"Arresting"

OK. Not sure what you'd call it villainside.

A thought came to mind while running my lowbie Ice/Cold Controller. One of the reasons Containment was put in was to help with Controller damage - and there's still complaints, on occasion, about leveling speed and whatnot.

I started thinking of APB. There's a (rather annoying, at times...) mechanic where Enforcers (freelance police - honestly, vigilantes) can stun an opposing player and, if they get there in time, can "arrest" them - if the player isn't freed by a teammate within several seconds, they're defeated ("Arrested") and have to respawn.

So - for PVE, at least - why not bring that mechanic here? (This being a PVE mechanic. PVP, I'm not sure how it would work out, other than being lopsidedly against most squishies.)

Essentially, it's this - if you can maintain a hold (say, 2 hold cycles? Numbers to be adjusted of course, and rank affects it, but 2 picked since 3 will straight up defeat a minion on its own at the very low levels) on a single enemy, that enemy will be defeated (arrested.) You do, of course, still get containment damage, so if you want to go the straight-damage route, you're still able to. But if you maintain a hold on one enemy while fighting the other two in a typical spawn, you can defeat both more quickly.

It's more of use low-to-mid level in solo to small groups. Though it would be interesting to defeat an EB or higher this way, if you could. Also, this isn't limited to Controllers/Dominators - Blasters, Defenders and Corruptors all have sets (or some sets) with holds in them, though blasters don't exactly need the help given their damage focus.

Just tossing it out there. Hammer away.

Edit: To make things interesting for others, throw in a badge set. "Mace," "Less than lethal," "cuff 'em," etc. Yes, it would put it off a bit for melee types, but most - I think scrappers are the only ones missing this - would still be able to get it later with APP/EPP holds. Let temp powers count toward it as well. (Yes, I know, I pick on badgers, but I'm trying to be fair to those who'd want to chase it on a melee AT as well by letting temps count.)

It's also an alternate for those tired of the "Damage is all that counts" mentality - now there's an alternate way to defeat enemies. And if you think hitting with a broadsword isn't heroic, well, a new path for you!

See my Guides and Tutorials

It's an interesting idea, certainly. Not 100% sure how or if it could be implemented however...
Ack, this heat doesnt let me think straight. I'll let more brainy folks have a pass at this first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I like it.

I'm going to be honest: I don't particularly like the idea.


On the other hand, I've been sitting here for 5 minutes trying to come up with a solid, logical argument against it. So my only argument is "I don't like it".

I don't like this at all.
To grossly over-simplify to two archetypes:

A Controller is by design a low damage (ie many actions to arrest) archetype. In exchange for this they get the ability to temporarily neutralise an enemy. One action to stop temporarily, many actions to stop permanently. Solo, this requires juggling a small group - keep number 1 busy for the next 20 seconds, then number 2, then number 3, then back to number one. Quick lockdown, long defeat, multi-tasking concentration requires.

In comparison a Blaster has few actions to stop permanently, but no way of stopping temporarily. This requires serial processing. Focus on number 1 till they fall over, then number 2o, and so on. It's generally faster but riskier because you stop all incoming damage less quickly.

What you're effectively asking for is to have Controllers require fewer actions to defeat outright, which upsets this balance.

Applying damage from multiple holds doesn't have to mean you're actually damaging the target. Its just you need to reinforce the vines or ice or mental block or whatever a few times to make sure they stay put.
What we could have is alternate death animations attached to a Control attack, without changing a single game mechanic. Instead of falling over, the defeated target remains encased in ice/earth/vines whatever before fading away.

From a balance stand point it seems pretty overpowered in a teaming situation. Also, if it is any mez that starts the timer (your example is a stun) this would definitely be overpowered solo/teaming.

It doesnt fit conceptually for me either. Not all enemies in the game are "arrested." There is no way we arrest green mitos or the stereo AV. Arrest was a very "E" choice that they went with likely to keep a mature rating off the games box. The game also has profanity disabled by default.

EDIT: read your second post about the no AoE's and that helps with balance, but I still think its definitely unbalanced for teaming.

I'm thinking back to soloing my Ice/Kin Controller here, so I can see where you're coming from. Every group of 3 minions would be shut down pretty quickly, leaving me to cycle through them in a rather dull battle between their health bars and my endurance bar, even with Sands of Mu helping out.

There'd come a point where I'd think "come on, these guys are already defeated. Can't we just skip the next 30 seconds?" Lower levels, like 1-10 weren't too bad, since the XP was fast and damage scalars hadn't kicked in. It was the 20s where its started to get painful, fighting +2s without a pet.

