Improving the Utility of Sleeps

[Blackfeather]

The Sleep status effect is best described as a fragile Hold - once it is inflicted on an enemy, they are unable to attack or move. Unlike a Hold, they break free as soon as any damage is inflicted upon them. This places powers which cause Sleeps in a different niche to ones that inflict Holds.

 

Instead of being used as a means of attacking with impunity like Holds are, they are instead better used to take enemies out of the fight, reducing the amount of attacks coming the party's way. Most Sleeps last much longer than Holds do, and are far less resisted in comparison (AVs have no special resistance to them for example), supporting this use case.

 

However, I would argue that this primary use case rarely comes up - I will attempt to explain why below:

 

• Damage is 'messy' and takes work to concentrate on specific targets
  • AoE damage is easy to come by in many powers. This results in potentially slept enemies awakening prematurely, taking them back into the fight and thus mitigating the utility that a Sleep provides.
  • Compare this to something like D&D, where such AoE is rare, and generally limited in usage - Sleeps are much more useful in this case due to said rarity, as it is easier for a group to attack a target one at a time in relative safety
• Larger teams result in larger amounts of damage
  • Compounds the above issue - additional characters means that additional damage will invariably be dealt. It is also more difficult to concentrate on specific targets due to the increase in chaos across the battlefield: lots of graphical interference, swarms of enemies (and players!) getting in the way, etc.

 

Given this, I personally think that Sleeps ought to be looked over, to see how better they might increase their utility - Static Field for example mitigates many of the issues above due to being reapplying itself over time: even if an enemy wakes up due to being damaged, they are quickly subdued again.

 

However, I believe that such methods merely sidestep an issue with how Sleeps function with the rest of the game. As such, I've thought up potential different ideas that could potentially help with the goal of "increasing the utility of Sleep status effects", roughly ordered in order of least to most change to the game:

 

• Add a status icon indicator on targeted enemies that displays inflicted status effects
  • At the moment, one is reliant on looking at the actual enemy NPCs, along with the graphics surrounding them to determine whether or not they are under the effect of a status effect. In large groups, this is much more difficult to do - as such, a series of status icon indicators in the Target window might better assist in making judicious decisions about where to attack.
    • Is this necessary? If one wishes to focus their attacks on a single target, why not just target through another player?
• Increase the range/radius of one-shot AoE sleep effects
  • My reasoning here hinges on the idea that if such effects are applied pre-emptively on a group, this would allow a higher amount of enemies to remain slept, even if AoE damage were inflicted afterwards, due to them being more spread out than said damage could encompass.
  • Perhaps enemies could be spawned in a way that keeps them more spread out by default, thus increasing the likelihood that such sleeps lock them down?
• Make the Sleep status effect itself less fragile
  • One could take inspiration from Champion Online's Paralyze effect - their equivalent of CoH's Hold effect, but with one large exception: any damage taken to the target reduces the duration of the effect. This could potentially be implemented with Sleep status effects, though this does raise a myriad of questions. Namely:
    • How large of a Sleep duration loss ought damage cause, and what metrics might be used?
    • How can this be implemented without edging out the benefits of a proper area-of-effect Hold, or a Hold in general?
    • Status effects work both ways. Would people enjoy being hit with a more persistent Sleep effect?
• Reduce the prevalence of AoE damage...?
  • This is less of a serious idea and more of a thought experiment due to how such a change would be extremely wide sweeping and generally Not Fun^TM. As mentioned before, Sleeps are generally more potent when attacks are focused, which AoE damage by their nature...isn't. Reducing the frequency with which characters could deal high amounts of AoE damage with ease could be a hypothetical way of increasing the utility of Sleeps. However, this has a whole range of questions attached to it:
    • How would the game 'feel'? It's part of the superhero genre to be able to lay waste with large explosions, etc. Being limited to the amount one can do this sounds odd from the get-go
    • Would enemy spawns need to be changed to match this lack of AoE?
    • It's clear that such damage is here to stay, especially with things like the Tanker changes coming out that increases the range of their sweeping attacks - is it fair to limit such improvements just for the sake of increasing the utility of one status effect?

