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I wanna talk holds and stuns in pvp games and a little stealth
4Renziks
Member UncommonPosts: 390
Can we just get rid of these in pvp, i love pvp in fps, but this along with armor makes pvp in most mmos non skill based...does anyone agree?
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gotta disagree with you on a couple points. first off, FPS also tend to have a form of stun (flash bangs, tear gas, etc), though it may not be as much of a complete stun as in MMORPGs, it still basically has the same effect of stopping your enemy from being able to do anything worth a damn about killing you or keeping themself alive. Same goes for armor, several FPS games make use of armor as well. Rainbow Six Vegas - you spec out your character with different armors on different parts of the body and more armor = a hell of a lot harder to kill, but you move slower. does that mean anyone who uses a flash bang to screw you up and move in for the kill doesnt have skill? or the person wearing armor in order to be able to better handle rushing into close quarters areas where someone is camping while taking a few extra hits that someone who chose not to wear armor (and is likely already dead) is wrong?
Now sure, some MMORPGs go overboard with stuns and other CC skills and do make it a game of basically, whoever spams stuns the most = instawin, but there are plenty of games that incorporate stuns into the game properly and it really does require skill. Ill use WAR as an example. Most healer classes can heal right through any dps you throw at them, especially in a 1v1 battle, and without stuns you wouldnt stand a chance of taking one out without 3-4 people focusing him at once. but learning to use your stuns, knockdowns, and silences properly and timing them to make sure you stop them from getting off some major heals on themself or anyone else does require plenty of skill and if you pay attention during the battles youll see a huge difference between the good vets and the noobs who still havent figured it out. Just watch a good Witch Hunter roll through several enemies like nothing by using the right things at the right time, and then compare it to another Witch Hunter who is sitting there for 2 minutes beating one one enemy and still failing to take them out.
Most MMORPGs go overboard on CC effects, and it's one of the reasons why their PVP isn't as good as that found in other games.
WAR basically nosedived regarding CC. They gave all sorts of classes all sorts of CC (including many AOE CCs) and then knee-jerked a solution to it by giving ~30 sec immunity timers after you're hit by CC. The result being that all sorts of classes have all sorts of CC but it's entirely random whether your ability works as advertised because it's very likely your opponent is under an immunity timer.
Ideal CC balance is one where you have access to very limited CC abilities but they always work. And it's best when the CC in a game doesn't totally disable characters; such as CC which only turns off a character's abilities but not their movement, CC which merely locks one class of spells, or snares (slows). Because the root problem (little CC pun there) is that it's no fun to have the game say "Sorry you can't play for the next 8 seconds." Because you're playing the game to play the game, not to sit there being a sheep waiting for your turn to use some abilities.
Stealth is fine. It's harder to balance, but it's worth it because it's such a strongly presented and interesting game mechanic (and it's fun.) Although in a lot of games there aren't enough counters available to stealth, and that becomes a problem. The non-stealth character shouldn't automatically be able to detect the stealthed player if he suspects one is lurking about, but he should at least have some methods for trying to root the bastard out.
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SO you love PvP in FPS, but don't like PvP in MMOs, so therefore the system should be changed to what you like?
What the hell is this? Are you threatened by a discussion on changing how PvP is normally done? lol this is a discussion forum isn't it? I mean it's not like were in a design room here planning out the next WoW, get a grip.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
I have to admit I love CC classes... that's generally what I play because they require so much more strategy to them (having to switch targets multiple times in a fight/switch from CC to dps to debuff to holy crap run like hell) most games I've played with CC classes have generally made them really hard to play so one mistake leads to either death or a good ole sprint.
I think that axehilt is correct though. CC shouldn't be 'i cut you off' from playing for 10 seconds at a time. Roots where you freeze the person in place but they can still use skills/attack are good... as is stunning where the stun only lasts until the enemy takes damage is good or interupt skills that stop you from casting/using whatever skill you were just trying to do. I like the stun immunity too even though he doesn't.... but 30 seconds seems a bit long. 5 or 10 second immunity would be good... especially if char's have the possibility of having 'anti-stun' skills or items that they can pop off right away in those 5 seconds after they've realized they are fighting a CC class. This seems to add more 'skill' to the game rather than simply who has the better armor/level etc MMORPG's focus so much on.
I like the idea that some classes can shut down other classes. Of course this comes to the balance issue, but I have no problems and am actulaly for Crowd Control, provided it is somewhat limited.
I love the knockdowns in Warhammer but feel the overlapping of those little wells of purple goo is just too much.
Mass Sleep in Lineage 2 was great but I would hate to see someone just be able to spam mass hate.