But, it was incredibly safe, and I'd chosen that style when I made the character. I could have made a Kin/Ice Defender with the same concept, and traded some safety for damage. I can't really see a way to add defeat-speed to this character without penalising the potential Defender, or even a Gravity Controller who's dropped some of the safety in exchange for some decent damage.

Say we had a separate health bar that drops evenly while the target is mezzed, and recovers instantly when they aren't. So maybe 45 seconds of continuous mez = defeat for a typical minion. And my solo Ice Controller's hold lasts for 30 seconds on a +2. This means I can leave a target once they've been held for 15 seconds - pop a quick hold and them and move on, knowing they wont be able to squirm free. This basically works in my favour against higher level targets, who'd take more than 30 seconds to defeat through damage, right? Without further HUD assistance (eg some kind of watermark on the hold bar) it would also suffer the damage over time problem you already get say soloing a Fire Controller, where you're not always sure if you can run off yet and let the DoT's finish them.

Like you say, we already have access to a continuous spectrum of damage/hold capabilities from Fire Blasters to Ice Controllers. Even with say an Ice/FF Controller, we can choose to slot for damage or hold in Block of Ice, or use Damage procs, or build up global acc to use Sands of Mu. I'd say we don't need to intorduce a mechanism to speed up defeats for those who've chosen slow but safe.

Like I said, i've experienced this myself, but I think the answer for me was to re-roll as a Defender.

I've been suggesting this for probably the last five years, so I very much agree with it. However, I wouldn't call it "arresting," since it's not. I'd actually just call it "defeat through control." Here's what I mean:

Suppose you lock an enemy in stone. The enemy will eventually break free. Lock him in enough stone, however, and he will stay in there FOREVER, or until someone jackhammers him out, at least, which would usually be the police when they come in after you've swept the premises. Or even if no-one comes in and the enemy does manage to break out in, like, a day, he's still not going to be a threat to you for as long as you're there. In other words, he's defeated.

This has a lot of precedent in contemporary fiction, with the one example I keep bringing back: Baldur's Gate. Petrification in Baldur's Gate DOES NOT WEAR OFF. You can dispell it, but if you don't, your character is a statue forever. In fact, one character you can add to your party you dispel from a group of statues who had been sitting in a field for I think years and years near a Basilisk's nest. Or take Spider-Man - pretty much every time he's knocked out with sleeping gas, he wakes up in a cage or bound to a board or dangling from a bridge or something like that.

Personally, I see this as being implementable in two ways:

1) Hold mag residue. Say we alter each hold such that it still holds for its original duration, but then leaves its magnitude behind for, say, twice or three times as long. It doesn't hold, sure, but next time you apply a hold, it stacks with the residue magnitude to form a stronger hold. Get the hold magnitude strong enough and the target can no longer escape on his own.

2) Give enemies a "control bar" next to their health. Each control effect brings the bar down a few units and it regenerates on its own slowly. Bring the bar to zero and the target is defeated through holding. I've actually done some work to try and implement this as a way to make holds less binary, but this isn't the right thread for that.

Either way, I like the idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My two issues with this would be:

1. It doesn't take that many dominators to perma-hold an AV (I know it's been done with just one), and I can't imagine controllers are much worse.

2. This would be problematic for dominators in non-AV stuff, too, since it'd basically turn a dominate-powered hold into a one-hit boss killer. It'd add a pretty substantial amount to their damage outside of domination, too. My Volcanic Gasses would basically be a set-it-and-forget-it nuke. If it doesn't apply to only holds, then you start getting things like AoE insta-kills every 30 seconds on perma-doms. While there are complains about controller damage, I haven't really seen any of those for dominators.

I don't believe anyone is suggesting that single-application holds be permanent effects, but rather that you be able to stack enough hold over time to do so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

/signed

I like this as long as it is limited to controllers and dominators only. I have always been a big supporter of moving away from damage being the only way to defeat enemies in the game. I would also like to see the same kind of thing applied to defender/corruptor debuffs.


>

OK so a held enemy gets defeated if held for x amount of time consecutively.

This would be awesome if the higher rank enemies took longer to kick in.

Hold a minion for what 1 minute, LT for 1.5 minutes, Boss for 2 minutes, EB 3 minutes, AV for 4 minutes, GM 5 minutes.

