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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Noaani

George Black wrote: »

But I also want to see classes have SOME specific CC counters.

This is how Archeage did it.

Most classes had a CC break for one particular type of CC, and as players could have three classes, they could almost always take multiple types of CC breaks - though obviously at the cost of other things they then cant take.

HumblePuffin

I haven’t played ESO in a bit but I don’t think the CC break has a cooldown does it? Just the cost?

Personally I’m not a fan of that, but I feel like it’s necessary in ESO because there is quite a bit of CC flying around. Id rather something like WoW where you could break every 2 minutes. Where you get free pass but you have to think about what and when you need to break, but that also lines up with TTK being decent to the point where if you don’t have the break you aren’t getting globaled but it’s def gonna hurt.

A lot of the issues with how CC can feel bad from my perspective is how often you’re getting globaled in it. And comes back to a TTK issue. I think you just have to find that nice balance between hard CC duration, TTK, and just the amount of hard CC getting thrown around. I just want it to look and feel cool.

Edit: I really like the idea of CC counters. I always look at it from the point of getting out of it, and rarely the point of just preventing it in the first place (outside of LoS and the basic things).

Dolyem

Noaani wrote: »

George Black wrote: »

But I also want to see classes have SOME specific CC counters.

This is how Archeage did it.

Most classes had a CC break for one particular type of CC, and as players could have three classes, they could almost always take multiple types of CC breaks - though obviously at the cost of other things they then cant take.

I kind of like this actually, allowing for more customization so it allows the player to decide what they would rather have. Would still need a balance obviously but that would come with time.

wherediditrun

George Black wrote: »

@HumblePuffin
Now I ask the people that are against hard CCs. Is this want you want? A list of CCs homogenized due to the universal counter "break free"?

Remove it entirely isn't a net loss solution. Hard CC has an illusion of mechanical depth when in fact it dilutes it and causes frustration to the player. That's quite important for heavy pvp oriented game to have pvp which is exciting to engage with. Not something you sit through 3 seconds watching your hp bar getting smaller or just "take one for the team' in group engagement.

Something like numerous soft stacking statuses / debuffs which provide both an additional mechanic to compete through as well as requiring lasting reliable effort to pull off engages more and provides more depth, room for outplay as well as reduces overall felt frustration of being unable to move your character.

However that's a bit difficult to do. So rather than having break free, just have shorter CC's with a lot more build up required to put it on the opponent which would provide windows for counter play to happen and player can feel that there was actual skill involved, rather than uh dumb what this button do, I applied stun. Xoxo. Example, you cast some sort of chain with a timer which makes your character slower by 50% if after 2 seconds your opponent haven't moved from the range of the chain it gets stunned. It requires you to pull off and think about positioning, it also allows player to have forsight and play around it. You compete on this dimension, not just dps as a result. (it's not an example of actual proposition for an ability, it's just an illustration of a concept).

In most cases hard CC is awful lazy design contributing to dps race stat dominant pvp. Either my stats are sufficient enough to prevent enough damage until character breaks out, or enemy has enough damage to kill you or put to close to death that it doesn't matter. While the counters and triggers of it are based on coin flipping / who blinks first type of deal.

Dolyem

wherediditrun wrote: »

In most cases hard CC is awful lazy design contributing to dps race stat dominant pvp. Either my stats are sufficient enough to prevent enough damage until character breaks out, or enemy has enough damage to kill you or put to close to death that it doesn't matter. While the counters and triggers of it are based on coin flipping / who blinks first type of deal.

This is a Lazy hypothetical not adding in more factors. "The stun, more health vs more damage THE END"
What about stat builds that can affect CC duration or effect? What about CC-breaks? What about Timing your own CC? Your teammates ability to either heal you, break you free, counter-CC, or just utilize the moment? Anyone who has seriously competed in rated large scale PvP knows that dealing with stuns and other hard CCs are the adrenline pumping moments where as a team you have to react correctly to the situation. And seeing as AoC is being designed around group play, hard CC (including stuns) sounds like a plus from my experiences.

SunScript

Dolyem wrote: »

This is a Lazy hypothetical not adding in more factors. "The stun, more health vs more damage THE END"
What about stat builds that can affect CC duration or effect? What about CC-breaks? What about Timing your own CC? Your teammates ability to either heal you, break you free, counter-CC, or just utilize the moment? Anyone who has seriously competed in rated large scale PvP knows that dealing with stuns and other hard CCs are the adrenline pumping moments where as a team you have to react correctly to the situation. And seeing as AoC is being designed around group play, hard CC (including stuns) sounds like a plus from my experiences.

