Crowd Control/Heroic Surge Feedback

[Borror0]

Cutting the during of CC with this mechanic does exactly what you are saying is a bad idea -- speeding up the pace and requiring fast thinking.

I said that speeding up the pace is a good thing, when applied to DDO.

It's not about "fast thinking is bad" or "having lots of time to think is good." Far from it. A game requiring only fast thinking can be extremely fun. See racing games. It's why game designers sometimes add time limits in their games. A game letting players a lot of time to think can also be fun. See Chess. It's about deciding which kind of pacing is best to your players and focusing on it.

In the case of DDO, having several thousands of seconds to think is far too slow. It's boring. The decision we have to make are not so complicated that we need a minute to think each one of them like a Chess player might need.

Adding a mechanic that seems to simultaneously break mobs out at once does not help the party control the pace or give them time to think.

Crowd control is not about creating pauses in gameplay carefully evaluated what to do next. Otherwise, control control would be designed much differently like stopping both players and monsters to move or attack (like the pause function in every BioWare game).

If the party likes a faster pace there is nothing stopping the party from using other tactics.

Crowd control is not only fun to those who like slow-paced gameplay.

Adjusting spells and adding this mechanic is almost a redundant use of development.

That's false. How long a spell lasts and the effect it has are two different components that affects gameplay very differently.

If you don't believe me, ask yourself which part of the following is not fun: "You've been hit an incurable debuff that reduces your DPS to zero for a full year." The duration is the problem. Being able to not do damage for a very short period of time is fine but if it lasts too long, it's not fun anymore and actually harms your game experience.

The mechanic we're discussing in this feedback thread doesn't do that.

...for the moment. It's a feedback thread. We can persuade them to ensure CC still stays relevant. That is, we we focus on persuading them of that rather than simply telling them to scrap it.

Why is the party running away if CC is too powerful?

Time is money. If you can avoid wasting your time, you gain more loot and XP per hour.

So, unless you need to kill a mob, the best strategy always involve not kill the mob as it saves you time. It's the principle behind zerging, btw.

The bottom line is that the heroic surge interacts with too many CC effects that are not broken or overly powerful that players invest a lot of resources in.

When the problem is common to all CC effects, you make a global change.

Destroying the randomness that we do have left, such as FUN and effective crowd control is a major step in the wrong direction for this game.

Leslie, your argument is "Don't nerf CC" and I agree to that. Update 3 does not have to nerf CC. Turbine can make other changes to ensure CC stays useful.

[Kemoc]

I said that speeding up the pace is a good thing, when applied to DDO.

Crowd control is not about creating pauses in gameplay carefully evaluated what to do next. Otherwise, control control would be designed much differently like stopping both players and monsters to move or attack (like the pause function in every BioWare game).

Not pauses but rhythm and pace, and it sets the flow and strategy of combat rather than just run in and beat on things till they die. If the group is familiar they don't have to stop and think just interact but the possibility of a quick breather is there as well.

Time is money. If you can avoid wasting your time, you gain more loot and XP per hour.

That is not entertainment that is a job you are talking about.

[calvinklien]

The chess analogy is a good one.

no it's not, it's a horrible one. Me and my friends play Speed Chess, we do what's called, "Intuitive Chess" so the chess metaphor is silly. It's also based on what Borror0 considers "fun" apparently he wouldn't enjoy playing speed chess w/me and my buds.

i also hate when we go down the metaphor path. Let's talk about what we're talking about: Heroic Surge, which from what I read, sucks. Borror0's arguments only make sense when you look at them from the perspective of a low willed, pure fighter, who's trying to solo everything. Yes, heroic surge is awesome for your pure fighter build, Borror0... point made.

Why does it suck? because it completely nerfs a class. Bards. Don't think so? Talk to my buddy, who considers the forums a waste of time (and maybe they are) he wont post here. He only plays bards, he decided to quit today after i had him read this thread. (kiss 15 bucks a month goodby turbine) You might want to have a dev post up on this thread right quick... He's a "RL" bud so it sucks to see him go just cuz this heroic surge nonsense.

Another RL bud said, in a word, and i quote, "It's gay." probably not the most constructive criticism, but then he went on to say, "It's nothing like D&D, and they're turning it into every other game out there where you have to have a rediculous AC and be a pure melee dude to be worth anything." guess what he did then, he cancled his subscription and sent me some links to new games in Xfire. (kiss 30 bucks a month goodby turbine)

wow, one thread, one silly idea in test mode, look at the loss in revenue. and this sucks for me, 2 of my 5 RL DDO buds dropping like flies. Hopefully they don't implement this new mechanic.

and borror0, quit telling people they have to give ways to improve Heroic Surge. this is a feedback thread and if you look through it most the feedback is:

Heroic Surge Sucks.
Heroic Surge Breaks the game for me.
Heroic Surge blows, please don't implement it.
I hate heroic surge, it nerfs my builds.

this is all valid feedback, from people that pay money. feedback doesn't require an alternative to heroic surge, a person can say, "It sucks." and that's it, it sucks. there's your feedback.

