Request from a Demon to the Devs of Neverwinter

demonmonger · August 2014

Dear Neverwinter Devs,

I am known in game as Demonmonger's Child, Trickster Rogue is my main character.
level: 60
/played time: 94 days, 4 hours, 23 minutes, 59 seconds.

Many hours have been spent here to test combat abilities of not only my own class, but to ferret out weaknesses in other classes as well. I and many other players in the community foresee dismal events taking place by not all, but a few of the upcoming changes that were announced in mod 4.

1) Removing Prone Skill from the warrior classes in pvp will drastically change the nature of this game that we have come to love.

I and other customers stand before you now to ask that you please reconsider removing prones from the warrior classes.
I personally do not have a GWF or a GF. However, I know without a doubt that once prone based skills are removed from their classes, they will no longer be of any threat to me in game. Thus said, the gameplay will suffer, player morale will suffer, and the overall level of trust that the skills that we have come to love that led many of us to become paying customers to support the cause of this game will dwindle yet again.

Please let the voices of those who have dedicated blood and tears (without crying for nerfs) be heard.
Please do not remove the prone skills from the pvp aspect of the game.

(to the community)
Please think hard about your answer before voting yay or nay in the poll.
Please voice your opinion on why you say yay or nay to the change of prone skills for warriors
Also include your main class and reasoning for yay or nay.

For a better future and a long lasting gaming relationship,

Demonmonger

Unknown · August 2014

This content has been removed.

emilemo · August 2014

If the prone is so bad nobody should have it in pvp. Its just wrong when all but 1 class has it.
Im a GF/GWF player

hammeredhell · August 2014

i have a lvl 60 of every class (and enjoy them all to an extent) so it's hard to click just one button in the poll....but as it stands been playing (one of the few non-perma) trs in when im in the mood to pvp. I understand the need to constantly reevaluate classes/skills from time to time for balance especially when adding a new class to the mix. as for gwf one of the classes most effected by the upcoming changes ive always thought it was bs that frontline surge could still prone a tr even in the 3 seconds of impossible to catch from stealth mode....but aside from a fix on that i think removing prones is silly....most notably Take Down....how is something with the NAME takedown NOT a prone? ur changing it to a stun? pfff! i get that gwf is op and i love playing them and i don't even mind that they're taming them down to force us to choose tank-ish or dps but removing prones is just wrong. also not a big fan of the ICD added to Eye Of The Storm as it kills my and alot of other ppls "don't really need to stack crit" builds on cw.

that's pretty much my 3 cents worth not that i think the devs will actually do anything with this thread but hey....w/e

charononus · August 2014

magenubbie wrote: »

I don't see a poll anywhere, but I think removing the prones is not a bad idea. It suffers from the combination of 3 problems:
1. certain classes have too many of them
2. they cannot be countered or shortened and tenacity barely affects it.
3. the effect is a game breaker. Once you're proned you're basically dead.

Removing the prones make the game less dependent on 1 effect that only a few can proc way too often and without it, it will require more strategy and less mindless button bashing to kill someone. This will in turn restore a portion of faith to the other classes and might bring more people to the PvP table.

Your argument that a GWF is nothing without its prones isn't true. There's more than enough ways to get kills. You still have your gap closers, you still have your self-heal, you still have your unstoppable, you still have your stuns and you can still have insane damage. The only difference is that the gamebreaker move is replaced by something that tenacity can affect. It forces people to adapt their gameplay to a level where people do not depend on 1 effect to get the job done. Right now a trained monkey can play a GWF and it will win. I'm glad to see that's coming to an end. The GWF might be a "mindless barbarian" in terms of RP, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't require skill to play it properly like every other class.

In short, in my opinion it does the exact opposite of what you think it does. I see no downside of removing it.

For the record, your playtime and money spent on this game are totally irrelevant to any argument about gameplay. Don't lower yourself by playing the money card, you'll only get flamed for it.

For GWF however most of the skills have really bad damage. The ones that have high damage have a huge wind up. With the 3 sec stuns you have a chance if you get it perfect for those skills to hit, barely. Increasing the dps of some skills, or decreasing the windup of IBS are needed with all the major nerfs. Right now a good player can dodge a GWF indefinitly

demonmonger · August 2014

magenubbie wrote: »

I don't see a poll anywhere, but I think removing the prones is not a bad idea. It suffers from the combination of 3 problems:
1. certain classes have too many of them
2. they cannot be countered or shortened and tenacity barely affects it.
3. the effect is a game breaker. Once you're proned you're basically dead.

Removing the prones make the game less dependent on 1 effect that only a few can proc way too often and without it, it will require more strategy and less mindless button bashing to kill someone. This will in turn restore a portion of faith to the other classes and might bring more people to the PvP table.