I'll tell you what's Lazy... not actually paying attention to the thread before making a post. I wonder how many times Dreoh has had to reiterate this thread isn't an anti-CC thread, but an anti-stun thread. I guess that's why people can't even form a complete argument for Stuns, when they can't even pay attention to the distinction.

I'm telling you, I keep genuinely waiting for people to actually start arguing about this properly so we can get a good back and forth like this forum and this topic deserves and all I ever see is arguments about how someone else should make the effort in the conversation because tradition or something. You're going to lose out like this, you know? Because at the end of the day, you don't have to convince us, right? You have to convince the devs and if you cannot even articulate why Stuns offer better adrenaline pumping moments and more teamplay opportunities than say a Root or a Silence and why it is that the tradition of Stuns in MMOs is so much more important than moving on with what we've learned from MMOs so far, then I don't even know what we're doing here.

Noaani

SunScript wrote: »

Because at the end of the day, you don't have to convince us, right? You have to convince the devs and if you cannot even articulate why Stuns offer better adrenaline pumping moments and more teamplay opportunities than say a Root or a Silence and why it is that the tradition of Stuns in MMOs is so much more important than moving on with what we've learned from MMOs so far, then I don't even know what we're doing here.

Actually, since the status quo is for stuns to be present, it is beholden on those that don't want them to convince Intrepid to remove them.

So far, the only actual argument has been "they are frustrating".

No shit, that is why they exist.

As an argument, that is about as smart as saying you don't like nukes because it is frustrating when they kill you, so get rid of nukes as they are just lazy.

The entire point of a stun in a PvP setting is to frustrate your opponent, and CLEARLY they do a good job at that.

So, since it is beholden on those wanting stuns removed to do the convincing here, please tell us all again - why?

Tritri

Although I agree that it's the ones that are against the stuns that have to find argument to convince the devs to get rid of it, I don't agree with your statement about "stuns are there to frustrate players"

Stuns aren't there to frustrates player, they are there to incapacitate one or more player to either focus them down, slow them down or block them from doing some actions. Stuns / Knockdown / banishment and others are hard cc there to gain a strategic advantage.

Sure you could get the same result with a hard root + silence on the a target, but it means using two spells for the same result, which means it's just a "lower" version of the stun.

I think people need to understand that the stun doesn't frustrate in itself, it's the fact that being controlled is not seen as fun by most players. If they get rid of the stun but still create an interesting combat system, people will still get outplayed, controlled and mown down by better and more prepared player. The frustration will be the same.

Getting bursted down in less than .5 second is not fun
Getting stunned for 10 sec is not fun
Getting permanently slowed down and controlled isn't fun
Never being able to get in range of your target isn't fun
etc...

Which sumarized goes like :
"Getting bested in a PvP game, isn't fun"

Azherae

Tritri wrote: »

Although I agree that it's the ones that are against the stuns that have to find argument to convince the devs to get rid of it, I don't agree with your statement about "stuns are there to frustrate players"

Stuns aren't there to frustrates player, they are there to incapacitate one or more player to either focus them down, slow them down or block them from doing some actions. Stuns / Knockdown / banishment and others are hard cc there to gain a strategic advantage.

Sure you could get the same result with a hard root + silence on the a target, but it means using two spells for the same result, which means it's just a "lower" version of the stun.

I think people need to understand that the stun doesn't frustrate in itself, it's the fact that being controlled is not seen as fun by most players. If they get rid of the stun but still create an interesting combat system, people will still get outplayed, controlled and mown down by better and more prepared player. The frustration will be the same.

Getting bursted down in less than .5 second is not fun
Getting stunned for 10 sec is not fun
Getting permanently slowed down and controlled isn't fun
Never being able to get in range of your target isn't fun
etc...

Which sumarized goes like :
"Getting bested in a PvP game, isn't fun"

And the point is that the exact frustration is not the part one is trying to remove. The lack of agency is the part requested to be removed. Which is why no one on the Anti-Stun side seems to grasp the related arguments. I like to be able to play more, I like if my opponent can play more as long as it continues to reward my skill. Why should my opponent get to play less (not do less, that's obviously fine) if it isn't necessary?

