you can break out of most CC for the cost of some form of personal resource ie health, mana, stamina, etc. Knowing the correct timing to use CC and break CC is one of the marks of a good player. For example, if a player chains CC breaks back to back they can burn through all of their resources. This leaves the player in a vulnerable position where they don't have the resources to attack, run, CC break again, etc. This rewards a skilled player for having the knowledge of what CC they should use, when they can sit a CC and survive, or when they need to break CC to survive.
3. I do not personally believe that you should have to choose between CC breaks and damaging abilities. Choosing an ability that provides extra utility through CC is one thing, but having to allocate skill points into CC breaks feels bad personally when I would rather have another shiny damage or support ability. If everyone has the baseline ability to break CC at the cost of a personal resource this alleviates most of that problem. If you CAN choose to get additional CC breaks that are on a certain cooldown I could be fine with that as long as it doesn't become a situation where X class is a 100% lock in all situations just because they are the only class to get that extra CC break option.
From an PvP perspective: I dislike losing control of my character, but I dislike the notion of kiting with no counter play even more. I think CC is absolutely necessary but it is hard to do in a way that is both fun and fair for both the initiator and recipient. It is a tough balancing act.
From a PvE perspective I think having that higher skill ceiling in interrupting key NPC attacks and better controlling encounters with CC feels incredibly rewarding and fun.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
I think every archetype deserves the ability to have some counter play to CC but it shouldn't be a get out of jail free card. CC breaks should have longer cooldowns in general and be specialized type breaks based on archetype. maybe a ranger should be able to break out of a snare, caster out of a sleep, tank out of a stun etc.
something that make sense and keeps the feel and flavor of the archetype. any type of universal CC break should be very limited and not self casted. perhaps a cleric/mage/bard could have an ability to shield an ally from CC for a small time and/or break any CC for an ally.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
I think giving the player the options to choose and specialize through skill points is always the best approach to take in any scenario. I don't like everyone being the same. Leave room for players to tailor to preferred playstyles and keep the enemy guessing.
That being said, until I had mastery over my archetype and the games combat system id generally always allocate skill points to whatever CC/CC break I had available by default.
- CC helps tremendously in pve on overpulls - my only dislike is that it only lasts 10 seconds on a pve mob (I feel like it should be 25 seconds on pve, but remain 10 seconds on a pvp player). CC breaks are necessary because if there is no counter then that's just going to cause rage.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
- In a pvp game, I think it's crucial for all classes to have a CC break. But only one. It's up to you to decide to use the break at that moment or save it for better timing in the fight.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
- I hate that choice but it's a necessary evil at this point. Would be nice to have it as an automatic ability given to everyone without spending a point, but I'm not going to cry about it. It's all about choices and tradeoffs.
Yea there was a lot of agreement about this exact example in my thread about cc and player agency back in 2021
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/50615/try-to-limit-the-amount-of-braindead-and-anti-fun-cc-that-is-stuns-there-are-better-alternatives/p1