I dislike hard CC as well, and would much prefer that disables heavily limit your options, but you still have some choice. Like, knocked down characters could still crawl around or attack with extremely heavy disadvantages. But, considering the animations and balancing already done, I imagine hard CC is here to stay.
One way to tone down hard-cc would be to make them give decent bonuses. I'm not sure if this is the case already (as was in D:OS1), but being frozen could give you a boost in armor and resistance to slashing, for example. Knocked Down characters should be harder to hit with ranged attacks. That sort of thing. I don't know if that would make much of a difference, but it'd be start, and you'd have to think about how your CC synergizes with your whole party more.
