Bitttymacod (atys)
I am confused by one thing, Krell. "Crowd control"?? None of the afflictions affect more than one mob, nor were they ever intended to. I'm having a hard time understanding your use of that term.
In addition, how long the effect lasts depends on your skill and the level of the creature that you are attempting to affect and also on the creature itself (some definitely throw off spells much more readily than others). If you are at or above the creature's level, the link can be held for a quite long period (often more than enough time for your teammates to club it or nuke it into submission). As with all actions, the actions of beginners are less effective than the actions of masters.
Crowd control is a very old and well known term in MMORPGs that has been around for many years now, since bascially everquest 1. Crowd control basically is any type of spell or ability(normally referring to spells) that can halt the movement and or mez(mesmorize) or stun, the mob in question or mobs in question. It applies for single target and AoE(area of effect) and or targeted AoE. But for crowd control spells to be worth anything though, they not only need to hit the target fairly reliably, but more important have a decent length of duration. If you cast a CC spell on a mob, but either the spell breaks right away, or the duration is stupidly short....then the spell didnt hold the mob back long enough to even be worth casting. From what Ive seen as a lowbie player on Silan, with around 36 magic now I think, crowd control spells such as root and fear are basically so useless they are not worth the sap to cast. This is even casting higher version of those spells on very low level weak targets of all types....and still the root and fear spells only last barely one second. Not to mention that unlike about every other MMORPG Ive played in over 14yrs now, the CC spells here need to bascially be channeled...or establish a "link" in Ryzom terms. This completely cancels any usefulness of CC spells for a solo'er like me, and as mentioned by a few others they are not really effective any better in groups....with such a short duration. What good is it to stand there and root something but you cant do anything else?? It makes no sense as to why the devs designed spells like that for CC spells. Crowd control spells in this game, at least at lower levels, need SERIOUS fixing/adjusting....otherwise they are in fact useless as many other posters here have already agreed. Some have mentioned though that maybe with some work, CC spells DO get better at very high levels. Maybe there is a spark of hope for CC in this game. but Im about fed up with it not to bother at this point and just nuke things down. CC issues aside, the rest of the game is interesting, and unique, more so then MANY other modern day MMORPGs.