 

Needless to say, this is a difficult topic to approach - there's a lot of factors at play that require considering, but I do hope that these thoughts were well articulated, and spark a good amount of discussion. What do you think? Was I correct in my assumptions of the main functions of Sleeps, and the lack of necessity/utility of said functions? Any ideas that I put forth sound appealing/need adjusting? New ideas entirely? I look forward to everybody's responses!

 

Neat Additional Points and Suggestions

• @ScarySai suggested making enemies go prone (Knockdown) once they're hit with a powerful enough Sleep, meaning that they'd need to get back up before returning to the fight once woken up. I like this suggestion a lot! Not only does it make thematic sense to make an enemy sleep on the ground, but it's also an effect that I wouldn't be too bothered by if a Sleep hit my character as well. Additionally, it'd provide a nice way of identifying which enemies have been put to sleep by seeing them prone on the floor.
  • Building on this, perhaps different kinds of Sleeps ought to have different kinds of potential effects. While putting enemies to the floor makes sense for powers which cause unconsciousness (e.g. Siren's Song, Mass Hypnosis), it makes less sense for powers which trap enemies in a fragile prison (e.g. Salt Crystals). In these cases, having a Sleep's duration merely shorten with damage instead of disappearing entirely might make sense. Blind's Sleep effect could also lower perception/ToHit for example.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Caulderone]

One option might be to make all sleeps more similar to Static Field.  All targets that get hit by the sleep get a "tick" once a second putting them back to sleep over and over for the duration.

 

Another option might be secondary effects that last for the duration of the sleep if they get awoken.  These could be immobilize, slow, -recharge, or the like.  These could symbolize the target(s) being groggy and having a hard time concentrating because of the residual effects of the sleep.

 

Either of those would likely mean needing to reduce the durations, maybe not all the way down to hold/stun, but somewhere between.

[MTeague]

I believe you are correct on Sleeps.  They are a classic "Mezmerize" as they existed in EverQuest.  The target can take no action until / unless disturbed.  Primarily it's purpose is to park a mob until you / your team is ready to deal with it.  Some sleeps are also Non-Aggroing, and can be used to bypass mobs you simply don't want to fight, as when it wears off they won't even realize you were ever there.

 

Sleeps work wonderfully when soloing, and I would urge that any changes made should not screw with their utility when soloing.

 

Sleeps CAN work nicely in a team, but I acknowledge this is rare, and generally only applies when the team is in over their head.  This happens far less at lvl 50 / incarnate.  The most classic example for team-use of Sleeps in today's CoH is generally for Positron against the Mirrior-Team, using Mass Hypnosis to lock them all down and then pull 1-2 at a time, or to buy a levelling team time against unexpected ambushes.  But at 30+ (if not sooner), I rarely bother use it in teams, because the targets will be re-awakened.  Although, from time to time, it has saved a partial wipe from being a complete wipe. It's just that that's so very very rare.

 

Sleeps are also one of a few forms of control, like Immobilizes, that are not impacted by Purple Triangles of Doom. 

[Blackfeather]

5 minutes ago, Caulderone said:

One option might be to make all sleeps more similar to Static Field.  All targets that get hit by the sleep get a "tick" once a second putting them back to sleep over and over for the duration.

 

Another option might be secondary effects that last for the duration of the sleep if they get awoken.  These could be immobilize, slow, -recharge, or the like.  These could symbolize the target(s) being groggy and having a hard time concentrating because of the residual effects of the sleep.

 

Either of those would likely mean needing to reduce the durations, maybe not all the way down to hold/stun, but somewhere between.

Those are certainly two potential avenues to go about doing it!

 

Personally I view Static Field as Electric Control's counterpart to Ice Slick/Bonfire/Earthquake - an AoE control that just happens to use a pulsing Sleep instead of knockdown to lock down enemies. As such, I see it as an exception to how Sleeps work, rather than what the norm ought to be. Additionally, this may potentially step on the toes of the Fear status effect, which essentially does this 'pulsing' - enemies either cower in terror or run away, and have a chance to attack once if they're attacked before resuming their feared state.