Sleep - Wake as soon as hit once, probably the closest to Stun, but in many games has cast time that you can interrupt, moreso than a stun does. Is 'stun with a 3s cast time' acceptable? If so, that should be the new position. "Make the cast time for Stuns 2-3s with an obvious tell, player can move targeting reticle until the end". Is this the acceptable compromise?
Knockdown - Prevents offensive abilities, player can still use defensive ones, even use Dodge if cooldown permits.
Paralyze - Most implementations suck. Could use 'mobile skills become immobile', 'cooldowns lengthened', all sorts of things. Opponent still plays.
Blind - Hides ground target reticles for the blinded player (or maybe all reticle), reduce reticle stickiness if that's a thing, flat reduction in Accuracy if Tab Target.
Root - Prevents movement abilities, player can still use offensive and defensive ones
Slow - Lessens non-ability movement, player can still use abilities.
Silence - Probably just weird in Ashes, would it stop Tank abilities and Mage abilities both? What happens to Summoners?
Knockback/Draw In - Prevents movement for a moment and causes disorientation by reposition, no need to prevent abilities, offensive ones are already more likely to miss

If the whole argument is 'stuns themselves are tradition and fine and must be in the game' and Intrepid for some reason decides 'let's not bother innovating like we are trying to do everywhere else, tradition is good', then the request should be 'please give Stun a long cast time and a big tell so that when we get hit by it, we know that the player using it was very skilled'.

Sounds like both sides will be okay with that, since that balances them nicely while keeping with tradition.

And in a shoutout to the other thread, notice how none of those require any RNG? Resistances can be flat 'duration reduction', and they can all be projectile skillshots, close range melee, and ground target.

Tritri

Well the thing is, I don't think you can just say that stuns are good or bad. You need to look at the whole picture, to have the whole gameplay in your mind to understand if it works or if it doesn't.

In DAoC you had 9 melee stuns, no prerequisite, no cooldown, and the whole gameplay was still amazing. And if there were cc's that bothered the played, it wasn't much the 9 sec stun (even if it was indeed super strong), it was more the snares in this game that were horrible to deal with

Hard cc gave immunity to the corresponding cc, 1 minute for magical based cc, duration times 5 for physical stuns (so 45 sec stun immunity after eating a 9 sec stun). The snares didn't gave immunity though... so you could litteraly get snared over and over again for the whol fight sometimes.. and I'm talking 30 secondes linearly decreasing snares that starts at 99% speed reduction

So yeah, why not make magical castable stuns that you could interrupt, or just get rid of the stuns entirely or keep stuns and add more of them, it just has to work in the whole system.

Currently, as I understand it, the only way to dismount another player is to stun them... so if it stays that way, I hope every class will get numerous stuns without long cd to avoid having to run around for hours trying to get someone to dismount and actually fight

Azherae

Tritri wrote: »

Well the thing is, I don't think you can just say that stuns are good or bad. You need to look at the whole picture, to have the whole gameplay in your mind to understand if it works or if it doesn't.

In DAoC you had 9 melee stuns, no prerequisite, no cooldown, and the whole gameplay was still amazing. And if there were cc's that bothered the played, it wasn't much the 9 sec stun (even if it was indeed super strong), it was more the snares in this game that were horrible to deal with

Hard cc gave immunity to the corresponding cc, 1 minute for magical based cc, duration times 5 for physical stuns (so 45 sec stun immunity after eating a 9 sec stun). The snares didn't gave immunity though... so you could litteraly get snared over and over again for the whol fight sometimes.. and I'm talking 30 secondes linearly decreasing snares that starts at 99% speed reduction

So yeah, why not make magical castable stuns that you could interrupt, or just get rid of the stuns entirely or keep stuns and add more of them, it just has to work in the whole system.

Currently, as I understand it, the only way to dismount another player is to stun them... so if it stays that way, I hope every class will get numerous stuns without long cd to avoid having to run around for hours trying to get someone to dismount and actually fight

And this is easy to agree with, some people just don't like the gameplay resultant from adding Stuns to games that don't suit them.

The issue is that Ashes already has a specific baseline framework involving skillshots (which at least to me implied some speed, backed up somewhat by how Javelin works in game), Action Combat components, relatively lower ground mobility, mobility during casting, shorter cast times, and GvG balance, along with two specific aspects of HP and scaling.

I would absolutely be fine with Stuns within the framework of a different game and I'm fine with the long cast timer Stun option in Ashes. But Ashes already started from a place where quick Stuns already don't fit. When viewed through that lens, this discussion doesn't have to be 'Stuns always suck' (though I still think it could be).

Stuns don't work well in Ashes as it is presented to us now. The game that 'would suit stuns' is sort of distant from where they are, but if they make it, it will probably be pretty good too.

CROW3

SunScript wrote: »

I'm telling you, I keep genuinely waiting for people to actually start arguing about this properly...

