The new Scout Update has brought Crowd Control (or CC as it is known in MMO land) to my favorite online shooter.
This was rightly feared by players as perhaps being overpowered at worst and annoying at best.
Well after a quick lunchtime session I can confirm that right now I don’t think the stun effect is Overpowered at all. The difficulty of actually pulling it off versus the lost utility by carrying the Sandman has pretty much balanced it out.
It is however Annoying.
One of the cornerstones of multiplayer game design (well one of MY cornerstones anyway) is to never take away the all of a players abilities all at once.
If you’re going to stop a player attacking then you don’t stop them being able to move. If you want to stop them moving then let them attack.
Left 4 Dead does this very well when you get incapcitated (and I expect this to get ripped off by more games please). You can’t move but you can still shoot (albeit at a reduced rate with horrible accuracy).
If I was making a war game with multiplayer then I would ensure that a “Dead” player can choose to either stay still and shoot with reduced accuracy OR they can try and crawl around to try and pull themselves into cover.
To remove all capability of interaction results in players essentially waiting to Die.
So how should Valve fix this mild annoyance from an otherwise fairly balanced ability?
- Allow Stunned players to wander around very slowly in cartoon fashion.
- Do not force the camera into third person.
- Play some birds circling the Players vision and some Tweeting sound effects.
None of the changes above will change how the Stun affects gameplay. The Stunned player is still largely helpless and unable to defend themselves but they are still interacting with the game.
They are no longer waiting to Die.
Similar Posts:
- None Found
9 Comments
Sounds like City Of Heroes’ disorientated effect. I was rarely frustrated at getting hit with that, as the animation for staggering around that it put you in control of was so amusing.
I always have City of Heroes in mind when it comes to CC that doesn’t annoy the crap out of me. The Disorient was funny and that bought it alot of good faith I think.
All the other CC powers you tended to have a resist or defence against so as they became more common at higher levels you had appropriate counters.
Assuming you could live with the increased endurance drain they had associated with them.
I do agree that it’s harder to pull off than it seems when you get hit by it, but I think this skill will inevitably be acquired with practise, making it even more brutal.
I agree with how you are trying to address the ‘helplessness/disconnect’ of the players hit by the Sandman stun, but I think you have overlooked one of the other major frustrations.
Right now there is no chargeup for the Sandman considering its effect is so powerful. There’s always a lot of talk about ‘anticipation’ being important in games, and I think it’s just as true here. The player using the stun doesn’t have much of a chance to relish his dastardly plan: the ball simply zaps someone (it’s that fast) and then it’s all about capitalising as soon as possible. It’s not like the uber where you get to the last 10% and start fantasising about how much carnage you’re going to be reaping in a few seconds’ time.
But more importantly the player being targeted has no anticipation at all. There is no warning. There is no lead-in animation and no real chance of escape if the move is executed in mid-range where it’s fast enough to be unavoidable and stuns long enough to make it an easy finish.
The move needs to be ‘readable’ (something Valve have focused on and championed with TF2 so far). All other moves in TF2 are readable. The thing with this one is it can either be used in ranged or in melee combat, and the idle weapon animation makes no distinction. So every time you see someone holding a Sandman above their head you are forced into a state of confusion: “Are they about to run at me with their bat or are they about to shoot me?”
So I think there are 2 major issues that need to be addressed:
- The loss of control (“Waiting to Die”), and
- Readability/anticipation
Maybe a quick animation showing the scout tossing the baseball up before thwacking it would improve readability/anticipation, and gives an attentive, agile player the chance to dodge. Agreed that it seems a bit ‘un-Valve’ to force stunned players to freeze and wait for death.
That’s exactly the animation I was expecting for the Sandman, actually. The first time I got hit with it, I had no idea what was going on (“He didn’t throw the ball up, so I couldn’t be hit by the Sandman”). It’s strange that something so incapacitating (even to ubered players, IIRC) has almost no lead-time or warning.
After playing it, I’m also not happy with the way it’s played out. The ideas given here are quite good, especially not forcing the 3rd person view. It feels so wrong, like I’ve been killed.
That being said, I do quite like how it prevents you from shooting. This is particularly effective against the Scout’s nemesis, the Heavy. It makes the minigun to stop spinning, which forces the player to start spinning up again, or try to run away from the much faster Scout who’s probably bashing him with the bat.
I have to disagree simply because the effect is so short-lived. I have to admit that it really makes the scout effective on defense.
I’m 99% demoman and I’m deadly effective against hardware with a good medic in tow. But nothing stops an ubercharge more impressively than getting “bonked” by a scout. Before, the only way you could slow up an uberdemo was with a Pyro’s blast (even then, I can do some serious damage). But I actually give a grudging chuckle of respect when I turn the corner all sparkly and glowy like and get whacked up-side the cabessa with a ball. I can still do some damage, but certainly not enough.
Therefore, I make the case that by doing a minor, action-based, nerf on ubered demos like me does the game a service. After all, everyone bitched that demos were over-powered, right?
@ Dave Mark
You are completely right. The Sandman is I think a balanced and above all required tool in the game as there was so little you could do to counter an ubercharge. Speaking as a long-time Heavy Player (and as such typically a magnet for medics with a primed uber) I fully understand and endorse the need for such a counter.
However the blog post is not really about whether the Sandman is balanced or not but about how the experience of being stunned is a frustrating break of flow to alot of players. The solution given will not affect the balance of the Stun or it’s ultimate effects. It will however make it less frustrating to less skilled players.
However-you are able to aim at the scout who hit you, who has very little health anyway, guaranteeing their death if they’re not smart about it.