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.
📝 Dev Discussion #68 - Crowd Control 🤼
Dev Discussions are an opportunity to join in on player discussions about topics that Intrepid Studios want to hear your thoughts on. This is less about asking us questions, and more about us asking YOU the questions! If you do have questions about Ashes of Creation, keep an eye our social media channels for our monthly Q&A thread, check out the Ashes of Creation community wiki, or try the #questions channel in Discord!
In this thread, we’ll be discussing:
Dev Discussion - Crowd Control
Crowd Control (CC) are abilities that Interrupt or disable an enemy’s movement. CC breaks are abilities that cancel or stop CC abilities.
- How do you feel about CC and CC breaks in MMORPGs?
- How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
- What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
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Comments
Every archetype should have some form of CC. Ideally their own type, rather than just their own spin on the same type.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
I personally prefer if CC breaks come only from the bard and cleric.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
If everyone has access to both, then this is a requirement, cause all of your dps stuff won't matter if you can't CC your opponent for long enough to use them or if you're CCed yourself and can't get out of it.
In PvE, if my group is pulling a room full of trash, and there are more than one big guys in the pull, we should have to manage CC, any long sleeps, long stuns, on one or more of the big guys so the tank can actually handle soaking up the rate of damage. And the group should be careful to not break the sleep on that guy.
Stronger pve enemies should also get CC they can use on us. Occasional snares or knockdowns.
That being said, there is nothing more frustrating in a MMO than being stunlocked, so dont go overboard with it. It should take a considerable amount of coordination in a group to stunlock someone. One player should not be able to shut someone down forever.
CC breaks depend on the intended time to kill. In a game where the time to kill is very short as in 10s or less, we NEED a cc break without question or there is zero chance to counterplay it. In a game with a short time to kill, you use CC, then dump all your damage during CC to secure the kill.
If the time to kill is longer, the need for the CC break is less or not at all even.
Longer time to kill makes using CC against an enemy strategic. Interrupting a heal, or big damaging move will be the primary use of CC. If the enemy is at low health you can treat it like above and use the CC itself to secure a damage window to force a kill.
Abilities that give CC immunity for a time I think are more valuable than a CC break, because they require you to plan its use. Use it so you can perform your big damage combo, or get the heal cast when you know they will waste their CC to try to interrupt you, or some other situation you need to make happen.
Also passives that reduce CC duration are nice to consider to.
Diminishing returns is another topic that should be carefully considered. Its also frustrating when I need to stun someone, but they are immune because someone else stunned them a minute ago.
1. How do you feel about CC and CC breaks in MMORPGs?
While CC can add a layer of strategy to MMORPGs, its overuse often leads to frustrating and unenjoyable gameplay. Excessive CC mechanics can strip players of control over their characters for prolonged periods, turning engaging combat into a cycle of helplessness. This not only diminishes the player's agency but also disrupts the flow of the game.
In PvP scenarios, prevalent CC abilities can create an unbalanced playing field where victory is determined not by skill or strategy but by who can immobilize the other first. This can lead to a toxic environment where players feel cheated out of fair fights. In PvE, over-reliance on CC can make encounters feel monotonous, as players repeatedly disable enemies rather than engaging with dynamic combat mechanics.
CC breaks, intended to counteract CC effects, can further complicate the issue. If CC is so rampant that CC breaks become a necessity, it indicates a fundamental imbalance in the game's design. Players should not have to dedicate resources or abilities solely to counteract an overpowered mechanic. Instead, CC should be used sparingly to enhance combat, not dominate it.
2. How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
Allowing all archetypes to have CC breaks risks homogenizing the classes, eroding the unique identities and roles that make each archetype interesting. Classes should offer distinct playstyles and strategic options, but if every archetype can counter CC in the same way, it diminishes the need for teamwork and role specialization.
Moreover, universal CC breaks can lead to an arms race where CC abilities become stronger to compensate for the ease of breaking them. This cycle exacerbates the prevalence of CC, further entrenching it as a dominant mechanic. It reduces the diversity of combat interactions, as players rely on the same counters regardless of their class choice.
By giving all archetypes CC breaks, the game diminishes the value of strategic planning and situational awareness. Players no longer need to consider positioning or timing to avoid CC; they can simply rely on their CC break ability. This can make combat feel shallow and less rewarding, as the nuances that come from class differences and player decisions are overshadowed by generic solutions.
