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Crowd control and stacking effects

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FalconStriker
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Crowd control and stacking effects

So first of all, I'm curious what types of crowd control are planned for the game? For example, stuns, holds, silence, slow, slow down cool downs, knock down(more or less stun), etc etc.

One thing I suggest for crowd control, particular hard CC like stuns and holds, is for there to be diminishing returns. For those who aren't familiar, it's where if the same type of crowd control is applied within a certain time frame, or if the same move is used, it becomes less effective in the duration each time it's used until a certain amount of time has gone by. This would only apply to player vs player however. I noticed a lot of mmo's make this mistake of not having diminishing returns for CC in pvp.

Another thing I'm curious about is how like effects will stack, like buffs, debuffs, and CC. For example, lets say there's a bubble defense ability, but 2 people have it or something like it, and lets say it gives the party so much of an armor boost. Would both bubbles stack, or would it it apply only the superior shield or perhaps give a diminishing stack based off of the lesser shield(s)? Then you have to think if the game has a raid like instance or something like what task forces were, where you have a group of like 20-25 people. How does one balance offensive and supportive effects, without making players completely useless with certain builds because they're build is slightly weaker than another players due to min maxing or just being a level lower? But also managing to prevent players from abusing stacking effects?

My suggestion, which the numbers can be case by case, is to have diminished stacking effects based on the number of similar effects. Lets say 4 people in the "raid" can apply a movement speed slow to mobs in an aoe, and it's 40% or something, obviously if this stacked, the mobs wouldn't be able to move at all, so I think that each player should have the layered effect diminish by a certain percent based on the number of stacked effects.

Not only this, but I think there should be hard caps like in old school coh on how much you can be slowed, etc.

Then you have things that have a duration, like a stun or silence. Lets say a certain mob enemy has the ability to lower a players armor by a certain amount, so taking care of that is crucial to survival. 3 players have the ability to silence that mob for 3 seconds, and that mob prioritizes on using that ability when it is able. Do you allow the abilities to add to the total duration regardless of how they timed it? Or make it to where they simply refresh the duration, so if they do it too early, it's their fault for not waiting to get the optimal stack? This one for me is a bit trickier.

I'd like to hear your guys thoughts on this, I felt city of heroes had a lot of inventive approaches to problems like this, a LOT of which that WoW actually straight up copied.

Brand X
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I would just like to have a

I would just like to have a tiertary hold that is a small AOE that holds in one hold! A nice little time bubble hold ^_^

Tannim222
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We cover the gambit of all

We cover the gambit of all the mentioned controld (sans silence) and quite a few others not mentioned.

All effects with durations (or active such as toggles) and can stack undergoes some form of diminishing returns.

All of our controls have nonbinary effects on targets which may vary depending on the type of control.


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Redlynne
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I always thought that

I always thought that Blizzard came up with cunning plan for handling overstacking of crowd control effects in Diablo 3 not that long after it launched. The notion was relatively simple. It was essentially a 10% duration increment scale that ran like this (taken from memory):

  • 100% duration
  • 90% duration
  • 80% duration
  • 70% duration
  • 60% duration
  • 50% duration
  • 40% duration
  • 30% duration
  • 20% duration
  • 10% duration
  • 0% duration

The way the system worked was that essentially the first time you hit something with a crowd control, the duration of that first crowd control effect was 100% duration. If the target was hit with the same crowd control effect a second time before the first crowd control effect had expired then the second hit would have a 90% duration. The second crowd control didn't "overwrite" the first, it merely had a shorter duration. Since the crowd controls in Diablo 3 were boolean (Y/N?) affairs, this wasn't a problem. Anyway, the basic idea was that every time you kept hitting with the same crowd control effects while that crowd control effect was still affecting the target, each subsequent hit would decrease the duration of the next crowd control hit by another -10%. Depending on your attack speed (which was variable and could be increased by gear), a sort of "equilibrium" could be established in which your NPC target would be able to intermittently break the crowd control effect and take action. So continuously attacking the same target with crowd control effects "worked" ... for a while ... until the target became "saturated" and started resisting the durations getting stacked on top of each other to be able to act in between the "gaps" of the overlap caused by reduced durations. There was even a built in "crowd control resistance decay" function, where NOT using crowd control on the target would reverse the duration penalty by 1 step per 1 second (or something like that), meaning that after "saturating" the control resistance (to something like 10/20/30% duration) if you stopped using that crowd control for up to 10 seconds you'd "reset" the control resistance to permit 100% duration on crowd control again.

