Whatever happened to crowd control?

Just tagging everyone I've spotted since I last had a chance to look at this thread who has been ignoring the topic.

WHAT THIS THREAD IS ABOUT:
Content is not being designed with crowd control in mind. This is bad, for reasons listed in the OP. Please discuss the design of content with regards to control effects and offer suggestions to make crowd control necessary.

WHAT THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT:
The controller role in general.
Power battery playstyle.
Cooldown on instant power.
Community expectations about power restoration.
Basically anything to do with giving power.
Where these things have been mentioned it has been merely to illustrate why current content design is bad.

I want to urge people once again to consider the topic this thread was created for, and not the power issues. I'm not saying there aren't power issues, and if you have relevent threads about those issues you want me to post in please send me a link, but THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS THREAD IS FOR.

Thank you.

I don't agree with your assertion of crowd control not being considered or some of the other things you've brought up. Its frustrating for me because I run with controllers who can give ample amount of power and CC without a tank. I see people who think because they are the FOTM DPS build that they can do everything by themselves and end up prolonging the instance.

Yes, there are arrogant DPS players out there, the game is field with arrogant players period. The new Sons of Trigon DUOs are best done with a troller who is able to provide power and CC. CC may not work on Bosses but they do work on minions. And it should stay that way, if you recall when Home Turf mods were first released Orbital Strike boosted all the way up had the ability to CC many bosses. It was one of the ways people were beating prime. So I don't agree with that.

As far as power goes in this game, both the Vitalization and Power stats need to be looked at to make sure they are performing as expected. As a fire DPS I can only use 3 powers before going empty and I've seen it happen to other power sets.

Yes, it is possible to give power and crowd control, but the point of this thread is that in the T5 raids it is neither necessary nor, in most cases, particularly useful. With a couple of relatively minor exceptions, the power spent controlling would be far better used if given to DPS.

I agree with the Sons of Trigon point - I usually run this content in controller role, in DPS gear. The stuns can be very handy. However, the bulk of this thread is aimed towards the raid level content, which has seen a steady decline of crowd control-oriented design since the start of the game.

I don't find that true though. In Nexus when entering the fight against the flying robot, one of the most beneficial things to have is a troller that can slow down the knock back coming from enemies. Do you need 2 healers to beat Nexus, 2 trollers I think the necessity comes from the group of players at the time and not entirely from the content. I think maybe you've run with some people that don't really respect how a troller functions and may have been in bad groups, but that is my assumption based off of what I am reading.

I feel like you have not read my posts if you think I'm ignoring the issue of the thread. My stance, as seen in my posts, is that CC in the content works, and is viable during many situations during gameplay and not the issue of current game design. To keep this short, I have responded to your proposed problem and responded in kind with what I really think the issues stem from and solutions that I think might work. If I'm not allowed to respond in kind them what is the point of having any discussion. I think CC and power out to the group should be tied together. That may not be "content being designed with CC in mind," but more along with gameplay with CC in mind. Surely you see that if Controller gameplay was even more tailored to CCing (not saying it isn't already because it is), then the content being designed with that gameplay would naturally follow. But I guess since I mentioned POWER, or GENERAL GAMEPLAY, I'm not touching on the issue at hand

Another thing to consider is how and who we can control. Trash mobs we can actually control with stuns, juggles, knockbacks etc, while bosses we cannot. Every enemy we can control through debuffs, which in turn buffs our teammates. That includes bosses. And we control the main source of assisting in power out to the group. That includes bosses. It would seem the only way to really tailor the game design to CC would be to either introduce more trash mobs or allow Controllers to CC bosses. I'm not sure either of those would be the end all be all change need for the content.

Possibly adding more gear type spots where CCing adds in the area to buy time to finish the cog would be nice(water bearers, bridge in fos, Sentries, etc) are the type's of things it sounds like you'd like to see. I agree I'd like to see those spots a little more in future content. It's a good spot for all roles to really test themselves. Without cheap one shots. Tanks keeping focus in the right direction and CC, Trollers giving power and CCing to protect, Healers keeping everybody alive for durations in one spot, and the DPS burning to keep the adds a manageable number. That's one way I could see CC becoming more of a demand, though I do think that even in T5 there are times when a troller should be CCing, we should be CCing all the time since our combo's and powers all provide that effect.