3. What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
Forcing players to choose between CC/CC breaks and damage when allocating skill points creates an unhealthy gameplay dynamic. It pressures players into investing in CC-related abilities not because they enhance their chosen playstyle, but because they are necessary to remain competitive. This limits build diversity and can make character progression feel restrictive.
When CC is overly prevalent, neglecting CC or CC breaks in favor of damage can leave players at a significant disadvantage, unable to perform effectively in both PvE and PvP. This can lead to a homogenization of builds, where optimal play requires a specific allocation of skill points, reducing the freedom players have to customize their characters.
Furthermore, this trade-off can be detrimental to class roles. For example, damage dealers may feel compelled to sacrifice their primary function—dealing damage—in order to invest in CC breaks. This undermines the class system and can lead to imbalanced group dynamics, where players are less effective in their intended roles because they had to compensate for the overpowered CC mechanics.
I don't like games with a lot of CC on one class/archetype. I don't like universal CC breaks. I believe people should generally have to play around CC, and I prefer a lot of softer CC because then the longer durations required to make them impactful can be tactical without being frustrating.
I like it when 'Cleric' types have severe blinds/flashes, Mages have Sleep and maybe some disorients, Tanks have knockbacks/pulls and interrupt channeled abilities, Bruisers have Stuns and maybe Movespeed downs, Rogues have 'Trips' that prevent enemies from changing their facing or meleeing things (but nothing else really) or 'Silences' that prevent them from using abilities, or both, Ranger types have Roots and Snares (usually the same thing, just 'Bind' in my mind), Bards have severe Slows, Paralysis, and Disorients (this last one is very game dependent, I normally think of it as a massive Evasion Down Debuff in Tab Target), and Summoners have everything, but 'roughly one of the above categories per Summon'.
I believe that, in isolation, each of these CC types has a specific way to be dealt with (other than Sleep, sorta) and can be played around without needing a CC break, but when correctly applied in an advantageous order, or stacked, it can lead to a true lockdown, at the cost of not being able to do it easily to a large group. Each can be used as a counter to some specific thing. Each can be resisted separately, without leading to CC-locks being important to the players attempting to achieve them. That is, you want your CC to give you an advantage, but not to be the win condition.
I don't like games with a lot of CC breaks, and I don't like universal ones without costs or very long cooldowns, but in an MMO where you could just be constantly exposed to them, even with a built up resistance, I can see the appeal of these. I massively prefer if a given class gets 1, maybe a secondary source of another one later (in Ashes, probably from Secondary Archetype somehow) and that the 1-2 they get are thematically appropriate to their function.
For example, if Fighters had a sort of 'recovery roll' that could get them back on their feet to keep swinging when Tripped, that would leave 7 Archetypes still vulnerable to this aspect of Rogues in my mind. One could argue that the Fighter is the person you'd want to prevent from Meleeing the most, but it's give and take. CC being applied 'at the moment a class has been forced to do something outside of their normal' feels better on 'both' sides, I think. If I 'had to resort to Melee' on Ranger and the Rogue had a way to prevent that, it's 'on me' at that point.
So, with my biases, I'd like Clerics to be able to self-break out of Sleep, Mages to be able to self-break out of Bind, Fighter to self-break out of Trips/Prone, Tanks to be able to self-break out of Disorients/Taunts, Rangers to have self-break out of Movespeed Debuffs, Bard to be able to break out of Silences OR blinds depending on the game style (if the blind is a true visual effect like what Phase's flash causes, then Blinds, so they can see the situation), Rogues to be able to shake off either Roots or Stuns, maybe even pulls, with incredible reflexes and good ping, and Summoners to break or ignore Silences (if it prevents them from summoning or commanding the Summon, and if not, then whatever is appropriate for the summon). In Ashes, I would not mind some method by which specific Augments added the CC Break of the Secondary Archetype. The most obvious thing I imagine is that whatever the CC break 'skill' is, has an augment option from some school that also does the other break. This would retain balance in CC break frequency while expanding options.
When placed in a skilltree choice situation, I will almost always choose to take both the CC and the CC break over damage options since I like PvP and unlike even dangerous PvE, where one can often come up with a situation that lets you work around enemy CC, PvP against skilled opponents means you will need it, and the mindgames, feints and reads related to it, are a large part of the fun.
Furthermore, in 'truly dangerous PvE' such as my normal experience, you need CC and CC breaks for almost all proper mobs that don't die quickly, whether that be because they are bosses, elites, or your group is tackling higher-than-them mobs for high exp. Simply because it's tuned that way. You must stop something from the mob even if you can't stop it every time, and the mob, in turn, will live long enough to make its CC have at least a random chance of mattering a lot.