[Aashrym]

I said that speeding up the pace is a good thing, when applied to DDO.

It's not about "fast thinking is bad" or "having lots of time to think is good." Far from it. A game requiring only fast thinking can be extremely fun. See racing games. It's why game designers sometimes ad time limits in their games. A game letting players a lot of time to think can also be fun. See Chess. It's about deciding which kind of pacing is best to your players and focusing on it.

In the case of DDO, having several thousands of seconds to think is far too slow. It's boring. The decision we have to make are not so complicated that we need a minute to think each one of them like a Chess player might need.

Crowd control is not about creating pauses in gameplay carefully evaluated what to do next. Otherwise, control control would be designed much differently like stopping both players and monsters to move or attack (like the pause function in every BioWare game).

Crowd control is not only fun to those who like slow-paced gameplay.

That's false. How long a spell lasts and the effect it has are two different components that affects gameplay very differently.

If you don't believe me, ask yourself which part of the following is not fun: "You've been hit an incurable debuff that reduces your DPS to zero for a full year." The duration is the problem. Being able to not do damage for a very short period of time is fine but if it lasts too long, it's not fun anymore and actually harms your game experience.

...for the moment. It's a feedback thread. We can persuade them to ensure CC still stays relevant. That is, we we focus on persuading them of that rather than simply telling them to scrap it.

Time is money. If you can avoid wasting your time, you gain more loot and XP per hour.

So, unless you need to kill a mob, the best strategy always involve not kill the mob as it saves you time. It's the principle behind zerging, btw.

When the problem is common to all CC effects, you make a global change.

Leslie, your argument is "Don't nerf CC" and I agree to that. Update 3 does not have to nerf CC. Turbine can make other changes to ensure CC stays useful.

So if you like fast game play, running thru quests because time is money, and the principles of zerging how is my ability to play differently stopping you from zerging?

I'm not playing a racing game, I'm enjoying playing DDO the way I want to play it.

Taking away my ability to have fun doesn't have any effect on your ability to have fun. I'm not advocating changes that stop you from zerging. Why are you advocating changes that stop me from using a strategy that I enjoy.

And if the goal is to do things faster CC allows that. You immobilize them and zerg thru (because time is money - you said so), or you immobilize and kill them. And things go faster if that's what you want. Things go slower if that's what I want. CC, as it works already, helps control the pace of the action.

Making CC less effective has no impact on zerging. It has an impact on CC'ing.

I have a really simple solution for you that does not require this mechanic: make your party, tell them you want to zerg, you're looking for buffers blasters and healers, not CC. Then go play.

I cannot appreciate a mechanic that make the game less enjoyable for me. I have not seen anything in your posts that demonstrates CC has any game breaking issues.

I have fun the way things are. Still a fan of scrapping it.

[Xyfiel]

Borror you can use all the words you want to try to describe a plethora of situations and circumstances, but the end result will still be the same. CC will become less used due to its lower reliablity. It isn't on the overpowered list. It does not need changed at this time under current game mechanics. If something changes later, or CC itself needs to be reworked, then put all the changes in at once.

Spindoctor it all you want, but no one is going to waste spell points on short duration CC, and have the mob be immune to CC right after. Removing CC duration on players completly changes the way builds will be made, if affects everything from spells to items to feats. If a game mechanic makes you immune, why do you need to worry about defending against it? If they are worried about us using FTS to immobilize orthons, then change the orthon spawn. We do this because mob inflation and immunities are already ridiculous, now they take away another option. It becomes bring dps and healing, nothing else apply. It is becoming a pretty linear game in that regard.

We all have different loyalties to this game, mine is tied to the DnD aspect. Keep removing it, and the ones like me will be gone. Then again Turbine has never been known for their customer loyalty.

[Aashrym]

no it's not, it's a horrible one. Me and my friends play Speed Chess, we do what's called, "Intuitive Chess" so the chess metaphor is silly. It's also based on what Borror0 considers "fun" apparently he wouldn't enjoy playing speed chess w/me and my buds.

i also hate when we go down the metaphor path. Let's talk about what we're talking about: Heroic Surge, which from what I read, sucks. Borror0's arguments only make sense when you look at them from the perspective of a low willed, pure fighter, who's trying to solo everything. Yes, heroic surge is awesome for your pure fighter build, Borror0... point made.