I'm going to disagree with this idea. It'd trivialize gameplay on my Grav/TA, for example. She's IOed up, but mostly just sets picked on whim and a bunch of Hold procs on that for (far more effective than intended) kicks and giggles. She's not a min-maxed build (heck she has Group Fly for concept). Yet, she can trivially hold somewhere around three bosses on her own with just single target holds. She can solo hold an AV outside of the PToD without breaking a set (and I'm willing to bet if I threw in Hasten and a bunch of global recharge, even the triangles wouldn't be an obstacle). She's stopped whole ambushes in their tracks with a couple of powers (or less). Green Mitos in the LGTF cower before her (haven't taken her on a Hami raid yet).

And again, this isn't a mix-max build like a perma-dom, but rather a "hey, I feel like slotting this cheap IO set" and "hold procs? Could be fun" build. While her lockdown prowress wasn't so silly prior to the IOs (mainly the procs), she could still rather effortlessly lock a pair of bosses running on SOs with just single target holds.

Allowing her to "kill" targets just by having them sit there for awhile would make her extremely silly powerful. If AVs were affected and the timer was short enough, she'd solo AVs better than my Scrapper who I've spent I have no idea how much inf on.

For the same reasons, I'd also be against "hold residue". A solo Controller on SOs would be able to lockdown the entire game just about.

Ok, now let's get off of that and on other issues. For example...

*Why bother with Reichman's huge bag of HP, Unstoppable, AV ambushes, and other nasty tricks when you could just form a team of Controllers, hold him for a minute, and call it a day?

*Heck, why bother with any ambushes an AV can summon when you could just recruit Controllers and hold them until they drop dead for no reason?

*Why bring anything without holds when fighting GMs?

*Why bring anything without holds on a TF?

*Why bring anything but Controllers to a Hami raid, outside of a token group of melee for Yellows? Drop lingering mezzes on top and why even deal with the other mito-spawns?

*Why let Fire/Kins farm so we... wait, never mind.

I could go on, but I feel unless you still had to mez the target for inordinate amount of time and/or it didn't work on anything higher than a lieutenant, the game would get trivialized by a huge amount and almost every AT would fall to the wayside for anyone who cares about performance.

I really don't see a way to implement this in a way people would really use without nullifying damage except in instances where mez is useless. If you're just doing damage, the enemy can fight back. If you're just mezzing him, they can't. Why would I take the riskier route when the safer one is just as rewarding and just as fast?

What about Illusion Controllers?

I think the idea is an interesting one but I'm not for it - Controllers were not designed, it appears, to be able to handle things in the same way as Blasters, Scrappers, and Defenders (to a lesser extent - even with the new Vigilance).

In a way they are akin to Tanks - they're not meant to be high damage dealers and have ways of mitigating damage to provide increased survivability. Some combinations of powers can do larger damage, but I personally think that's good design: have enough combos of sets for different playstyles so that not every Tank, Controller, etc plays the same.

I could see this working as a temporary power, or as part of a unique trial/TF/SF. It may even have connotations for Going Rogue - in terms of 'the more arrests you make in the trial(etc), the more your heroic alignment increases, and conversely for pure damage dealing.

Also, I'm not a fan of making this just a Dominator/Controller thing - as has been stated, there are plenty of Blasters and Defenders (and Tanks, really) who can emulate a controller in terms of holds or stuns. The same goes for Corruptors, Masterminds, some Brutes and some Stalkers. And of course VEATs can be quite control-focussed. Oh and Warshades! Less so Peacebringers.

It's why i like interesting temp powers like the 5 Gold Rings from the Xmas event, and the PBAoE +Psionic damage +Psionic resistance power from the Crystal keeper SF - everyone has access to them.

So /unsigned from me.

I'd need to see some proposed numbers for the "control timer" for each rank before I'd be confident agreeing or disagreeing with this idea.

Too short and you run the risk of simply applying a hold to an enemy and walking away only for it to be defeated by the control timer. Mainly thinking of me hitting a boss with a domination powered st hold and then moving on to the next spawn effectively giving my toon full reward for practically no expenditure of time, risk, or effort. That might stop such an idea in its tracks

Too long and it would be fairly pointless in most situations.

I'm also assuming it would have to scale by level as well as rank. If you desire it to be useful in lower levels and phase out a bit in higher levels that is.

In conjunction with a control timer and/or bar like Samuel and you are talking about I've tossed around the idea of defeat through sheer display of control dominance. For instance if you stack mag 15 hold on a boss they simply surrender and are defeated because you displayed that they stand no chance. I would probably disable such a thing for AV class enemies though. The devs have demonstrated that they seem to want these encounters to behave in a specific manner.

But ya, alternate methods to overcoming encounters is something I've been thinking about for quite some time( I've got some interesting scenarios drawn up that involve defeat through debuffs such as end drain for example). I'd need to see this particular idea fleshed out more before endorsing it though.