Your argument that a GWF is nothing without its prones isn't true. There's more than enough ways to get kills. You still have your gap closers, you still have your self-heal, you still have your unstoppable, you still have your stuns and you can still have insane damage. The only difference is that the gamebreaker move is replaced by something that tenacity can affect. It forces people to adapt their gameplay to a level where people do not depend on 1 effect to get the job done. Right now a trained monkey can play a GWF and it will win. I'm glad to see that's coming to an end. The GWF might be a "mindless barbarian" in terms of RP, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't require skill to play it properly like every other class.

In short, in my opinion it does the exact opposite of what you think it does. I see no downside of removing it.

For the record, your playtime and money spent on this game are totally irrelevant to any argument about gameplay. Don't lower yourself by playing the money card, you'll only get flamed for it.

I spoke of playtime in terms of testing pvp pve combat situations.
You spoke of unstoppable but that is getting nerfed too.
Prone skills make the game more enjoyable to me.
Without them / and with roar fix, the pvp aspect of GWF / GF class vs others is going to suffer greatly.
I spoke of why people pay not that I have paid for this game.
We pay because we have trust in the company. Faith that what we buy will be here until the company "goes under"
We pay as a thanks for making this game available to us. (Thanks for bringing the game we played on paper to our computers)
We pay to support a game we feel is going in the right direction.
This is all I meant by mentioning payment.

Let's keep our focus and try to make a better game. (without over nerfing)

Unknown · August 2014

This content has been removed.

ironzerg79 · August 2014

I don't think a forum poll is going to change anything about the direction of Prones in PvP.

demonmonger · August 2014

ironzerg79 wrote: »

I don't think a forum poll is going to change anything about the direction of Prones in PvP.

it's worth a try...

If the cries of players that already quit the game matter, so should the voices of those that remain.

ironzerg79 · August 2014

Devs have been actively looking for feedback for almost 8 weeks now here:

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/forumdisplay.php?1211-NeverwinterPreview-Feedback-General-Discussion

We're three days from the launch of the new module. There's no way they're going to back track on some of those major changes (like Prone) at this point.

maegmaag · August 2014

Nice poll. Am CW and i vote NO: removing a mechanic (flattening the gameplay further) is of no improvement. There are other ways.

Considering tenacity: remove tenacity, thx.

demonmonger · August 2014

ironzerg79 wrote: »

Devs have been actively looking for feedback for almost 8 weeks now here:

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/forumdisplay.php?1211-NeverwinterPreview-Feedback-General-Discussion

We're three days from the launch of the new module. There's no way they're going to back track on some of those major changes (like Prone) at this point.

all of their feedback sections were fragmented and separated.

every class is combined here and the polls will show how we feel.

let's let the poll speak for itself.

It is our collective voice on the matter.

charononus · August 2014

magenubbie wrote: »

The same argument can be made for a (WK) TR. VP barely stuns long enough to do a dazing strike or any other skill. The use of it is clumsy at best and only really works as intended in about 20% of the time. Most of the skills they have barely do damage. IS, SS , Deft strike and VP anyone? TRs have dailies that do less damage than a GWF with an encounter skill. Other than VP and Deft strike all their encounter skills can be dodged infinitely. There's nothing wrong with being able to dodge a GWF/GF the same way you can dodge a TR. Landing skills shouldn't be a given (not even for ranged characters, but that's another story).

But, if a little damage increase or lowering the casting time of certain skills turns out to be required to compensate for the lack of control, I'm not against it on general principle. It would depend on how that was done and with how much. Let's first find out what other skill combo's the GWF can come up with that makes things not as bad as they sound before we start that discussion.
But in all honesty I don't think it will be required. They simply have the same weaknesses with attacks as a TR has, only with 20 times the defense of a TR. And I think that's not a bad thing.

Eh you lost me on the specifics there, as my only TR was a MI that ran to 60 and has sat there. I'll probably make WK at some point just to learn the skills a bit but......
The problem is that it really does need some tweaking for the damage now with having no control. TR abilities you have to time right to dodge in my experience but indeed can be dodged. With 2 sec stuns GWF's IBS no one should ever be hit by if they have good tenacity and are paying attention at all. With 3 sec stuns it's in the range of possible but it will require a perfect execution with no room for lag or error.

Unknown · August 2014

This content has been removed.

sexwax45 · August 2014

I think its fair changing prone to stuns as some classes don't have the ability to prone at all, it seems more balanced, although i don't pvp, and i have a GWF.

maegmaag · August 2014

sexwax45 wrote: »

I think its fair changing prone to stuns as some classes don't have the ability to prone at all, it seems more balanced, although i don't pvp, and i have a GWF.

Every class (class, not every paragon path) so far has an access to one or more skills with prone effect (SW i know almost nothing about). Also since we have no STR/INT/WIS vs max(CON,DEX) -like checks, its logical its class/paragon skill specific.