 

Secondary effects attached to status effects are nice, but I'm not so sure if they should come along with the status effects themselves; it seems like such effects are attached to the powerset themselves rather than any one status effect. E.g. -Def for Earth powers, Slows for Ice/Psychic powers, and so on. Plus, on a more subjective note, while debuffs aid in utility, if a mez is mitigated 'early', does that feel as useful for the power-user? Certainly, it's compensation of a sorts.

 

Definitely a lot of food for thought - they're very interesting suggestions!

[Nayeh]

I'm a huge fan of efficient hypnosis usage but AoE in City of Heroes is so abundant in this game. Unfortunately you have every other controller out there that's trigger happy about their AoE immobilize to even bother using this ability. I can't even count how many times I threw hypnosis on an ambush crowd and some derp decides taking loads of damage would be a much better alternative than leaving them asleep. This is almost where I prefer dimension shift since it can be idiot proof.

 

I would be in favor of an initial short duration "heavy sleep" that won't awaken monsters if damages and then fading into a normal sleep that will break. So basically turn sleeps into a 2-5 second duration hold that fades into a normal sleep that can be broken.

 

Or a ticking sleep similar to what was described above with grogginess, forgetfulness, or perception debuffs.

[Vanden]

2 hours ago, Caulderone said:

One option might be to make all sleeps more similar to Static Field.  All targets that get hit by the sleep get a "tick" once a second putting them back to sleep over and over for the duration.

I think this is a solid idea, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if you put a Sleep-over-time effect in the powers system, when the target takes damage it's going to cancel the entire effect, not just the current stacks of sleep on the target.

[Caulderone]

17 minutes ago, Vanden said:

I think this is a solid idea, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if you put a Sleep-over-time effect in the powers system, when the target takes damage it's going to cancel the entire effect, not just the current stacks of sleep on the target.

Yeah, I feel like my second idea (secondary effects that stay once sleep breaks) would be much easier to implement.

 

That first idea probably would probably require sticking a pseudopet on the target(s).  Probably too much hassle.

[Blackfeather]

5 hours ago, Nayeh said:

I'm a huge fan of efficient hypnosis usage but AoE in City of Heroes is so abundant in this game. Unfortunately you have every other controller out there that's trigger happy about their AoE immobilize to even bother using this ability. I can't even count how many times I threw hypnosis on an ambush crowd and some derp decides taking loads of damage would be a much better alternative than leaving them asleep. This is almost where I prefer dimension shift since it can be idiot proof.

That's a fair standpoint! Though it does sound like part of this is due to a lack of understanding of mechanics from others. However, I'd say that even in an ideal scenario where everybody knows how they work, it's still a bit difficult to work with Sleeps.

 

I did think up of another potential way of increasing the utility of Sleeps: to introduce scenarios where they would be more necessary/useful. At the moment, most enemy mobs are static, waiting for parties to come to them, leaving groups with an easy choice on what to focus down on. This can come at the detriment of Sleeps in larger groups - while damage is focused, it's not necessarily clean, nor is it really capable of being so, due to the high amount of AoE damage around.

 

What if there were more cases where enemy ambushes occurred for example, where the party has to handle simultaneous groups from different sides? This is an extension of the 'mobs could be more spread out' idea, essentially; not everything can be hit this way, leaving Sleeps a useful means of shutting down part of the group.

[Nayeh]

1 minute ago, Blackfeather said:

 

What if there were more cases where enemy ambushes occurred for example, where the party has to handle simultaneous groups from different sides? This is an extension of the 'mobs could be more spread out' idea, essentially; not everything can be hit this way, leaving Sleeps a useful means of shutting down part of the group.

Unfortunately that is rarely a case because apparently we value having an AGGRO Cap here when it would clearly add depth and difficulty to the game.