Why does it suck? because it completely nerfs a class. Bards. Don't think so? Talk to my buddy, who considers the forums a waste of time (and maybe they are) he wont post here. He only plays bards, he decided to quit today after i had him read this thread. (kiss 15 bucks a month goodby turbine) You might want to have a dev post up on this thread right quick... He's a "RL" bud so it sucks to see him go just cuz this heroic surge nonsense.

Another RL bud said, in a word, and i quote, "It's gay." probably not the most constructive criticism, but then he went on to say, "It's nothing like D&D, and they're turning it into every other game out there where you have to have a rediculous AC and be a pure melee dude to be worth anything." guess what he did then, he cancled his subscription and sent me some links to new games in Xfire. (kiss 30 bucks a month goodby turbine)

wow, one thread, one silly idea in test mode, look at the loss in revenue. and this sucks for me, 2 of my 5 RL DDO buds dropping like flies. Hopefully they don't implement this new mechanic.

and borror0, quit telling people they have to give ways to improve Heroic Surge. this is a feedback thread and if you look through it most the feedback is:

Heroic Surge Sucks.
Heroic Surge Breaks the game for me.
Heroic Surge blows, please don't implement it.
I hate heroic surge, it nerfs my builds.

this is all valid feedback, from people that pay money. feedback doesn't require an alternative to heroic surge, a person can say, "It sucks." and that's it, it sucks. there's your feedback.

You play chess differently than I play chess. (Your way does sound fun too). That is how I see DDO. Played and enjoyed different ways by different ppl. (moving on, this isn't chess you're right)

It's too bad your buddies are looking at quitting. This change could have a big impact on bard play unfortunately.

[calvinklien]

CC will become less used due to its lower reliablity. It isn't on the overpowered list. It does not need changed at this time under current game mechanics.

but see, borror0 is ONLY looking at the Heroic Surge effect from a low willed melee' build perspective. he doesn't care that X amount of builds and play styles will become virtually useless. he makes it obvious that he's a fan of melee' who apparently get held by CC spells alot. he's not thinking about builds that USE crowd control. he's only thinking about his little fighter that will now get to make a heroic surge to break a greater command, which means he dies less. selfish.

Removing CC duration on players completly changes the way builds will be made

not pure strength based fighter builds. those types will LOVE LOVE heroic surge... cuz as you said:

If a game mechanic makes you immune, why do you need to worry about defending against it?

anyways, i'm agreeing with you xyfiel. heroic surge is steping too far outside the box and blows.

scrap it.

[Emili]

...
I address the comment about insta-death effects earlier in the thread.

As for other spells, I won't lose sleep over them landing more often because the Fort and Will saves have been dropped. I might say differently about reflex-based CC (or not) but that's a minority anyway and it has its niche against low reflex target.
...

... and how so? Any caster given the choice now can take but one view. Comes to trash - you kill it - not CC it. Why? Well quite simple mass hold and waiting for melee to move from mob to mob is less efficient and the melee are not there to clean up trash any longer under such case.

Let's take a look at shroud at level 16 compared to shroud today...

Today's part one - melee beat on portals and casters clear up trash... banshee and implosion clear it. Melee sole purpose in part one are portals.

Compared to yesterdays part one shroud only the better casters were able to deliver the FoD and destruction to do so... many undergeared casters actually used CC at the portals rather than chance the failure of an insta-death thus taking agro CC ensured less risk to the caster and placed some of the clearing duties on the melee.

CC is more of a cooporative group approach ... dealing death by spell be it instant or AoE such as firewall does not have to be... Gianthold and orchard for instance - near no melee be involved to complete those quests any good well geared at level death dealing caster rips thru them like a hot knife thru butter.

Sins... common method is Webs and less dwaling of hard damage or insta-kill ... do you know why?

Current immunities in end game along with mass serve the purpose of "bring some melee along."

Increasing the spell landing for CC and all spells requiring will saves and fort saves then lowering the duration of the CC serves that the caster may kill much more and are better at it... or they may CC the mob who will now require a meleeing of which may possibly break before the melee get around to cleaning up the last few... plus they're temporarily immune to being CC again for a short period - thus reaction from the caster community in general will be ... do not let others do for you what you can do yourself. Instead of using CC - KILL IT.

No the change does not increase the use of CC makes it less appealing to other methods.