I also prefer this for another reason in PvE: having multiple weaker forms of CC against strong PvE enemies means that for many, you can just not give them any particular CC immunity that isn't natural to them. You can balance encounters around this. Even better if the mobs are treated like players and have the CC break for their 'class' to prevent them being cheesed by most groups. If CC breaks also offer some immunity duration, this should also be fine. In PvP it encourages having a balanced group, for PvE enemies with those CC breaks it doesn't outright disqualify 'bringing more of the class or Archetype that shuts down the enemy's strength with their CC' but it requires coordination. Basically I just like being able to actually CC stronger mobs without having to remind everyone of the laundry list of specific resistances it has, especially in non-FFXI games where it's not element-ary (and even there, they often make you remember at least one 'incongruous' immunity or resistance for the strongest encounters).
Despite all that, I think it is possible to reasonably choose not to spec into CC, depending on your group, hunting grounds, or 'preferred style/encounter', particularly in conjunction with the Weapon Proc system. I don't think it would be 'reasonable' to not spec into your CC break, in a dynamic PvX game, though. I would just consider those skill points 'automatically spent' for basically everyone, even for the CC that one could rely on me as the Cleric to be attentive to and remove (in my mind, the ones that don't seem physical, interestingly I associate 'CC break from an external source for those' with Tanks and Fighters, people who physically pull you back up or otherwise free you from restrictions).
I don't mind multiple sources of smaller CC on single target or small-cleave abilities that also do damage, and I think this would work fine in Ashes since the CC part would not affect NonCombatants. "Layered" soft CC on single targets seems like it would match the game's design style without being overwhelming. I would expect this from Augments though, and according to current design information, those do not take Skill Points, so it's a different type of build question. If I had to take offensive skills that I might not normally take, to get access to Augments that granted weak/short duration CC, I would consider those tradeoffs on a case-by-case basis, probably without any particular bias toward 'always doing it' or 'generally not doing it and going for damage instead'.
This balances CC impact while allowing for customization through gear, which keeps PvP engaging without over-reliance on constant breaks.
In many PvP or PvX environments, it feels like players are forced to choose CC abilities to remain competitive. This is because CC hinders the opponent, creating a window to deal damage when they can't respond or escape. A balance between choosing CC or CC break abilities versus raw damage would be fair, but it also depends on how CC stacking or usage is managed—no one likes being CC-locked, as it's unfair and frustrating.
I also think that having stat mitigations against CC would be beneficial. For instance, heavy armor could offer more CC resistance, medium armor slightly less, and light armor the least. This would add an additional layer of strategy in terms of both class and gear choices.
If you restrict CCs to one or two archetypes, then it simply means that everybody targets those first, and then the rest of the group second, and you've got a whole team that's CC'd all together. Where's the fun in combat when you can just stand there and tickle them to death. It also means that if somebody attacks you in a 1v1, if you're the archetype that doesn't have a CC break, then you're screwed.
Physical melee should have trips and stuns where as the ranged could snare and slow and the magic users have a wide range of CC that have some sort of synergy component to them. And by synergy I mean something like instead of a sleep spell you can have drowse which applies a dot to stamina, if drowse is cast on someone with a daze effect (light stun) they are put to sleep, then drowse + menacing melody can cause confusion and make the player start walking around in random directions whenever they try to move
I would also like to see a more in depth option for customizing your kit a little more than what I'm used to seeing in MMOs like a system where for example each level gives you 5 skill points and each ability costs 3~5 points to learn and their augments cost 1~2. Augments shouldn't just give some sort of stat boost to damage or utility rather also allow for things like more distance covered on gap closers, the duration of dots and CC, cast range/speed etc.
so expected gameplay would work like this you would have faster single target skill(s) that would inflict drowse but also aoe skills that do the same. if you need to AoE sleep mobs your tank would need to spec into it's AoE daze skill and make the mechanic of sleeping a group of mobs something that requires more than 1 person doing something. aoe daze shouldn't last longer than the cast time of the aoe drowse; this way without proper skill ups and specializing in these the mage would have to precast, meanwhile the tank is in position cause the tanks daze would be a pbaoe with a .5s daze
now hears how you can use this system to balance both pvp and pve, make your cast range short, give it a few seconds to cast where as the aoe daze only lasts for like half a second, if two people want to fire off this combo quickly the person doing the daze will want to dump points into the skill to make the aoe a little bigger and bring the daze time from .5s to 1.0s, the caster using the aoe drowse also has to dump a bunch of points to get the cast time down. and if it's going to be for pvp they will also have to dump more points into its range so they don't get picked off when trying to do this combo\
This can work out like the TP system in FFXI where Mages could synergize with Melee DPS but instead create niche systems built around teamwork and sacrificing DPS/HPS/Sustain for more CC. Apply the same concept to opening enemies up to take more damage or DoT damage or just whatever you can think of.