[Blackfeather]

Just now, Nayeh said:

Unfortunately that is rarely a case because apparently we value having an AGGRO Cap here when it would clearly add depth and difficulty to the game.

I don't really see how the aggro cap is relevant in this case - if anything, a larger increase in enemies that can't all be drawn away by a a single Big Strong Bruiser sounds like it'd make Sleeps more relevant in this scenario, because it'd provide an alternative means of reducing the numbers of enemies that are able to engage with the group, instead of all of them just targeting said Big Strong Bruiser.

[Nayeh]

But if everyone has the attention of enemies that exceed AGGRO caps then they're much more likely to die because they aren't returning to posts. In the current state enemies beyond caps merely stand around and do nothing or give up chasing.

[Blackfeather]

53 minutes ago, Nayeh said:

But if everyone has the attention of enemies that exceed AGGRO caps then they're much more likely to die because they aren't returning to posts. In the current state enemies beyond caps merely stand around and do nothing or give up chasing.

It sounds like you're presenting another use case for when Sleeps are useful - when there are too many enemies for the group to effectively handle via just having all attacks targeting the Big Strong Bruiser(s) of the party.

 

Could you explain your point in further detail, and how this links back to improving the utility of Sleeps?

[Razor Cure]

I was thinking about Sleeps the other day. Out of all AoE sleeps (single target ones are fine, being tied with damage in PsiBlast, or having a huge magnitude in mind control), I think Mind Control gets screwed the worst.

The elec sleep, as mentioned, is totally awesome, and easily the best. The sonic blast one isnt great, but its still nice utility. The pant and eath control sleeps are also extra utility, and both sets have great and varied hard controls to back them up.

Mind control..well, I think the whole set nets a tweak really. There is a lack of hard controls, with only the one AoE Hold, as TK is finnicky, Fear is nice but shares similar issues to teh sleep, and teh AoE confused gets royally shafted compared to SoC.

I like the idea of a sleep lasting a certain amount of damage is done to the target, but no idea how hard that would be to do.

What about a slow/-rech/chance to confusion, on targets that are woken. I mean, how many times do you wake up, totally alert and aware, full of energy? It would make aoe sleeps actually somewhat useful, and a chance for confusion would really help for Mind COntrol (since MC has such a long rech).

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Razor Cure said:

I like the idea of a sleep lasting a certain amount of damage is done to the target, but no idea how hard that would be to do.

How about taking damage having a percentage chance to wake the sleeper depending on a) the magnitude of the Sleep and b) the damage taken, so that a sleeping target could have a minor DoT applied to them without waking, but if they eat a blast effect it's virtually certain to wake them? Or divide the incoming damage by some ratio, and it reduces the magnitude of the Sleep, and if it drops far enough, they wake up?

[Greycat]

Sleeps are probably underrated, actually. They take effect at times regular holds and other controls don't... I'm seeming to recall "shutting down dispersion bubbles" being one of them.. (Which makes me kind of shake my head at saying mind needs a tweak - it's a pretty powerful control set.)

 

I wouldn't argue with a "secondary effect" - a few seconds of -acc makes sense, hard to aim while you're still yawning, for instance.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Greycat

[Blackfeather]

1 hour ago, Razor Cure said:

I was thinking about Sleeps the other day. Out of all AoE sleeps (single target ones are fine, being tied with damage in PsiBlast, or having a huge magnitude in mind control), I think Mind Control gets screwed the worst.

The elec sleep, as mentioned, is totally awesome, and easily the best. The sonic blast one isnt great, but its still nice utility. The pant and eath control sleeps are also extra utility, and both sets have great and varied hard controls to back them up.

Mind control..well, I think the whole set nets a tweak really. There is a lack of hard controls, with only the one AoE Hold, as TK is finnicky, Fear is nice but shares similar issues to teh sleep, and teh AoE confused gets royally shafted compared to SoC.

I like the idea of a sleep lasting a certain amount of damage is done to the target, but no idea how hard that would be to do.