Suffice it to say, I found this a much more elegant solution than the Purple Triangles of Doom system used by City of Heroes. I tried it on my Speed Demon build (Demon Hunter with an attack speed of greater than 3.125 attacks per second) using Grenades that would stun for 3 seconds (at 100% duration) and was able to put Diablo himself into Lockdown, with only intermittent stretches of a fraction of a second during which Diablo could take action (because of the control resistance saturation). It was remarkably effective, while also being quite nerve wracking, but it effectively allow me to play my Speed Demon as a sometimes Controller who could just LockBomb entire battlefronts into submission, which was kinda cool (when it worked).


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Tannim222
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We had considered reducing

We had considered reducing duration but after some evaluating we decided keeping duration but reducing stacked outputs. For controld it was mainly due to the non-binary nature of our controls - something which has never been done the way we're applyjng them.

There were other factors I'm not at liberty to discuss, but should be more understandable once those other factors are brought out.


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FalconStriker
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@Redlynne:

@Redlynne:
That seems like a pretty good concept, definitely a good way to keep duration CC in check, keeping the players on their toes but not making stacking feel completely useless.

@Tannim222
So I guess what you're saying is depending on the type of effect it can only stack a limited amount of times? Weather it be CC, or a buff, or debuff or w/e. I guess the problem I have with that still is in large raid like groups, if you limit movement slow stack to lets say 3, it's going to make the 4th member feel useless at times during chokes. It definitely makes sense with buffs though.

This is always such a difficult subject but I feel a lot of game developers ignore it and it causes huge problems later. Hopefully this isn't the case for COT.

Tannim222
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FalconStriker wrote:
FalconStriker wrote:

@Redlynne:
That seems like a pretty good concept, definitely a good way to keep duration CC in check, keeping the players on their toes but not making stacking feel completely useless.
@Tannim222
So I guess what you're saying is depending on the type of effect it can only stack a limited amount of times? Weather it be CC, or a buff, or debuff or w/e. I guess the problem I have with that still is in large raid like groups, if you limit movement slow stack to lets say 3, it's going to make the 4th member feel useless at times during chokes. It definitely makes sense with buffs though.
This is always such a difficult subject but I feel a lot of game developers ignore it and it causes huge problems later. Hopefully this isn't the case for COT.

It is less a finite number and more of how a system called Output which drives are values works. I mean, at some point there is a "number of stacks" possible. It depends on the variables.

Stack enough movement debuffs and the target is immobilized. So in that case, adding more movement debuffs can be viewef as "wasted" but in reality, it is actually helpful if the intent is to maintain that immobilized status. After all, those initia stacks will be the first to wear off.

The same goes with control effects. Eventually a target will be controlled. You may want to continue attacking with a control to maintain thst status.

And we're only looking at one side of combat and not taking into consideration how protections may affect controls anf debuffs. Or how Momentum of the attacker (depending on their power set and / or mastery powers) can affect their powers, nor how the target's momentum may come into play .


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FalconStriker
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Oh that's interesting,

Oh that's interesting, stacking an effect to overcome resistances, could make team work more dynamic in boss fights too.

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On one hand a dynamic system

On one hand a dynamic system with lots of ability for the player and devs to tweak and dial in. On the other hand a lot of moving parts that could be troublesome to manage for the player and the devs.

You don't just control them and done, you are constantly working to control them. I like the intent as long as the complexity doesn't become onerous for the players or especially the devs.

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If the complexity only really

If the complexity only really comes into play a little for bosses, more for elite bosses, and mostly for archvillians and giant monsters (whatever we're calling the CoT equivalents), then I will like its non-binary potential to affect AVs and monsters. I hope we still get to one-shot-CC most minions and lieuts, as in CoH.

