Putting the magnifying glass on Crowd Control
My pen has run out of ink this week writing down the coords of bases and battles(and names of spies that need to be kicked from nwchat), and out of all these there were two that i just could not stand at all. CC is a bad thing, but it was semi-bearable for some of the battles. Honestly these two were the worst battles id ever been in.
First:
The spot that is currently mayhem's ql 200 in efp 500 3k i believe in coords? I can't remember, but get anyone to crowd that CT and the battle is all over. The place is deeply creviced and there's almost no way around it, the CT sticks out and can be placed tactically to lag out attackers. Once the defenders arrived we were not able to go in - we tried every direction that there wasnt a rock wall at and it was the same damn deal. The attackers nicknamed it 'the CC base'
Second:
1.2k,1.1k coords in DAV
God, this one is the worst. An assault from any side at all gets you boxed in the CC - lined up, clanners had literally no place to walk at all - enforcers, adventurers and MAs(well, excluding the AS) were literally just my cannon fodder as someone using a 40m range weapon at the time (nicknamed the 'CC peashooter' by fixers, the kerans OT). Even this was not enough, as omnis when at low hp from the few of us fixers,soldiers and agents with 40m weapons would just move back to heal, we had no choice but to release aggro, and with all the fixers and docs there you could be sure they wouldn't need to use a kit. I couldn't move forward, we ended up literally sniping a tower to its destruction which took way too much time. We had an army of about 25, and we couldve blew a lot more up and killed a ton more omnis had CC not been put into place..Why i could not move back as well i never figured out, all i know is if my character took anymore than 3 steps in any direction id get the yellow message. Putting it to the challenge means youd get warped 4538954365495 miles away(sarcasm, but you get the idea) and by the time you get back half the forces are gone. Now when support professions like fixers, nt's and doctors get warped in this manner it can mean the end sometimes for attackers.
What has CC accomplished?
-Many veteran pvpers, and new ones refuse to go to these battles because of the flawed system
-It is totally unfair to people who need to be in melee range, and there is a large amount of people in this game who are melee professions - also, with crits nerfed 40m ranged weapons are more of a rarity, with the manex being among the only worthwhile ranged weapons in damage is half that with a yatamutchy predictor. Which by the way, un-equips when you have to yalm after you get removed from the crowd, some people have much trouble equipping high ql versions of these. A sidebar suggestion might be to remove this and put it in Utils3 as nothing much really goes there.
-Losses of battles that could've been won had it not been placed
-Exploitation, the 'move to CT and CC them out' is something people have no choice but to do
-Given us another thing to deal with on top of lag
-Given people yet another thing to complain about in this game
- nothing good
The solution could be to remove CC altogether, however that is not enough alone. If you do that AO will revisit the former problem as to why CC was made; massive lag. One thing ill say is that it WAS worse before CC (dont stop reading yet). The core of the problem here is that the servers need to be upgraded, and to the point where you can support an amount of players in one area. Now I run on dial-up and my computer isn't the best I admit, but i play this game with a friend irl and he has the same problem - he has a cable internet and a recently bought computer.
I've taken games back to the store when i get what is called 'defective hardware' because they keep kicking me out, or have some bug - i return it, i get another copy, and it works fine - this is a common thing with console games and computer FPS's(online and offline), but to be kicked out of the game due to linkdeath in the double digits in one night shows that there is definately something wrong, and it's a problem with several people. NW isn't fun when you go linkdead in the heat of battle as you're swapping guns and return to the game in front of [Insurance Reclaim].
It's really too bad the consumers have to be brainstorming ideas for the people selling the game. FC really needs to get their thumb out of their ass when those 'paid advertisement' things that compliment AO falsely come around - it totally throws off what players, mainly pvp'ers have explained so much to FC about.
All they need to do is look at this forum. A vast majority of these threads are about CC more than they are about notum wars' events and the benefits the expansion gives. Er wait, no, did i say expansion. I meant booster pack. My bad. =)
