Beyond the obvious multiple character based imbalances in this game, there is yet another problem. This is the crowd control being pigeonholed into almost exclusively a stun. CC is fine, I don't have an issue with having various types of CC in the game. My issue is the sheer amount of silences. Mud silences, Ice silences, goat silences, EMP silences, stun silences.There are so many silences in this game that it is very easy to be stunned till you die before being able to do anything. Stun makes sense as a silence, it really does. I feel that they just flooded the game with you can't do anything trolololol abilities. Not only that but some are quite long.Mud and Ice for instance should lock you in place/slow you but they shouldn't mean you can't fire as well. There is zero reason whatsoever for some of these abilities to just be a general silence. Popcap needs to be more creative so that every single ability doesn't have to mean hey I can't do *.This is a repost of my thread on reddit: https://en-us.reddit.com/r/PvZGardenWarfare/comments/48mvgd/why_is_everything_a_silence/TL;DR I want most abilities to be a little more unique/restrained instead of basically making you a free kill because you can't do anything.

The amount of stuns/silences is absurd and ruins half the point of the game. You're not a MOBA, you're a 3rd person shooter with semi battlefield and TF2 elements. And guess what, neither of those games have stuns because it ruins all kinds of balance, skill, and ultimately fun.Being able to press a key to make someone defenseless should never, EVER be implemented in a shooter of ANY kind, a flashbang is different though, but that's an entirely different topic practically. That's an abysmal idea really, the stuns. It works in MOBAS because in those you have items, abilities, and heroes to counter them. But not in PVZ, not at all. In a fast paced shooter that = easy deaths. In a MOBA it is entirely different. Please PopCap, remove some of the silence abilities, replace them with something more diverse, fun, and skill dependent. Or at the very least tone them all down DRASTICALLY, the longest one should only be a max of 1.8 seconds.

One such remedy could be as simple as breaking down these abilities and granting only pieces to certain moves. For example, Rose's Time Snare could inhibit ones movement, but not prevent the use of shooting, abilities, or turning radius. Same can be said for the Chomper's Goop (which might impact turning radius alone), Engineer's Loud Speaker (which might prevent abilities), etc.

@Rhendyr wrote: The current abilities shouldn't have made it out of beta. They should have been fine tuned quite a bit more, made more into slows, roots, turning radius slow downs, ability lock out (while still being able to move or auto attack normally), attack slow downs, maybe resistance debuffs, etc, but not basically the same generic thing over and over, which is either, no abilities plus severely reduced movement, or no abilities plus no movement/attack. Exactly, the lack of variety is a big killer, that and the time these things last. I'm not sure how they even thought it was a good idea. This has more cc than games that actually give you CCproof/counter abilities

As a general rule for entertaining game design, it is a bad idea to take control away from a gamer. That is the effect of stun. It is worse than being killed because you are powerless while the enemies surround you and do as they will to you and your properties. Isn't gaming all about empowering people, letting them do things they can't do in normal life? When you are dead, you can at least blame it on poor play on your own part, or skilled play on the enemy's. When you are stunned, all you experience is frustration.

Fire and Ice aoe are attacks, not CC. At least not in the traditional meaning of it as abilities that prevent you from doing something like roots, silences, slows, stuns etc. I'm not referring to damaging abilities at all, that is an entirely different subject. I solely mean the issue with a large majority of CC abilities having no variation and just plain not allowing you to act or attack. This gets even more frustrating due to how long they last and the ability for enemies to just chain stack them on you. \Many games have cc immunity items or modes or abilities that ignore cc so things like stuns don't automatically mean death in most cases. Obviously this game will not have those functions but that means it should be tuned down a lot. I want more unique statuses for the effects instead of hey you can't do anything but stand there and die.