Clearly not, otherwise you would have noticed this argument fell apart 5 pages ago. When someone has a fundamental belief about x, there is no logical argument about x, there's just venting. Hard CC exists for the very reason Dreoh hates it - it completely removes the opponent's agency. It's like arguing that ice is terrible because you hate anything frozen.

Azherae

CROW3 wrote: »

SunScript wrote: »

I'm telling you, I keep genuinely waiting for people to actually start arguing about this properly...

Clearly not, otherwise you would have noticed this argument fell apart 5 pages ago. When someone has a fundamental belief about x, there is no logical argument about x, there's just venting. Hard CC exists for the very reason Dreoh hates it - it completely removes the opponent's agency. It's like arguing that ice is terrible because you hate anything frozen.

But by that nature, arguing against someone who thinks that it isn't necessary is pointless too.

Dreoh said 'This thing, that this mechanic does, is bad and not fun'.

The counter, as you are presenting it, is 'This thing, that this mechanic does, exists to do exactly what it does.'

It's similar to 'having to sit or rest to heal mana'.

"Sitting to rest to heal mana is not fun, it slows down gameplay, the game can be built without this."

The equivalent response would be: "That's what it is for, to slow down gameplay, the game shouldn't be built without this."

Except that we know Intrepid's response to this. Steven's personal response, I think, assuming I don't misremember the video.

"[Jeff] explained to me how the game could work without it, so we removed it."

You're right in that the discussion is over, if the 'final say' from the conservative side is 'Working as intended'.

The others should probably move on to 'explaining how the game could work without it, so that it can be removed'.

By that reasoning, there's no need to interrupt the latter process.

JamesSunderland

CROW3 wrote: »

SunScript wrote: »

I'm telling you, I keep genuinely waiting for people to actually start arguing about this properly...

Clearly not, otherwise you would have noticed this argument fell apart 5 pages ago. When someone has a fundamental belief about x, there is no logical argument about x, there's just venting. Hard CC exists for the very reason Dreoh hates it - it completely removes the opponent's agency. It's like arguing that ice is terrible because you hate anything frozen.

Yep, the argument became meaningless quite some pages ago, the people arguing against Stun and Hard CC, are doing so through a personal preference viewpoint saying what they believe it should do, be, what they like or dislike and throwing ambiguous words around like "it's bad", "lazy design", "lack of agency"(neglecting hard-CC counters) or "Frustrating"

CROW3

@Azherae - Which is exactly what the thread transitioned into. But I was responding directly to SunScript's complaint that no one properly argued Dreoh's OP. We did. It ran to ground. We moved on with the cc discussion.

Now, once someone has drawn an ideological line in the sand, you can absolutely continue to bring logical arguments to the table. I'm ok just moving on and discussing other things, you know?

Azherae

JamesSunderland wrote: »

CROW3 wrote: »

SunScript wrote: »

I'm telling you, I keep genuinely waiting for people to actually start arguing about this properly...

Clearly not, otherwise you would have noticed this argument fell apart 5 pages ago. When someone has a fundamental belief about x, there is no logical argument about x, there's just venting. Hard CC exists for the very reason Dreoh hates it - it completely removes the opponent's agency. It's like arguing that ice is terrible because you hate anything frozen.

Yep, the argument became meaningless quite some pages ago, the people arguing against Stun and Hard CC, are doing so through a personal preference viewpoint saying what they believe it should do, be, what they like or dislike and throwing ambiguous words around like "it's bad", "lazy design", "lack of agency"(neglecting hard-CC counters) or "Frustrating"

Then let me ask this. If the argument was meaningless, and by minor implication 'lost by definition' on the Anti-Stun side.

If Dreoh made a different thread 'Suggestions for CC implementations that exclude stuns', would you simply have no reason to post in it? Would you not feel the need to 'enter the thread to try to tear down the idea that CC Implementations should exist without Stuns'? Since it would have no basis, just a fantasy from people with a personal dislike of a concept.

What if you made a different thread 'Why CC implementations should include Stuns', and somehow, magically, no one who opposed Stuns posted in that thread, everything would be fine, right? Because 'the game has stuns, and Intrepid won't remove them because of our preference'. Also, surely, the strong points brought by the second thread would counter any chance of that anyway.

Azherae

CROW3 wrote: »

@Azherae - Which is exactly what the thread transitioned into. But I was responding directly to SunScript's complaint that no one properly argued Dreoh's OP. We did. It ran to ground. We moved on with the cc discussion.

Now, once someone has drawn an ideological line in the sand, you can absolutely continue to bring logical arguments to the table. I'm ok just moving on and discussing other things, you know?