What about a slow/-rech/chance to confusion, on targets that are woken. I mean, how many times do you wake up, totally alert and aware, full of energy? It would make aoe sleeps actually somewhat useful, and a chance for confusion would really help for Mind COntrol (since MC has such a long rech).

While Mind Control could certainly do with a look over (I'm planning on making a thread on that at a later time in fact), single shot AoE Sleeps remain as something to be looked over in general, rather than this being an issue with any one set, personally speaking.

35 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Sleeps are probably underrated, actually. They take effect at times regular holds and other controls don't... I'm seeming to recall "shutting down dispersion bubbles" being one of them.. (Which makes me kind of shake my head at saying mind needs a tweak - it's a pretty powerful control set.)

 

I wouldn't argue with a "secondary effect" - a few seconds of -acc makes sense, hard to aim while you're still yawning, for instance.

Sleeps definitely have their uses - the main issue is that their main use, that is to say, pre-emptively taking out enemies for later, is in direct conflict with the high amount of AoE attacks in the game. It's much easier to evaluate if an enemy is slept in smaller groups for example (though I suppose the chaos murderball of an 8-group party is a whole 'issue' in of itself).

 

While secondary debuffs are nice, I do think it'd be a good idea to find ways to improve the status effect directly, or explore avenues in which its use can be better made use of, if that makes sense.

[ScarySai]

Idea off the top of my head: Find a way to have sleep targets go prone, so even if instantly broken, they have to get through a 'get up' animation to get back into the fight.

 

45 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

While Mind Control could certainly do with a look over (I'm planning on making a thread on that at a later time in fact)

a "Mass levitate" replacing TK would be great.

[ABlueThingy]

Currently don't sleeps, generally, have a higher mag then their hold counterparts?  So it's easier to sleep a boss or what not.

 

Maybe you could make it so every sleep cast on them was like... another ablative layer of sleep that had to get knocked off?  Cast one sleep, takes one hit to wake.  Cast 3 sleeps, take 3 hits?  Or tie that to Mag?  Mag 7 sleep actually drops 7 sleeps on them that you have to break through one at a time?

 

Sleeps are really just an obvious and clear example of the problem with controls in this game in general.

[Blackfeather]

1 minute ago, ScarySai said:

Idea off the top of my head: Find a way to have sleep targets go prone, so even if instantly broken, they have to get through a 'get up' animation to get back into the fight.

Turning Sleep into a Knockdown that they can't get out of until they wake up? That's a neat idea for sure, I like this.

[Blackfeather]

4 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

Currently don't sleeps, generally, have a higher mag then their hold counterparts?  So it's easier to sleep a boss or what not.

 

Maybe you could make it so every sleep cast on them was like... another ablative layer of sleep that had to get knocked off?  Cast one sleep, takes one hit to wake.  Cast 3 sleeps, take 3 hits?  Or tie that to Mag?  Mag 7 sleep actually drops 7 sleeps on them that you have to break through one at a time?

 

Sleeps are really just an obvious and clear example of the problem with controls in this game in general.

Sleeps are generally not resisted by enemies - Archvillains have no special protection to them for example, and Mind Control's Mesmerize has a 3.5 magnitude compared to the regular magnitude 3 control powers.

 

And I did mention making Sleep similar to something like Champion's version of a Hold - reducing in duration depending on the damage taken, which could certainly work considering how Sleep powers tend to last longer than their counterparts (when not broken prematurely).

 

I wouldn't quite describe Sleep as having a problem per se, but it's a status effect in a game where AoE damage is very prevalent, and its control fragile, making their use suboptimal in a lot of cases.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Replacement]

I've been meaning to post something to this effect for a while.  First round effort (suggested testing ground: all versions of Salt Crystals): simply adding a delayed echo.

 

E.g. if the power currently reads "mag 3 sleep for 20 seconds", it would gain a 2nd line in the detailed info that says "mag 3 sleep for 18 seconds after a 2 second delay." (flagged not to stack with self) This is just to to make it a little more durable.  I don't think reapplying sleep over and over and over for the full duration is realistic -- at this point, I think the headache of assessing what that would do to the power level of players all around is... probably not worth it.  But 1-2 reapplications at the start to give your party a chance to react and reorganize themselves would be quite nice.

