Mention "crowd control" around here and most people immediately think of enchanters- with good reason. "Mezzing" seems like it will be a staple form of CC (as a former EQ enchanter, I'm really excited for this).
There are other methods of CC, however, many of which are less effective than mezzing, but I'd consider them crowd control nonetheless. So, thinking of what I've seen from other games:
Mez Effect: stop mob from doing anything for a period of time
Stun Effect: Stop mob from doing anything for a short period of time
Root Effect: physically hold the mob in place
Snare Effect: limit (slow) the mobs movement
Charm Effect: gain control over the mob
No Agro Effect: cause mob to ignore players
Banish Effect: temporarily remove mob from existence
Berserk Effect: cause mob to attack nearest other entity
Blind Effect: cause mob to wander aimlessly
Fear Effect: cause mob to run away
I'm sure there are more ideas. Got any? Do you consider the above effects to be "crowd control?"
Another layer of distinction: what might cause the effect to break (like damage breaking mez), or not.
Just wondering, passing time while waiting to catch the next stream!
Silence: Prevents mobs from casting spells.
Daze: Prevents mobs from auto attacking.
Confuse: Causes mobs to attack a random target, favoring those in close proximity.
Pacify: Reduces aggro radius.
Lull: Reduces social aggro radius.
Captivate: Works similar to fear, but causes mobs to walk slowly towards you instead of fleeing in another direction.
Void: Area of Effect spell that temporarily freezes an area. (Once in the void, players and NPC's cannot perform any actions, or have any actions performed against them.)
Disarm: Temporarily disables mobs from being able to use their weapon.
Heavy: Movement Speed / Attack Speed / Casting Speed slow, simultaneously.
Curse: Performing any action while cursed has a chance to cause a negative impairment. (Could be damage, stun, mana loss, fear, debuff, etc)
Totally all varying forms of CC! The trio I ran with most in EQ was comprised of a monk/Druid/mage. Between split pulls, roots and pet offtanks, lots of cool, non-mez style CC goin on.
I think while it would probably function similarly to mez, a sleep could be interesting... maybe with a function that the mob might wake up if you pull other mobs past it... or maybe tie it to the “alerter” type mobs in Pantheon so that they wake up when those types of mobs yell for help
Mechanically, the only way I saw them used in EQ1 was: snare+fear when outside, and mez. Stun didn't really count because they were so brief, and root broke randomly or on direct-damage, so it wasn't considered reliable crowd control.
I'm a huge fan of the DDO Bluff mechanic. Doesn't require LOS, let's you pull singles of non-bosses, has a reasonably large range. Don't really need anything more than that, if you're patient.
Fear/blind is always problematic because of navmesh pathing and the speed that NPCs move at. You fear something, and instantly it runs towards other creatures as fast as possible, and you've now got 10 things to fight instead of 2 or 3. Using fear in a dungeon was a great way to kill your group and possibly several others. Lull/Pacify/Soothe worked fine, similar to bluff, just took longer.
In other games, fear/terror makes the creature stand still and be scared/shaken. That works. The confused state isn't used very much, but it would be nice to see in Pantheon, as creatures that are confused will attack their allies, stand still, do nothing, or take a few steps and then repeat. Having states and exploits of those states (like sleep/prone and coup-de-grace) can be amazing, in the hands of skilled players, provided they're tuned with duty cycle immunities.
Unfortunately, there's been no indication so far that the main focus of combat will be applying and exploiting non-self-provided states, so.. I don't think we're going to see that depth. But it is very engaging gameplay in other games.
I am more concerned with what crowd control our *enemies* will have than what forms of crowd control we get. I am sure many classes if not all will get at least something.
As a player I find it very frustrating especially when not in a group to spend much or all of a fight unable to use my abilities. I am, of course, far from alone in this.
Most games give immunity so that a character cannot be controlled over and over. Hopefully Pantheon will give a broad enough immunity so that a character will not spend an entire fight controlled if multiple enemies use the same ability on him or her or if the same enemy uses different abilities e.g. mez, sleep, disarm, fear etc.
Having played a few pvp focused MMOs, I definitely agree about not being CC'd for the whole fight from that viewpoint. For this, I've found conditional 'break' abilities to be a fairly decent compromise. Only usable if you are under CC, with a moderate cooldown.
For PVE, I honestly hope that CC plays a part, as it can add another dynamic to battles...but placing a limit on how often a mob can use a CC ability may be a good thing.
One alternative could be working this in to specific dispositions. For example, there could be a 'party-breaker' disposition that would focus on taking a player out of the fight...maybe the healer, maybe the enc, etc. Hopefully it would be flexible enough to not target the main tank. If you don't get that party-breaker controlled or dead, it could be a really big deal. Not every mob with a CC capability would nessicarily have this disposition...rogues for instance could definitely focus on DPS with another disposition. And this wouldn't mean that other dispositions couldn't CC. But a party-breaker would focus on CC.
Also, it could be that certain classes may have abilities to 'cleanse' some or all types of CC from others, which could add some depth to healing/support.
I just prefer the 'give the players the means to resolve the detremental situation' method rather than the 'artificailly keep it from happening' method.
vjek said:...Stun didn't really count because they were so brief...
It's one of those situationally-dependant things - main time I used stuns was on raids, with several other chanters set up to chain AoE stuns to create a stun bubble to keep swarms of adds out of the show.
Have also used it when grouping when we didn't have a plate class for a tank, and chain-stunning helped us take some some mobs that the group struggled to do without :)
oneADseven said:Silence: Prevents mobs from casting spells.
Daze: Prevents mobs from auto attacking.
Confuse: Causes mobs to attack a random target, favoring those in close proximity.
Pacify: Reduces aggro radius.
Lull: Reduces social aggro radius.
Captivate: Works similar to fear, but causes mobs to walk slowly towards you instead of fleeing in another direction.
Void: Area of Effect spell that temporarily freezes an area. (Once in the void, players and NPC's cannot perform any actions, or have any actions performed against them.)
Disarm: Temporarily disables mobs from being able to use their weapon.
Heavy: Movement Speed / Attack Speed / Casting Speed slow, simultaneously.
Curse: Performing any action while cursed has a chance to cause a negative impairment. (Could be damage, stun, mana loss, fear, debuff, etc)
Love this idea