[SableShadow]

but see, borror0 is ONLY looking at the Heroic Surge effect from a low willed melee' build perspective. he doesn't care that X amount of builds and play styles will become virtually useless. he makes it obvious that he's a fan of melee' who apparently get held by CC spells alot. he's not thinking about builds that USE crowd control. he's only thinking about his little fighter that will now get to make a heroic surge to break a greater command, which means he dies less. selfish.

Dunno about his fighters; I've only run with his bard.

I follow his logic, same as the AC/Grazing hits logic: "If you make the effect less binary, then you can do x, y, z and balance things out".

I don't agree with it, because I don't think Turbine's going to balance anything out. That's just too hard. We're going more and more toward direct damage/damage resistance (str/casting stat vs con) that every other MMO has, only we'll have twitch gaming on top of it.

not pure strength based fighter builds. those types will LOVE LOVE heroic surge...

Pretty much.

[Borror0]

That is not entertainment that is a job you are talking about.

Games are not some magical framework where humans stop thinking rationally. If the most effective way to deal with an encounter is to cast a crowd control spell and then run away,

Me and my friends play Speed Chess, we do what's called, "Intuitive Chess" so the chess metaphor is silly.

If you agree that enforcing a faster pace changes how the game is played drastically, then the comparison is just right. I said that Chess players like chess because it is slow-paced and allows careful analysis. Of course, you can change the rules but then it becomes a new game with different traits and that is fun for different reason. You even acknowledged that fact by giving it a new name - Intuitive Chess or speed Chess - rather than simply calling it Chess.

it completely nerfs a class. Bards.

It does not nerf CC bards but it's only one force in a more complicated vector. As I said before, Update 3 does not have to nerf CC spells. In fact, it could even boost them if Turbine so desire. The intent of Heroic Surge is not to nerf CC spells into uselessness, so there is room to bargain a boost to CC spells to make up for the nerf Heroic Surge represents.

Taking away my ability to have fun doesn't have any effect on your ability to have fun.

Once again, crowd control is also fun for people who fast-paced gameplay. Additionally, people who like past-paced gameplay are the greater part of the DDO playerbase. If you feel that the end game overwhelms you with information you cannot process, you are in the minority. Most players who oppose to nerfing CC spells do so because they don't want the game to become more simplistic (ie a DPSfest) rather than because they want the same to remain so easy.

[Aashrym]

Once again, crowd control is also fun for people who fast-paced gameplay.

That was one of my points. Thank you for clarifying and agreeing with that part.

A game mechanic that changes CC for other ppl is pointless.

Additionally, people who like past-paced gameplay are the greater part of the DDO playerbase.

Please post a statistical reference for this that we can verify. Unless you have access to surveys of some sort this is opinionated assumption, not fact.

If you feel that the end game overwhelms you with information you cannot process, you are in the minority. Most players who oppose to nerfing CC spells do so because they don't want the game to become more simplistic (ie a DPSfest) rather than because they want the same to remain so easy.

This is still pretty assumptive and kind of insulting. But going with that assumption for arguments sake it's still pretty irrelevant. I like CC without the heroic surge. Heroic surge is a bad mechanic. Scrap it.

[Xyfiel]

So Borror, you don't understand how as described this changes every build in the game? It isn't just people who cast CC spells/songs. I have not seen you talk about how to correct the fact that so many other things will get broken. So no, I am not asking for a buff to CC spells when so much more is at stake.

[calvinklien]

it's a flat out nerf.

what it sounds like to me is the devs are too lazy to go in and tweak individual spells to their liking. and who would want to go in and edit all the spell descriptions? who would want to change the code on EVERY crowd control spell?

I can see how it would be a pain in the arse but look, we pay them, and if they have some different vision of how they think the game should be they need to tell us now so we can decide how big a paycheck they get next month.

scrap heroic surge, don't look back.

[Borror0]

We're going more and more toward direct damage/damage resistance (str/casting stat vs con) that every other MMO has, only we'll have twitch gaming on top of it.

Actually, "every other MMOs" have a more complex combat system in terms of strategy than DDO by requiring tanking, aggro management, crowd control, cooldown management, etc. whereas we only have to bother about hitting monsters really hard and having an healer there to heal us. That's sad part of it all. Though, like you said, we have the twitch gaming which is really where the complexity is in DDO.

I have not seen you talk about how to correct the fact that so many other things will get broken.

Then you should read this thread once again because I did.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

and borror0, quit telling people they have to give ways to improve Heroic Surge. this is a feedback thread and if you look through it most the feedback is:

He is saying that because Turbine has never cancelled plans because the users didn't like their idea. They have however, on several occassions, modified their plans based on feedback. For example when we went from XP penalty on death to equip damage on death the majority of testers thought the change was bad and didn't want it implimented. Turbine ignored that. They however did listen to ideas for improvement and prevented perm damage from occuring due to death damage and modified death damage based on item hardness.