Another way to improve the need/balance of CC is implement adds that are effected by certain types of CC(like the sentry's in FOS 3). The adds hit hard in T5 so having a plan of attack for those certain type's of adds would help the whole team to not take damage and finish the instance.

More adds like the gatekeepers! That makes preventing damage out from an add important. If I saw more adds like that I'd be happy. I also like things like the Medic Shield from FOS 3. One toss of my throwing knives knocks them right out of the shield, thus saving the groups.

Maybe we should bring up examples like those already in game where CC plays an important part of team survival and/or progression. Those can be implemented into future content, and perhaps spark new ideas of implementing important CC. For me, I guess I need a more valid reason to CC an add other than to prevent damage for teammates. We should definitely talk about good, important uses of CC!

It's a shame you don't get it.

So you claim you don't get to CC stuff in T5 and that we need to bring that back: point of this thread. Then you go on a rant about how you CC stuff all the time in T5 content.

Then claim I don't know how to control.

So which is it? Are you CCing stuff or not in T5? Because you contradict yourself. I mean I don't understand how you can ask for a feature then go on and on about how you're already doing it. LOL.

To be clear, I'm talking about the necessity to CC stuff in order to finish the content. Yes there are quite a few ways to CC stuff and laughably it seemed the ones you tend to use are primarily weapon and consumbles rather than the 2348902342394723 powers we have but don't use.

heh! glad someone posted in this thread today. i couldnt for the life of me find it last night, lol.

i actually had a pretty epic CC moment yesterday!
its hard not to get excited when they are so few in top tier content anymore.

anyway, i was in a nice Paradox run, in the final fight, and i guess all of our DPSes wiped except one.
it was a good group though and everyone pushed on with just the one dps.
so when the Adds would spawn things would get a little hectic since that one dps was working overtime and there was only 1 tank and healer as well... Trollers to the rescue!!
obviously we had a power surplus at that point so when the adds started mobbing everyone i just started spamming the heck outta A Wave and Singularity combo for the push back/ polorize/root effects, and it was absolutely magical!!

seriously, the ability of CC effects to play how they can, and should, in the content is still 100% there, but the issue is the way the content revolves around Burn except when dps is shorthanded.
i'm not a game developer, i have no idea how this can be tweaked... BUT IT SHOULD.

I'm 100% confident that you didn't read the entirely of my posts. Please go back and read them. There are solutions, they were presented.

Pretty much my point in a nutshell played out. Thanks for sharing that.
Notes:
Power was in surplus so trollers were not in battery power mode.
Trollers had to CC stuff to keep them from overwhelming the group because of a slower burn.

Solution? Get rid of blue bar healing.

Yes I forgot about the scaling. Good point, makes it even worse.

LOL how old are you?

Please quote me where I said "I don't get to CC stuff in T5" and where I said "we need to bring crowd controlling back." Find those exact quotes.

You won't find it because you're making it up. I never said we need to "CC stuff" again because unlike you I realize normal actions result in crowd controlling. It is done anyway. Something that you just don't register in your brain. What I said was we need objectives that require us to use our control effects to progress and/or use our control effects to defeat specific NPCs. Not CC for the sake of CC which is done RIGHT NOW.

You don't know how to control. Your idea of crowd controlling is just to base it off powers. That's beyond reckless and foolish considering a Controller should manage their power bar too. You NEVER acknowledge that weapons and other tools that don't require power can crowd control. What is so laughable about having access to MULTIPLE tools to control NPCs AND that offer COUNTER control effects to specific immunities??? Again, you don't know how to control.

I lost the little respect I had for you. 3 people have now pointed out what the topic is about to you and all you do is complain. You're points are weak and not well thought out. You shouldn't post in here since you have nothing constructive to add that has to do with the topic. Your "solutions" belong in another thread. Be an adult and go search for it then complain in there.

Your solutions don't cover your point 100% people don't want to be in paradox for more than an hour, and if there was no recharge and there was other ways to get power I would say f the troll get me another DPS and tank. Having troller makes the game equal. Good luck with this idea because its one of those ideas that won't ever be fixed

76 upvotes is a 5#!t load for these forums.
however you think the issue should be addressed, unless your just a carbon copy dps like every other bum in this game, something needs to be done.
so SPYTLE: "whatever happened to crowd control?"
--for friggin realz yo.