The amount of silences is bad... | EA Forums

12 Replies

Anonymous
10 years ago
I understand your frustration! It would make more sense for these stuns to act similarly to Chompers good-- allowing you to turn and shoot. But to be fair, there are quite a lot of CC abilities out there beyond ice and mud. All fire and lightning variants have AOE and there are quite a number of one hit kills (imp punts, chili bean, etc.).
Yinvoked
10 years ago
One such remedy could be as simple as breaking down these abilities and granting only pieces to certain moves. For example, Rose's Time Snare could inhibit ones movement, but not prevent the use of shooting, abilities, or turning radius. Same can be said for the Chomper's Goop (which might impact turning radius alone), Engineer's Loud Speaker (which might prevent abilities), etc.
BlackNWild
10 years ago
Fire and Ice aoe are attacks, not CC. At least not in the traditional meaning of it as abilities that prevent you from doing something like roots, silences, slows, stuns etc. I'm not referring to damaging abilities at all, that is an entirely different subject. I solely mean the issue with a large majority of CC abilities having no variation and just plain not allowing you to act or attack. This gets even more frustrating due to how long they last and the ability for enemies to just chain stack them on you.
\
Many games have cc immunity items or modes or abilities that ignore cc so things like stuns don't automatically mean death in most cases. Obviously this game will not have those functions but that means it should be tuned down a lot. I want more unique statuses for the effects instead of hey you can't do anything but stand there and die.
Minty_Twister
10 years ago
The amount of stuns/silences is absurd and ruins half the point of the game. You're not a MOBA, you're a 3rd person shooter with semi battlefield and TF2 elements. And guess what, neither of those games have stuns because it ruins all kinds of balance, skill, and ultimately fun.
Being able to press a key to make someone defenseless should never, EVER be implemented in a shooter of ANY kind, a flashbang is different though, but that's an entirely different topic practically. That's an abysmal idea really, the stuns. It works in MOBAS because in those you have items, abilities, and heroes to counter them. But not in PVZ, not at all. In a fast paced shooter that = easy deaths. In a MOBA it is entirely different.
Please PopCap, remove some of the silence abilities, replace them with something more diverse, fun, and skill dependent. Or at the very least tone them all down DRASTICALLY, the longest one should only be a max of 1.8 seconds.
BlackNWild
10 years ago
@Minty_Twister wrote:
The amount of stuns/silences is absurd and ruins half the point of the game. You're not a MOBA, you're a 3rd person shooter with semi battlefield and TF2 elements. And guess what, neither of those games have stuns because it ruins all kinds of balance, skill, and ultimately fun.
Being able to press a key to make someone defenseless should never, EVER be implemented in a shooter of ANY kind, a flashbang is different though, but that's an entirely different topic practically. That's an abysmal idea really, the stuns. It works in MOBAS because in those you have items, abilities, and heroes to counter them. But not in PVZ, not at all. In a fast paced shooter that = easy deaths. In a MOBA it is entirely different.
Please PopCap, remove some of the silence abilities, replace them with something more diverse, fun, and skill dependent. Or at the very least tone them all down DRASTICALLY, the longest one should only be a max of 1.8 seconds.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Rhendyr
10 years ago
Agreed, there are far too many 'silences' in this game. Then when you add in ice variants, such as frost rose with her homing charged stun that makes it to where you can't do anything, move, fight, use a skill, nothing, then it really is absurd. I main Brainz, 200 hps, and when I'm silenced, I'm almost always dead, especially since it cancels out any current ability you have going on.
The current abilities shouldn't have made it out of beta. They should have been fine tuned quite a bit more, made more into slows, roots, turning radius slow downs, ability lock out (while still being able to move or auto attack normally), attack slow downs, maybe resistance debuffs, etc, but not basically the same generic thing over and over, which is either, no abilities plus severely reduced movement, or no abilities plus no movement/attack.
BlackNWild
10 years ago
@Rhendyr wrote:
The current abilities shouldn't have made it out of beta. They should have been fine tuned quite a bit more, made more into slows, roots, turning radius slow downs, ability lock out (while still being able to move or auto attack normally), attack slow downs, maybe resistance debuffs, etc, but not basically the same generic thing over and over, which is either, no abilities plus severely reduced movement, or no abilities plus no movement/attack.
Exactly, the lack of variety is a big killer, that and the time these things last. I'm not sure how they even thought it was a good idea. This has more cc than games that actually give you CCproof/counter abilities
Anonymous
10 years ago
As a general rule for entertaining game design, it is a bad idea to take control away from a gamer. That is the effect of stun. It is worse than being killed because you are powerless while the enemies surround you and do as they will to you and your properties. Isn't gaming all about empowering people, letting them do things they can't do in normal life? When you are dead, you can at least blame it on poor play on your own part, or skilled play on the enemy's. When you are stunned, all you experience is frustration.
BlackNWild
10 years ago
I wish EA gave us some concrete information about future changes so we would know if CC changes are coming. I doubt it however as it hasn't been mention but it needs to be. It is a frustrating problem.
MekBoss
10 years ago
I agree. Rose's CC is especially annoying because it lasts longer than most other CCs. At the very least we should be able to use skills like rocket jump and burrow to break out of CC but if you get hit by CC during the activation of a movement skill it should still count. I'd really just prefer it if they removed some of the CC, it's far too frequent now.