From Jeremy Gaffney Carbine Studios:
Personally I (and Chris, the lead combat designer) both agree that spamming "F" is actually the weak one of the bunch in the vid. Part is the main reason mentioned here (macroability). OTOH, there's something to be said for it in actual gameplay because, despite the other arguments against ("why hit keys? Just let me out early instead") it actually feels right in a strange way. Like you're struggling against something that then lets you out. And feel does matter.
And the minmaxxer in you might know that if you're "good" at the mini game (through macro hardware or clickin' skill) it is trivial, but at a more base level you actually do feel like you have more control over your fate by solving the mini-puzzle.
However, here's another downside of the F-spam: it doesn't combo as nicely as the other CCs. For instance, if you disarm someone and then disorient them, the disarm is more effective, but through skill you might still rapidly get your weapon back. Tether and disarm is a great combo that isn't insta-win: you don't have a weapon, so damaging the anchor is harder, and the tether might keep your weapon out of range. But disarm might randomly drop your sword within tether range so it might not matter and you rapidly break out...so a nontrivial combo, often effective, but still with options.
But F-spam doesn't naturally combo well in the same fashion. It's one of the first ones we did, and it "feels" pretty good, so we have it in there. It's IMO fairly likely to shift to something else through iteration (though that's really up to the combat guys and beta feedback).
Some alternatives:
a) something we've knocked around for mez could work: your soul gets "knocked back" out of your body and you have to return to your body to get control - might feel good, but does create some special case code; disorient probably affects your spirit, but direct damage goes to your body instead, causing some neat combos and meaning you can't be dodging etc. until you're back in your body, which is gonna be Trouble. Kinda a parallel to disarm.
b) tie it in more with a root type effect - put your feet in a boulder which needs damage to break through it, otherwise you can't move. IMO I like root effects more than stun/mez because it makes the environment usage matter - run an enemy around a corner and root them and you remove them from combat but with more interesting gameplay options than just "wait for the effect to end"
c) some of the other concepts mentioned in the thread - less macroable versions of what's in there. Does suffer from the lack of interactability with the other effects and might feel like "type in your ATM pin code" to break out though (the issue with combo attacks back in the Age of Conan era IMO, not to diss that game as I enjoyed it).
And feel's important on these, it makes a big difference when it feels right (kinda why F-spam has survived through a few iterations).
Anyways treat none of this as gospel as the combat guys have control over the direction of all this and I trust 'em, but just thoughts on reading the options mentioned here.
