PvE Crowd Control

Circa 2011/2012, The Everquest 2 team realized that extensive crowd control in a PVE context is not fun. Control over your character is lost, and there was minimal if any strategy for the player to prevent this from occuring. Shroud is in a similar state.

The infamous monkey room in K'Rul has 3 CC options. They can Knock you down, Confuse you, or Stun you. NPC Archers have Disabling Shot. Liches have roots and stuns. Fighter mobs (skeletal) have a stun. Deers have a knock down, bears have a knock back which can interrupt. Haven't played with boars, suspect they have a knock down? Reapers have a root/stun. Spiders root. Crocodiles...dont recall. Shall I continue?

With the limited mob diversity in this game (all 55+ of them! https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/q1-2018-schedule-update.106312/)

This isn't fun, engaging gameplay. Its frustrating, and is weaking the spring on my space bar. Confusion was endearing for 70 levels. Now its obnoxious. Knockdown/root/stun was never fun.

 

That has been the topic of many discussions within our discord channel. Over used for lack of other options and no true counters for it. If they had a counter to clear and a way to get up faster maybe but they still need to thin out the number of creatures that use the same tactics everything doesn’t not need to stunn knockdown confuse.

 

I wouldn't mind it as much if the mob's capabilities were more in line with our own.
But a hardened skeleton that is green to me that I can wipe in a few hits, walks up to me, and 99% of the time lands the stun on the first hit.
If I go to hit it back with GM crushing blow and GM stunner, I'll stun it less than half the time.

The "resist crowd control" buff that appears seems to significantly reduce our ability to do things to a mob, but has no real noticeable effect on keeping -me- from being chain stunned/knocked down/etc.

Standing side by side, a light armor user and a heavy armor user with max stun resist passive, in Krul ? We're both getting stunned at the exact same time, every time, and all his "stun resist" seemed to be doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. Now I'm not saying its completely useless? Maybe he got stunned 1 less time in 100? but it certainly wasn't noticeable.

 

We took a group into K'rul once and after a while we just left. Constantly being knocked down over and over with no diminishing returns was no fun. Now I just sprint to the monkey room and ignore the rest of the place.

 

I would say that some mobs SHOULD have this mechanic. However the overuse of it makes it unpleasant.

Ever played Left 4 Dead 2? Mudmen in Swamp Fever would obscure your screen when you hit them. The counter was to keep an awareness of the zombies around you, shove/shoot them before they hit you. However at most I think it was 3 mudmen in a pack of 20? less than 20%. In a game where they have 6 special infected, regular zombies, and each map having a unique regular zombie, so again low diversity, but there is a clear mechanic to avoid/prevent the slowdown, prevent the CC. Hunter pounce? Deadstop the hunter. Charger? Move out of its path. Maybe you would argue the volume of CC relative to potential enemies. Each of the SI feels unique, and a core mechanic (dodge it/shove it before it lands) exists to prevent the CC.

Shroud has a bunch of mobs that uses CC to make the fights take longer, and make the fight more dangerous as your character flails about trying to remember how to stand up, walk left, and take any action. "It’s a combination of a game’s ability to communicate goals (a game that doesn’t tell you where to go in a giant flat map with nothing on it is hard, but no fun), to communicate means (a game where the shoot button changes to a random button on your keyboard every time you shoot is hard, but probably no fun), and to deliver a challenge proportional to your ability to play." (Ismail, 2017)

The only two counters I have seen in this game is to try and interrupt the animation with say air magic/Body Slam, or to RNG avoid the source with Dodge (not avoidance). After all, avoidance is just a glancing blow, it still landed, and it seems like the effect still applies. Body Slam will wreck your armor due to the massive durability effectiveness. Air magic isn't realistically an option due to the 50% chance (roughly) of stunning the mob when the mob cast it first. Air magic for heavy armor isn't realistic due to the fizzle chance it has.

Ismail, R. (2017, October 12). There's No Such Thing as a Hard Game (Or an Easy One). Retrieved January 31, 2018, from https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel...h-thing-as-a-hard-game-or-an-easy-one-w508271

 

Especially in regards to the idea around knockdown changes as discussed in the R50 Post Mortem - PLEASE CONSIDER THIS THREAD. This is not going to be fun chain stunned and crit to death on the ground because the RNG decided 40% CC resistance doesn't pop.

 

The troll fight annoys me to no end. As a melee character I need to 100% dodge his attacks (which is do able). Troll hits you once, you get knocked down, which would be fine. However the troll attacks faster than you avatar can get up, so now the troll just stun locks out on the ground. If you do manage to get up, you are confused and probably run right back into his swing.

I know you can use smelling salts on the ground but its no help if my guys can get up in time to run away from the next swing, which pretty much has a 75% chance to re stun or knock down.

 

When it feels like i spend half the fight not playing cause I am either stunned, knocked down, confused, then why am I even there?