Crowd Control, Dungeon tactics, and enabling organized players to accomplish more

One area I see that sota has yet to take advantage of is combat tactics in a dungeon setting. Admittedly, we don't have very many dungeons yet. But I am relatively sure more are coming.

Right now everyone is basically in bulldozer mode. Out-Level the content until you can faceroll it. The problem is, this makes content non-viable when it is of the most player benefit to run.

One way to address this is to design areas and their residents in a manner that allows for, and steers players to, the usage of tactics and planning. A big part of that is the use of Crowd Control.

Lets face it, right now sota is rather weak on the CC side of game mechanics. Even weaker for the concept of re-application for long term control.

Some of my fondest memories from other games was running dungeons that were challenging, interesting, and rewarding. Sure at some point you would out-level or out-gear said dungeons and it would turn into faceroll and people soloing areas designed for groups.

But right now in sota, all I see is the end stage of out-level and faceroll going on.

I want to have difficult, but not impossible group content that does not require having one or more people who out-level the content in the group.

This sort of thing will also be a key element for end-game content.

In my opinion, there should be numerous options for CC available to players and in PVE settings that CC can be re-applied to infinity. But similar to Ring of Fire, each player can only have 1 active at a time.

With this, setup enemy NPCs in groups and clusters and give them distinct abilities that have distinct counters. That when countered properly, the encounter is much easier. When not countered, the encounter is very difficult.

Counters could be the application of CC, disarming weapons, applying specific debuffs, not standing in certain spots at certain times, etc. There are many options out there, and tons of precedent in other games for examples of things that work well.

 

RadioMan, i don't know you, but you are just awesome because i fully agree with what you just wrote there!

 

I agree that the more dimensions there are to character development the better. Having crowd control in this game would be a huge improvement. Often crowd control can be overpowering and they end up nerfing it until it's almost useless.

I would like to see crowd control implemented in a way where groups would want someone to play that role but individuals wouldn't just all throw crowd control in with their mix.

Having slows, mesmerizing and stuns that are powerful enough to build a character around would throw the balance off and create issues if everyone could do it without any penalties.

If casting crowd control was very effective but had large repercussions or debuffs to the casting player it would create a class defining role without throwing balance out.

For example a 3 second stun would be totally game breaking, but if it also debuffs the players damage output by 30 percent for 10 seconds or also stunned the caster you'd have a workable spell. It would create a group role but everyone wouldn't just throw it into their rotation ruining the game.

 

In pvp, sure a long stun is a terrible idea. But I disagree when it comes to pve, and pve is the main point of this post.

 

Instead of nerfing PvE due to PvP balancing, you just need to have 2 rulesets. Annoys me to no end that Portalarium has not understood this mechanic yet.


Tactics, cooperation and strategy are hallmarks of an epic gaming experience

 

Air tree used to have long stuns but they severely reduced them because people were almost perminently stunning some large mobs like the Phoenix.

With 8 people in groups, if crowd control was used by everyone and wasn't balanced to be a role, it would quickly be abused and nerfed to uselessness.

PVE and PVP can use more crowd control, but it needs to be a trade off especially in a game where every character can have every skill. Without the trade offs they couldn't make the skills powerful enough for someone to bother specializing in it without people abusing it.

I'd rather see players specializing in truly good crowd control than giving everyone it with no downsides and having it suck because people create 8 person stun rotations.

 

CC should be more than just stuns.

Some ideas:

Roots could be adjusted to block outgoing attacks and become a CC.
Freeze critters in a block of ice
Polymorph - all sorts of options with this
Confusion - walk around in a daze
Shackles - have chains hold the critter down
Shield bubble - lock critter in an unbreakable bubble of magic​

• Boss type critters, like the phoenix, should always be immune to CC.
• CC should break on damage done, including DOTs. So rotations as you suggest would be useless.
• CC should also create a large amount of aggro.
• CC that can be re-applied indefinitely should only be single target

I am not talking about giving players a tool so mobs never do damage to them.

I am talking about creating methods to give players tactical options so that when they work together they can take on content that otherwise would be deadly or impossible.

A great example is the Lich room in Chillblains. Players who are level appropriate for the rest of the zone, tend to get stuck there. That is a room that is ripe for the application of CC.

 

Diminishing returns is all they needed to add. Nerf hammer is strong with these ones.

Plus PvP = 50% duration

There is already an 'is character' value for avatars

 

yes for pvp, dimishing returns for CC is a must. But the focus of the thread is PVE