I also liked in FFXI a lot of skills had an element tied to them so maybe the Drowse ability is a dark based skill so resistances and modifiers effecting dark magic will not just effect DPS magic but the drowse ability as well.
All should have personal CC break-out skills. Only some classes should be able to break-out/provide immunity to other players.
In PVP the abilities should not be as effective in length than they are in PVE. While some CC may hold for over a minute on a NPC, PC's as target should only be stunned maybe 10 seconds.
Have a druidic CC in the form of roots coming up from the ground. However, characters have a chance to break it based on their Strength stat. If 100 is the highest Strength can get to, then at 100 Strength you have a 50% chance to break free. There would be no timed immunity from this type of CC, just the recast time of the ability from the person who cast it. Someone else, however, could then cast it on you. Similarly, the CC can have it's effective time reduced with Fire-- from a torch, a spell, etc.
There can be a mental CC which could be reduced/resisted based on your Will Stat, or removed by a caster with the proper spell to remove it. This type of CC could come with an immunity timer where you can't be effected by it again.
The difference in those two scenarios is: the CC which renders you mostly helpless (like the mental CC) has an immunity timer because you should not be "taken out of the fight completely" at will. Whereas the ground root doesn't stop you from casting or using a ranged weapon, and thus you're not out of the fight completely so there's no point putting an immunity timer on it.
CC break are never fun for the attacker, at least not in coms, but the level of communication and teamwork it takes to adjust to a cc break in both pvp and pve is an added layer of play i enjoy at higher difficulties
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
Some form is fair, but a ranged having more than melee become problematic when a melee can only function in melee, also pve team coordinated cc breaks or allowing certain archetypes certain breaks to bring them in for specific pve raid fights etc is another great added level of play
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
Depends on my role in my guild, (pvp, pve, etc ) some will look for the "best build" but providing balance between choosing a stun or and ability to break stun defines your limitations, your role, and your "uniqueness" to the world, so dynamic balanced choice i beleive is the most important
There's nothing more fun than not letting your opponents have fun. If CC breaks are common, they should only work against one or two types of disables or purge a single stack rather than of all of them. Anything else results in people just building for damage since single target disables become worthless.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
If each archetype has a CC break, the ones who don't have to chase their targets need weaker CC breaks like spending all stamina at once or losing health up front in exchange for not eating an entire combo.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
That depends on how many disables there are in total and whether CC breaks can prevent forced movement, I am going to pick neither if I can get away with it on a ranger. In most games DPS has to be a glass cannon or risk having his party wiped by one. This goes double for PvE where enemies won't even target you once as long as tanks know what they are doing.
---> TL;DR: Give everyone 1 CC break, an easily achieved option for a second and anything beyond that should be niche and generally quite expensive to acquire.
Addendum: Chain cc'ing should effectively not be a thing, DR's should be universal to everything other than arguably roots (which should probably have their own) and slows.
My thoughts on a solution that may fit, but may not be feasible, is to ensure well tuned diminishing returns on CC are in place, create stat options for CC resist, and then some classes like front line archetypes can have an option of getting a temporary CC immunity or stat boosts to CC resist.
Ditto. No one should be helpless to CC stacking so everyone should have their break-free option, and not everyone should be able to apply hard CCs. Get some variety in the disabling abilities. Blinds, Roots, Silences, and Slows to go with the Knockbacks, Stuns, Charms, and Staggers.
Dimishing returns on CC should also exist to prevent stunlocking like we saw on stream. That's a real awful experience trying to PvP when you're stuck with no control of your character.
You are gravely mistaken in how this works. When CC breaks are common, your cc's are still exceedingly valuable - even the single target ones, you just have to put more brainpower into using them.
If you want to lock a target down, when solo you need to burn their breaks using other CC's -> if you're in a group, you just have to do a bit of minimal coordination.
You then have a skill differential between whether your opponent decides to consume their breaks on CC's that you have deemed less critical to your current success, or if they bite it and save it for the coming <stun> or something that they deem could come at a worse time for them.