I think the issue is that some people want pvp to be only about damage. But I would very much be for class that was about debuffing and shutting down the enemy. That one can do it to several at one time is fine with me as long as there are ways to counter act its effects or to limit the time one can use these tricks.
For instance, allowing a character to attack while stealth, even though it breaks stealth seems to me to be a little unbalancing. But I am for them unstealthying about a seond or 2 before an attack. This way there is an element of surprise but at the same time someone can feasibly be fast enough to defend themselves.
Also, given some classes the ability to see through stealth would also help mitigate this.
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Till they use stealth like in aion were it's only used to hide not to use some skills I find it ok myself not almost all est skills need you to be stealthed to sue them.
I love cc too. I remember a lot of people complained about daoc, the long mezzes, stuns, but I thought it was pretty fun. The counters such as purge, sos before hand, charge, dampening effects. It really helped to have a good group+ who knew what they were doing to counteract. It took skill. I'm sure some would say it didn't take skill, but if that were the case, you wouldn't see many horrible players, hehe.
As far as immunities, that is a good thing. Morons can't just keep spamming it to lock you down. If you do have some idiot who uses it too early and causes people to be immune, you can screw up your whole side, so that is even more skill and tactics needed.
That is why I love cc, because it makes the fighting more in depth than just the lets hit on each other for a few minutes.
These things are a huge problem in WoW. Having a class that can lock others down ten times over have no place in MMOs. When you can't get a single hit in on your opponent because they have so much CC is absolutely ridiculous. I've had a rogue take me from 100-0 while he had 15% health the entire fight because I couldn't get a hit in. These things should not happen under any circumstances. Blizzard eats fatty fail cake when it comes to designing CC.
No, as long as there is balance they work fine. If you have problems in your game with CC it is because the PvP was not thought through.
"Skill" in a first person shooter is player skill, specifically hand eye coordination.
"Skill" in an RPG is primarily character skill. What abilities can your character do, and at what level.
The problem with crowd control in an RPG is not a matter of "skill" because other than being able to use a mouse and keyboard there is no real player skill involved in RPG combat, but rather it's a match of character skills.
The problem is a matter of balance, which is hard in MMORPGs.
If there is any significant crowd control that works against other players, then any match including crowd control is decided instantly by who gets off the first mez or root. The other person can't do anything, and then dies, match over.
For most players reducing combat to something as simple as who gets off the first mez or root is not fun or balanced.
In testing RealmLords, crowd control left over from the original PVE design proved to be a big negative for PvP combat. The direction I took is to reduce CC duration to very brief (1.5 seconds tops) and make it long cool down. It is still an advantage, but it's no longer an "I Win" button.
As to armor, I'm working towards rock, paper, scissors, which I happen to feel is the most fair way to design PvP balancing. Tank classes with big armor take little damage from melee classes, but are very weak to magic dps classes. Clothies on the other hand are no match for fast swords or daggers. Classes with big protection or big heals, do crappy dps. Classes with great dps don't get protection or heals. In the end it seems to balance out, but a ton more testing is needed to fine-tune it.
Regards to not "Player skill based"... yes to some extent MMOs don't provide much in the way of giving eye to hand coordination or bright tactics a chance to shine. The big issue for me with regard to this is CPU loading on the server. Counting mobs and players I might be looking at as much as 500 simultaneous combat activities in a zone. There's no way my system can calculate and communicate that much in anything close to real time needed for twitchy combat. Best I can offer is keeping weapon range very short and having the players do a "pvp dance" (sort of like the kangaroo dance from FPS).
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The trouble with CC in MMOs is the CC is designed for use in PvE. Once it gets into PvP the duration is usually too long. It also creates a lot of problems in PvP when toons that do a lot of damage have access to CC.
I've always thought CC should be limited to a defensive purpose, meaning it should only appear on support toons as a way for support toons to get themselves out of trouble. This prevents ranged damage dealers from incapacitating enemies from afar and then burning them down and it prevents metee toons from incapacitating targets and hacking them into little pieces with impunity. It shouldn't be a "BAM! Now you have to stand completely still for a minute and do absolutely nothing until we decide to kill you" type of thing. I don't consider it skill to win a fight simply because you saw the other guy first and, therefore, were able to make him completely unable to defend himself.
CC in MMOs should be limited to point blank area of effect roots and snares that are short duration (10 seconds) and break on damage. This would allow the support toon to get itself out of trouble, but also leave the CCed toons to defend themselves a bit.
The trouble is with the trend towards "soloability" (is that even a word?) in MMOs you have lots of toon classes that can do damages and have access to CC so the fight usually comes down to who sees whom first and who lands their CC first.
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