Tannim222
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Scott Jackson wrote:
Scott Jackson wrote:

If the complexity only really comes into play a little for bosses, more for elite bosses, and mostly for archvillians and giant monsters (whatever we're calling the CoT equivalents), then I will like its non-binary potential to affect AVs and monsters. I hope we still get to one-shot-CC most minions and lieuts, as in CoH.

That is the intent of the system. Though there are some other variables which can affect performance.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

It is less a finite number and more of how a system called Output which drives are values works. I mean, at some point there is a "number of stacks" possible. It depends on the variables.
Stack enough movement debuffs and the target is immobilized. So in that case, adding more movement debuffs can be viewef as "wasted" but in reality, it is actually helpful if the intent is to maintain that immobilized status. After all, those initia stacks will be the first to wear off.
The same goes with control effects. Eventually a target will be controlled. You may want to continue attacking with a control to maintain thst status.
And we're only looking at one side of combat and not taking into consideration how protections may affect controls anf debuffs. Or how Momentum of the attacker (depending on their power set and / or mastery powers) can affect their powers, nor how the target's momentum may come into play .

In a non-binary system, what you've just described makes a heap of sense. I like it.

It would be interesting if the amount of stacks also affected the momentum bar of the target {depending on the target, of course). mwahahaha


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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

It would be interesting if the amount of stacks also affected the momentum bar of the target {depending on the target, of course). mwahahaha

You mean how even if stacking up control effects doesn't result in lockdown, they can still "dampen" the amount of Momentum being generated by the target, in effect degrading resource generation which can be used to counterattack? That way even if a full lockdown isn't possible or achieved, simply applying the control effects still has value in determining how the battle progresses and the threat the hostile poses.


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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
It is less a finite number and more of how a system called Output which drives are values works. I mean, at some point there is a "number of stacks" possible. It depends on the variables.
Stack enough movement debuffs and the target is immobilized. So in that case, adding more movement debuffs can be viewef as "wasted" but in reality, it is actually helpful if the intent is to maintain that immobilized status. After all, those initia stacks will be the first to wear off.
The same goes with control effects. Eventually a target will be controlled. You may want to continue attacking with a control to maintain thst status.
And we're only looking at one side of combat and not taking into consideration how protections may affect controls anf debuffs. Or how Momentum of the attacker (depending on their power set and / or mastery powers) can affect their powers, nor how the target's momentum may come into play .
In a non-binary system, what you've just described makes a heap of sense. I like it.
It would be interesting if the amount of stacks also affected the momentum bar of the target {depending on the target, of course). mwahahaha

Depending on how the enemy generates momentum I can see this going both "ways" so to speak, by that I mean either increasing or decreasing momentum generation.

For enemies that are dependent on using abilities to generate momentum would most likely have their generation potential being reduced. Some other enemies may have the condition (among others) of being CC'd to generate momentum.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:
It would be interesting if the amount of stacks also affected the momentum bar of the target {depending on the target, of course). mwahahaha
You mean how even if stacking up control effects doesn't result in lockdown, they can still "dampen" the amount of Momentum being generated by the target, in effect degrading resource generation which can be used to counterattack? That way even if a full lockdown isn't possible or achieved, simply applying the control effects still has value in determining how the battle progresses and the threat the hostile poses.

I like this description.

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blacke4dawn wrote:
blacke4dawn wrote:

Depending on how the enemy generates momentum I can see this going both "ways" so to speak, by that I mean either increasing or decreasing momentum generation.
For enemies that are dependent on using abilities to generate momentum would most likely have their generation potential being reduced. Some other enemies may have the condition (among others) of being CC'd to generate momentum.

That's what I was thinking. Some mobs might not like being controlled and could get rightly pissed about it.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Momentum builds as a target

Momentum builds as a target is attacked. The plan for
Npcs is to build in a Momentum-triggered power to break out of control effects.

For player characters Momentum will drain into Reaerves faster when controlled to offer the same capability, the opportunity to break out of controls.


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