It also grants further flavor/class identity to classes who have access to more CC's, who will obviously have an easier time locking down targets.
--> Someone else mentioned having individual *types* of breaks for individual types of CC, and it's a button bloat nightmare that existed in Archeage that is almost universally despised by the (now former) playerbase. Terrible take.
--> a final note, is that CC should generally not exist to remove people from the fight for extended durations, it should exist to disrupt the fight and gain advantage in a critical moment - it should feel bad to get cc'ed, but it shouldn't consistently feel like people aren't getting to play the game in fights. This becomes even more relevant in RvR, where you still only have access to <a few CC breaks> relative to the dozens of cc's flying out per minute, making conserving your break for the right time even more important.
Classes should have a CC and with that there should be CC breaks, of course, everything balanced though. We don't want perma CCs nor we want players just kitting all the time and can't get ccd. I think a 3-4sec window that you can't get CCd after breaking CC its healthy.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
I believe a class CC should be included in the class kit, no skill points needed, just a standard CC for each class. Same for breaking CC just as a block, dodging or running are standard abilities based on Stamina.
I do not hate them. I've seen them before so I am used to have them in mmos
[*] How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
I am ok with a little bit of CC on each archetype but I would like one or two archetypes to have more CCs than others. Like tank, dd and healers have their things to excel in, some Archetypes could excel in CCs too, at least when we talk about PvE.
In PvP, you can balance them differently, to achieve whatever rock paper scissor relationship you want.
[*] What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
I prefer CCs
I suggest the Summoner to have more CCs than other Archetypes and to be more flexible through their summons when comes to switch between DD and CCs.
A, Personally, if someone breaks out of my CC that's not fair, but I should be able to CC everyone unlimited.. That's how I feel.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
Good.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
I don't understand the question.. Allocating points effects damage vs allocating points to effect CC/CC breaks?
Anyway.. On a more serious note, I think there should 100% be CC breaks, with cooldowns obviously. But there should also be unbreakable CC's.. Maybe like a minor mire/entangle/root skill that can be broken by all class CC breaks.. But then a higher level skill that has a bigger cooldown that can't be broken and has to be used more wisely..
As for CC breaks, I think they should be just as specific. Fighters and tanks might rely on adrenaline to shake off poison, broken bones, or slashed tendons, while clerics could cleanse allies of poisons, blindness, and curses, as well as heal broken bones. Rogues could have poison immunity and an 'escape artist' ability to avoid traps, while bards should be able to wake sleeping allies and be immune to mute effects. Rangers, on the other hand, might not have any CC break, while mages could blink out of traps or warm themselves free from freezes.
That said, hard stuns—like a bash to the head or a shock—shouldn't have any breaks at all, only a countdown. The only counter for such effects should be to dodge them altogether.
On the other side, a Ranger/Hunter has a fairly high mobility, damage output and is a ranged class. Because of his movements and the peel that his allies can give him when attacking from within a formation, it can be really, really hard to shut them down. Their CC breaks should be way weaker.
I think this ideology can be replicated to the rest of the classes/roles of the game.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break? I think it is okay and fair, but as I said before, CC breaks should vary from archetypes to archetypes, given they will be fighting in different conditions and with different advantages and disadvantages.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points? It depends on the class. If I am a support, tank, or a mix between support and offensive, I will give a higher priority to CC so I can focus fire the CCed enemy with my team comp and bring them down quickly. But that is just... unfair. The game tends to feel less like a game and more like a stress for people who suffer from focus fire.
The problem with CC is just that. It basically prohibits you from playing for a few seconds. And if you are focused on those few seconds, you will die. And die, and die... indefinitely.
I think you guys should really try to punish CC and focus fire strategies and mechanics in the game. Make it feel like a game, not like a pain or punishment.
I think that some of the things I want to point out are really well explained by @ariatras in his post. CC is something that can break the game in more than one way, make it unenjoyable, linear and with no real difference or personalization between one player and another, since once CC is deep rooted in the game, it will be a necessity to play the game rather than being an option.
Keep CC limited, even CC break needs to be limited. Keep it as an option, a situational asset and not something that can define the game instantly.
When taking advantage of action combat in Ashes, it opens the opportunity to give agency in all aspects of battle. Included in that agency should be the availability for any class/character to either avoid spells, or hit them more consistently. Being able to dodge roll means that the introduction of area cc can be adapted to and overcome. Rather than a tank being able to simply smash a shield over your head to stun you, they charge up a cashew shaped charging cone in front of them. If used at the right moment, they could cause an AoE stun to many people, if used inappropriately, it can be quickly dodged away from by players that preserve their stamina for the right moment.