DA, which is hated by most of the population, isn't going anywhere. But based on feedback ideas from Lama, they did substantially change how DA worked and took it from unplayable to just annoying.

Constructive feedback sometimes gets listended to. "Make it go away or I quit" seems to be completely ignored. Borror0's advice is therefore good.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

I don't think it's a particularly good idea to let monsters be CC'd for so long. Because, if we don't plan to kill them, we can just ignore them. There is usually a good reason they are there. The whole "Flesh to Stone all the mobs to avoid respawns" was pretty cheesy and everyone knows it. ..

Respawns is cheesy.

I don't see any problem with allowing longer CC on monsters. I do think this is a mistake. I think the move away from permananet effects is sad.

If they insist on this change, the durations need to at least be a bit longer before saves occur.

[calvinklien]

"Make it go away or I quit" seems to be completely ignored.

silly me, and here i thought profit was a motive.

i understand what you're saying Lorien.

then my feedback is this:

Dear Turbine,

Make it go away or I quit.

:P

[mavannas]

First of all, I haven't myself tested anything on Lamannia yet so I only rely on information that has been seen in this thread. However, as far as I can see, this Heroic Surge stuff makes monsters immune to CC effects after having been hit one and after a time.

First question that pops to my mind and was not entirely clear on other posts is that is the time when HS (Heroic Surge) comes up. Does it depend on the CC spell/song being used as well as the level of the mob?

If it doesn't depend on the CC spell/song, what is the difference between longer duration CC and shorter except that the former uses more sp and therefore is a waste of it, if the HS will anyway invalidate the CC effect after a fixed duration?

Also it would seem Borror0 is simply missing the Bard nerf point (I play a bard, but a WC so this has little effect on me normally). Bards fascinate has longer duration for a reason, amount of songs is limited to fixed number not SP. So spamming shorter duration CC is not an option to bards (unless we get more, which is unlikely since this would effect also other bard songs).

Overall the problem with this HS stuff is the big question of WHY? Are CC wizzies/Bards overly powerful? I must assume no, since I see very little cc overall in the game. So why on earth is it being "fixed" if it aint broken? (Even Turbine developers must know the old saying about not fixing things that aint broken) Only thing that MIGHT be considered broken were the tripping animals and Air elementals, and this is not even fixing those AFAIHR.

And dont go into the _changing_ play style to be faster paced stuff, borror0. It sounds like a very bad excuse to make a nerf. If you dont like the more controlled environment of DDO, you have plenty of "fast paced MMO" options available.

----
Repe of Orien (14 Bard WC)

[Borror0]

Also it would seem Borror0 is simply missing the Bard nerf point

No. I get it and I agree it's a problem.

Bards fascinate has longer duration for a reason

Not one relevant to class balance. It could last half the time and fascinate would be as powerful

[Xyfiel]

Actually, "every other MMOs" have a more complex combat system in terms of strategy than DDO by requiring tanking, aggro management, crowd control, cooldown management, etc. whereas we only have to bother about hitting monsters really hard and having an healer there to heal us. That's sad part of it all. Though, like you said, we have the twitch gaming which is really where the complexity is in DDO.

Then you should read this thread once again because I did.

Yeah, just did. Didn't see you talking about how this one mechanic weakens or nullifies items/feats/abilities. Just spells, lots of misc talk, lots of talk on CC, but nothing specific like trip feat, racial enhancements to boost saves, whirlwind sword, create undead(they get a save, so that spell just became even more useless), even maybe reducing the duration on earthgrab and ice II. So again, I will not discuss ways to implement this better until the big picture of how it will change the game is considered.

I made a post a while back with many things I considered breaking. Address that, one line at a time. Just because you weave around conversations with your loyalty to Turbine, doesn't mean some of us don't understand what is really going on. I guess if I wanted to work somewhere I wouldn't go crazy dismissing there ideas either. Then again, I have done my research, most of the crazy decisions come from the higher ups. Their own employees stated such. Which is unfortunate the real devs have to deal with their greedy desires and our complaints.

Whatever, this will go in, and they will push us out slowly. Seems that is what they want, they want the F2P players. They want the general consumer, who is easily coerced into purchases by psychological tricks. They want them dumb and happy. And they will word nerfs into gains using word trickery to give a false sense of happiness. So go join them, I truly hope you find what you are looking for.

The rest of us will continue this long battle of us vs them they want to play, until we have had enough and leave. This may be a surprise to you, but more of us are leaving every day. Soon, this will play like most MMO's, with just a DnD name on it.