Again, removing/disabling a mechanic is making the gameplay more flat (thats what rpg is about). Its a step back. RPG is not instagib q3a osp mode.

iambecks1 · August 2014

demonmonger wrote: »

all of their feedback sections were fragmented and separated.

every class is combined here and the polls will show how we feel.

let's let the poll speak for itself.

It is our collective voice on the matter.

There was a lot of feedback about removing prone so gentlemancrush made a post explaining why he removed it -

gentlemancrush wrote: »

Second, I want to talk about Prone and why we are shifting some of the prones away from PVP, but not all of them. Prone has a special interaction with Deflect in that while someone has you Prone you cannot deflect any incoming attacks. While we do like this interaction in PVE, changing the behavior from PVP to PVE felt awkward and confusing for users so we decided to convert these to stuns instead and still allow the control to exist without the ability to shut off enemy player defensive stats. Secondly because of animation limitations prones cannot be any shorter than .66 seconds. Given this we wanted to allow CC resist to work correctly in more cases, and therefore we wanted prones to be generally saved either for more powerful spells (like several dailies) or for powers that require substantially more skill to land (like Shard of the Eternal Avalanche). These changes should improve the feel of CC Resistance and make it behave more uniformly in all situations.

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?692681-Official-Feedback-Thread-Great-Weapon-Fighter-Changes/page22&p=8294681&viewfull=1#post8294681

demonmonger · August 2014

(puts hands up in the air)
Well, when your pc can't handle a game you upgrade the pc.
If the animation limitation can't handle prones below .66 of a second tweak the animations or just make a sign that goes over a players head that stands for prone but animation can't handle the speed.
Allow players to rolls left and right once knocked down prone and have players press space bar again to stand back up.
Allow deflect to work from prone. (ufc fighters deflect from prone positions all the time)

Come on.. make it happen!

silverkelt · August 2014

magenubbie wrote: »

Same as my earlier reply really. If the stuns are too short to make them of use, extend them (and do so on the TR as well while they are at it). I have no wish to make the GWF non-viable in PvP. As a CW I know how frustrating that can be. But the endless prone chains were really overkill on any class.

It's a shame this discussion shows up 3 days before all this goes live. if the OP had made this thread a month ago, maybe things could have changed or been given a second look by the devs. Now we'll have to wait and see how things turn out and maybe ask for some tweaks a little afterwards.

To be fair to GWFs, they have asked this basically every day in the preview forum since it was changed. If not to give every prone back, back give back damage/prone to takedown.

reiwulf · August 2014

I do think that prones should be left for skills that can't be used all the time, like dailies or stuff like that. Otherwise you can get chain proned by 2 chars and there's nothing you can do.
A great way to keep them would be if there was a way to get out of a prone, like someone said, pressing a button would make you roll to the side while proned, but for now, you're just standing there.

hefisdo · August 2014

Takedown and Frontline Surge being stuns is kind of right, but it looks VERY inappropriate.

Prones are way too powerful, but some of the existing powers just look better being prones instead of stuns.

I'm a CW and I'm against prone removing, despite I know they won't change it this far.

str8slayer · August 2014

They want only dailies and artifacts to have prone capabilities, encounters are too spammable, I guess they don't like the whole "inescapable chain prones" in pvp (I can sympathize). One minute kicking ***, the next proned and focused, sure it's cheap, but it takes teamwork to accomplish so I'm split on this...

At the very least don't go taking away prones from dailies, making encounters stuns is one thing but that's as far as I'd go...

charononus · August 2014

str8slayer wrote: »

They want only dailies and artifacts to have prone capabilities, encounters are too spammable, I guess they don't like the whole "inescapable chain prones" in pvp

Except CW's, SW's, and I think HR's (not positive on this one) still have them as encounters.

demonmonger · August 2014

All we can do is hope....
Funny that a game i played for 7 years is just now taking my advice on skills and cast time. Haha.
Too late though I am never going back there.

zshikara · August 2014

I don't want prones to be removed from the game, but on the same token I don't think any one person should be able to chain prone you. That's rediculous when I am at full health and literally cannot move for 10 to 15 seconds and die because of it.

I play a DC main if you don't know by my sig ^_^.

iamannoyingdevil · August 2014

demonmonger wrote: »

People that cry for nerfs do not understand how to play their characters well and need to go back to games for simple mindless people. we effective players of neverwinter are tired of you ineffective players crying for easy win buttons.

Nice siggy , seems quite weird that you complain about players asking for easy mode button at the same time as you ask for chain proning to be allowed ...... irony.

melodywhr · August 2014

this thread is in violation of forum rule 3.14. if you want to send a private message to the devs, you may use the PM function of the forums. alternately, you do not need to address the devs or PWE staff if you want them to see it. PWE does read the forums on a regular basis.

thanks.

Request from a Demon to the Devs of Neverwinter

Comments