 

13 hours ago, Caulderone said:

Another option might be secondary effects that last for the duration of the sleep if they get awoken.  These could be immobilize, slow, -recharge, or the like.  These could symbolize the target(s) being groggy and having a hard time concentrating because of the residual effects of the sleep.

I think this is cool.  We already have some precedent in this with Fear effects providing -ToHit for this same reason.  One thing that would be really interesting is a Recovery debuff (or similar, such as negative Endurance discount), to help synergize with the number of incidental Sleeps that seem to pop up in some Electric attacks.

[Zepp]

14 hours ago, MTeague said:

Sleeps work wonderfully when soloing, and I would urge that any changes made should not screw with their utility when soloing.

This was my exact thought when I started reading this thread.

 

14 hours ago, Caulderone said:

Another option might be secondary effects that last for the duration of the sleep if they get awoken.  These could be immobilize, slow, -recharge, or the like.  These could symbolize the target(s) being groggy and having a hard time concentrating because of the residual effects of the sleep.

While I don't think the idea of having a secondary effect associated with sleep is a bad idea, I think having it take effect on getting awoken may not be useful. I would suggest, rather, that just as Fear took its cue from Dark (-ToHit), Sleep should take its cue from Earth (-Def). This could make the powers useful in teams, and they wouldn't necessarily need to be reduced in duration.

 

2 hours ago, ScarySai said:

Idea off the top of my head: Find a way to have sleep targets go prone, so even if instantly broken, they have to get through a 'get up' animation to get back into the fight.

This ideas seems like a good one. It works well for solo as well as group and doesn't break solo viability. It would also not require a major amount of programming or be a justification for decreasing sleep durations.

[Blackfeather]

49 minutes ago, Zepp said:

While I don't think the idea of having a secondary effect associated with sleep is a bad idea, I think having it take effect on getting awoken may not be useful. I would suggest, rather, that just as Fear took its cue from Dark (-ToHit), Sleep should take its cue from Earth (-Def). This could make the powers useful in teams, and they wouldn't necessarily need to be reduced in duration.

That'd be quite interesting, and makes sense - unconscious enemies would probably be easier to hit.

51 minutes ago, Zepp said:

This ideas seems like a good one. It works well for solo as well as group and doesn't break solo viability. It would also not require a major amount of programming or be a justification for decreasing sleep durations.

Definitely agree on that, and I personally think it's fitting with Sleeps too; have somebody fall asleep on the spot to the ground, rather than fall asleep standing. I also wouldn't mind it as a status effect that's used on my character, as compared to Sleeps which reapply themselves, which would definitely be much more annoying to face.

[Caulderone]

12 hours ago, Zepp said:

While I don't think the idea of having a secondary effect associated with sleep is a bad idea, I think having it take effect on getting awoken may not be useful. I would suggest, rather, that just as Fear took its cue from Dark (-ToHit), Sleep should take its cue from Earth (-Def). This could make the powers useful in teams, and they wouldn't necessarily need to be reduced in duration.

That is what I intended, but didn't spell out.  The debuff(s) would apply with the sleep, but they wouldn't be obvious or apparent until the mob woke up.

[AgentForest]

Every sleep move should have some secondary effect unique to it or its set.

Mind Control sleep moves should deal a burst of bonus damage if the target is forcibly woken up.  I suggest this for Mind Control because it has a hard time dealing damage compared to other controller sets, so it would give their Containment a hand.
Sonic Blast's sleep move should lower enemy resistance by a decent amount, lingering after they wake up.
Spore Burst should lower the target's Damage output significantly when awakened.
Salt Crystals already has a defense debuff, but that could be made stronger to make it as strong as the other suggestions.

Ice Control and Ice Melee AoE sleep effects should cause a large recharge/speed debuff.

It's been suggested already, but it's definitely the easiest idea to incorporate into the game.