Although there should still be room for more casual abilities, to ensure that slower players can still stand a chance, those casual and easier to hit abilities should have much smaller impacts. Some of the most aggravating applications of CC that is found in games is when they're incredibly effective, and incredibly easy to apply.
Excited to see how CC manifests when testing begins & throughout Alpha 2!
It's good, they really help with organizing teamwork too. I would like the CC breaks to have a greater cooldown than the CC application.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
All archetypes? That's different, usually not everyone gets a CC break ability. But if everyone can have a CC break, I think it will encourage teamwork.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
At this point in time, the skill points don't seem to do much. So, I can't see skill points being too important or impactful. Although, I can surely see it being important to the majority of players to fully spec into a CC and/or CC break skill, even if that character is a DPS.
CC and CC breaks should be integral and necessary. A player group should not be able to pull mass mobs and just mow them down unless their is very little reward to do so. CC like Dark Ages of Camelot, had a very good CC component.
[*] How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
Yes definitely, only 3 archetypes - Bard, Summoner and Mages should have a CC, and then at very high levels.
[*] What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
You should not be able to CC mobs higher than the CCer. Levels would increase with character level and number of CCs level with skill points in the talent/skill.
CC is a cornerstone of PVP and PVE from my experience. Knowing when to put it in application can be very powerful. I personally am a fan of every class having some form of CC and a CC break, but that is because most MMOs I have played have had this system in place and I have learned to fight and apply this knowledge of playing around the CC break.
But there is a point where CC can become to much. Take modern WoW with its M+ systems were NPC need to be interrupted but most classes can only interrupt once every 14 if they are lucky. The solution is to CC the mobs till the next interrupt, or just flat out CC the entire pack till it dies. This leads to an unhealthy dynamic were the higher the difficulty the more dungeons turn into just CCing the adds to death and classes without CC aren't invited because the game system revolves around everyone having 3/4 CC abilities per class.
If Ashes wishes to go down the route of archetype specific CC there would be a worry of say Summoners being forced to do summoner/rogue for a stun instead of the archetype combo they wish to play as because summoners never get invited due to a lack of a stun. There should be CC relevant customization from the augment system, but personally I dont want Ashes to tread down the route of midmaxing class choice to complete the class because they lack CC or CC breaks.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
I personally agree with it, but my mindset is locked into what I have experienced. Take SWTOR for example, every class has a CC break and usually 2 forms of CC, a 4 second hard CC and a 8 second CC that breaks on hit. Knowledge of when to use the break and when to mindgame the enemy into using the break early for plays became standard practice.
I would still say CC breakers should only come if CC is readily available. If few people can stun it would make breakers OP, on the other hand if everyone could CC without a solution to break the stun players would get 100 to 0 without being able to move from the enemy.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
I don't believe in forcing players to choose between damage or CC is a fun or meaningful choice. I believe enhancing the CC break or granting immunity from it are decent choices compared to damage.A system were players can choose between utility or defensives or mobility and utility would offer more intriguing choice than choosing between doing damage or having basic functionality.
Finally I would like to say if everyone is getting a CC, there should be systems to reduce their effect on players such as a diminishing return system and/or CC breakers and immunities. If CC is going to be rare let their rarity come with a punch that is unavoidable.
CCs need to be much longer, the mage's 10s CC is pretty useless and a waste of time & mana to cast
CCs should be much more visible, so it's clear that mob is CC'd and don't touch it
It's a must and quite literally a staple in any MMORPG. I love being able to lock down the opponent and being able to save myself through a well timed CC break. It is and always has been: Stop the enemy from playing the videogame and deal damage, whilst they are trying to do the same. Whomever does it best wins.
How do you feel about all Archetypes in Ashes of Creation having some form of a CC break?
All archetypes should have a few. Perhaps some more then others, but baseline, every archetype should have the option. How many depends on how CC heavy the game will be.
What are your thoughts about choosing CC or CC breaks versus damage when allocating skill points?
I tend to lean to an equal spread. But if i ran out of CC breaks to choose, i would put it into CC before damage skills.
So i guess that would make the order: CC breaks if any, then CC if any, and last damage.
Misc thoughts:
I might change the order to CC breaks > Damage > CC if all i can choose is the same type of CC and it'll just get diminishing returns on the cc duration.