Crowd Control
Some elements of the game might interfere with the player’s position. We will refer to the effects that impediment the ability of an entity to move or use its skills as “Crowd Controls”. During crowd controls, the player can’t move his avatar (except for the “silence” and “blindness” effects) but is still able to move the camera. There are several possibilities for this:
Automatic move: A spell may lead to the player moving automatically toward a target. In this case, as long as the spell lasts, the player cannot use his controls to move his character, and his course is decided by the pathfinding algorithm.
Projection: When the player is projected in a certain direction, his character moves according to this direction and uses his airborne animation. The speed of the projection is fixed by the effect and is independent from the speed characteristic. If an obstacle is in the way of the projection, it stops it.
Teleportation: An entity may get teleported from a place to another. In this case, after a short teleport animation, the entity disappears from its starting position, then reappears at the target position with another short animation. The eventual obstacles between the two points are ignored, but the arrival point must be a free space. The player cannot move during the teleportation
Stun: During a stun, the player cannot move nor use his abilities. An animation shows the dizziness of the avatar, which is reinforced by a visual effect.
Root: When rooted, the player cannot move, but can still freely use his abilities, as long as they don’t move him. If the moving effect is just part of the ability, all the effects will occur except for the moving part, and if the ability is only a movement ability, it will be unavailable. The player cannot be moved by another crowd control during the duration of the root.
Silence: If silenced, the player will be able to move but not to launch any ability.
Blindness: When blinded, the player can control his character as usual, but the collisions of the physical attacks he makes will be disable, which means they won’t affect their targets.
The crowd controls can also affect the AI entities and modify their behaviour in the same way. Applying twice the same crowd control to an entity will not change its effects but will consider the longest duration for the time of the crowd control. On the opposite, applying two different crowd controls will cumulate their effects but not influence the duration of either. Only the most constraining one will be renderer visually. (Projection > Stun > Root > All others)
A last status effect, Unstoppable, makes the entity immune to all sorts of crowd controls.