Make it so that a player that burns through power too inefficiently goes critical and instead consumes MUCH more power than usual and loses the power to regain power that scales to complete loss for short periods of time Going critical is a double edge sword. More DPS and crits at the cost of drastically reduced power regen. This alone adds a whole new layer of strategic depth concerning when is the time to burn, and raid pacing.

I once plugged an alarm clock rated for 120v into a 240v outlet overseas. Guess what happened to the alarm clock? BZZZZT AND SMOKE!! Same principle here. Let people slowly and ever so gradually skill up in power usage so the time spent in the abuse penalty box is lessened over time.

Maybe after crit burning they have to regain power manually by skillfully melee attacking to regen power.

It makes little to no thematic sense that people can just absorb that much power so quickly with at basically no penalty. You could also ramp up the aggro caused by over expenditure of power.

In short. Burn through power and you burn your fuse. It takes time to repair/heal your fuse (which could be a whole new power set btw). Over time you can get fuses with higher ratings that let you go critical for longer periods of time with an increase in crit damage and/or a decrease in recover time.

I could continue on and on, but I feel the general idea has been explained.

Oh one other thing. The fuse applies to tanks and healers as well. Maybe the tank gets to supertank for awhile. Maybe the healer can supermassheal or even drastically reduce the res timer to avoid a wipe at the cost of no power regen for awhile, unless via manual means or a class other than a controller that can either remove the debuff on the healer through some time intensive action (meaning they can't perform other role duties until the action is complete or interrupted) or what have you.


edit
This also means powers might actually backfire on the user/group/raid if overburn is used too much! Now all of a sudden people have to actually think about what they are doing instead of just mashing buttons.

This helps to solve pacing, CC issues (as they are now needed), makes every other class out there have to have diverse power sets (kiters, off tankers, now you need both fire and ice, etc etc), adds additional strategy, adds push your luck gameplay, creates extra challenge and skill, exercises the sphincter more often, and generally makes the game more fun to play.

Sigh... It takes forever to download this game. Anyway Overburn could be represented by a glow or aura around the caster (controllers too!) along with accompanying text like

Your skin begins to tingle as the power flows through you!

Energy crackles around you as you enter Overburn!

A field of raw energy surrounds you!

You can't take much more of this! It feels as if you are going supernova!

In agony and mortal danger, your synapses fry as the last of your power is spent!

You have reached Overburn and xxxx has taking xxxxxx damage!

Where the xxxx can be you and the damage could be heals, resses, blocked damage, crits, raid wide heals/cleanses, other abilities yadda yadda. Each color progression should be random in order. So for example you could start at blue then instantly end at red! Also each color progression gives scaling +/-'s for each color. So at blue you do a little extra DPS to others (and possibly yourself hence +/-) at red you have SIGNIFICANT +/-'s!!

The random progression and scaling output creates push your luck gameplay. So I'm at blue right now at this rate I will hit yellow or worse anytime now. Maybe I should cool off a bit. Or maybe you are almost dead anyway, the raid almost wiped and going supernova saves the day.

But if you pace yourself, you increase your output and allow others to better explore their roles and loadouts as everything won't be quite as easily burnt down to the ground.

You've got healers managing their heals, so tanks gotta tank better, controllers gotta cc and manage pow better, making DPS manage DPS better. On and on, back and forth. It's a self reinforcing system. Also sometimes you just need to push your luck for strategic reasons, and just to generally have fun to see if you can pull it off in ultimate heroic fashion.

Sorry for the length. I blame download times on the ps3

Also I tried to edit my post but too much time expired. whatchagunnado?

That's fair, and I'm certainly not saying you can't control anything in these raids, however my entire experience has been that there is little motivation to do so - that in the majority of instances, the power would be better spent as DPS.

Can you agree that there has been a steady decline in the content/design of enemies with regards to crowd control as the tiers have progressed? Looking at eye drones, shield armours, elite guardians etc in Batcaves, broodmother and bridge sections in FOS, and then very little after that? I would like to reverse that decline.