Agreed, the issue (as my post just above points out) is that the two 'camps' are at a nonproductive stalemate, but this specific thread with all it's 'baggage', let's say, attracts new readers or returning readers to just revive it with repetitions of the points that surround the stalemate.

I consider this a situation where it would be massively beneficial to make a new thread. Two, in fact. We don't have the level of 'magic' required to separate them cleanly though. To 'sort' people into 'people who want to discuss how Stun is not needed and their concepts of the gameplay' and 'people who want to discuss why Stun is needed in their concept of the gameplay'.

But we should probably try, because without at least trying, no one's going to seriously talk about gameplay.

I'll leave that to OP though, if @Dreoh considers that worth it. There's enough data in here to do it with. If a Compilation is needed, I can be summoned for that too.

Nearly every response in this thread that isn't part of the 'tug of war at the stalemate point' is a person's neatly encapsulated opinion, so a splice is easy, and a scrape-splice is easier.

CROW3

@Azherae - Yes, exactly. I think it was either you or I that explicitly called it a stalemate at that point, again which we moved on from (even @Dreoh was on board).

The two threads are an interesting academic idea, though I want to bet 5g on both turning into ideological stalemates.

Azherae wrote: »

I'll leave that to OP though, if @Dreoh considers that worth it. There's enough data in here to do it with. If a Compilation is needed, I can be summoned for that too.

Haha! This cracked me up.

JamesSunderland

Azherae wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

CROW3 wrote: »

SunScript wrote: »

I'm telling you, I keep genuinely waiting for people to actually start arguing about this properly...

Clearly not, otherwise you would have noticed this argument fell apart 5 pages ago. When someone has a fundamental belief about x, there is no logical argument about x, there's just venting. Hard CC exists for the very reason Dreoh hates it - it completely removes the opponent's agency. It's like arguing that ice is terrible because you hate anything frozen.

Yep, the argument became meaningless quite some pages ago, the people arguing against Stun and Hard CC, are doing so through a personal preference viewpoint saying what they believe it should do, be, what they like or dislike and throwing ambiguous words around like "it's bad", "lazy design", "lack of agency"(neglecting hard-CC counters) or "Frustrating"

Then let me ask this. If the argument was meaningless, and by minor implication 'lost by definition' on the Anti-Stun side.

If Dreoh made a different thread 'Suggestions for CC implementations that exclude stuns', would you simply have no reason to post in it? Would you not feel the need to 'enter the thread to try to tear down the idea that CC Implementations should exist without Stuns'? Since it would have no basis, just a fantasy from people with a personal dislike of a concept.

What if you made a different thread 'Why CC implementations should include Stuns', and somehow, magically, no one who opposed Stuns posted in that thread, everything would be fine, right? Because 'the game has stuns, and Intrepid won't remove them because of our preference'. Also, surely, the strong points brought by the second thread would counter any chance of that anyway.

"If Dreoh made a different thread 'Suggestions for CC implementations that exclude stuns', would you simply have no reason to post in it?"

This title would still require an excellent, logical and techinical non-biased reason for the exclusion of Stuns(Or Hard CC in general even tho he considers Knockdowns not as bad as stuns because of some visual reason???)

"Would you not feel the need to 'enter the thread to try to tear down the idea that CC Implementations should exist without Stuns'?"

I didn't felt any of that "need" you are saying there mate, i only tried to find the excelent reason for the Anti-Stun Ideal, sadly what i most found was personal preferences, ambiguous language and pseudo-equivalency arguments.

"What if you made a different thread 'Why CC implementations should include Stuns', and somehow, magically, no one who opposed Stuns posted in that thread, everything would be fine, right?"

Such thread wouldn't even make sense to be made in the first place, as it isn't a "appeal for change" (which requires an argument for such a change), but a reinforcement for something already well established.

Azherae

CROW3 wrote: »

@Azherae - Yes, exactly. I think it was either you or I that explicitly called it a stalemate at that point, again which we moved on from (even @Dreoh was on board).

The two threads are an interesting academic idea, though I want to bet 5g on both turning into ideological stalemates.

Azherae wrote: »

I'll leave that to OP though, if @Dreoh considers that worth it. There's enough data in here to do it with. If a Compilation is needed, I can be summoned for that too.

Haha! This cracked me up.

Not sure why. I have text analytic tools that I presume Dreoh doesn't, so it's faster and easier for me. If you meant 'why I would leave it up to Dreoh, I don't get that either, but I often don't understand the amusement of others, so if you are so inclined, please explain it.

Edit: Oh wait I see it now? The use of the term 'summoned' was funny?

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