SoD, buffing, and boxing. Just a conversation.

L

Ludovician

Dalayan Elder
Everyone complains that buffs are a pain. 2 boxing as a limit is a pain because you need full buffs to go out and do things and be the most efficient at it, and you're constantly juggling characters to get it.

Making buffs SB and having a duration of 3-4 hours sounds pretty appealing to those of us who came from live where the "good" buffs lasted 30 minutes or less (back when I played at least).

But, in my opinion, making buffs last for hours really caused more harm than good. Now buffs are expected and needed, and the classes who cast them are not needed past Athica steps because it's literally more efficient to leave your XP spot to "rebuff" instead of having that class with you. Why bring that enchanter or that shaman or that druid when you can just stack your group with buffs and then load up with a healer, a tank, and 4 big dps?

It's too late to make a change, and while the idea of infinite buff durations might sound appealing to some, I think it might be a step in the wrong direction.

I think the long buffs are the root of a lot of issues here. Not really posting to push for their durations to be lowered, just posting for the sake of conversation and because the thought was on my mind and I do hope for the best for the health of this game.
 
Yeah, you and lots of others. I'm not lobbying for 30 minute buffs, this isn't about that.

The damage has been done already and content is pretty much balanced around max buffs. But when it comes to group buffing and finding groups on certain classes, you can't deny that issues exist.
 
Here is my take on buffs, fueled by years of threads about this unenjoyable and annoying aspect of the game:

1. There are too many buffs. Consolidating buffs (looking at you shaman stats, combine) when possible is a move long, long overdue. Managing your buff bar should still be a thing, but much less of a thing than it is currently.

2. If a class is balanced around the long term buffs it provides it needs to be rebalanced like that buff doesn't exist. This, obviously, does not include short term buffs like somatic or paragon or vortex etc... Can you really look a shaman in their doe eyes and tell them that a significant portion of their imaginaryclassdesirabilitypoints are spent before you even leave town? How unfair is that? That is one step from a developer just coming out and tagging the class with the title Buffbitch.

3. Assuming #2 gets done, long term buffs should have two digits added to their duration. That is the easy fix. A more desirable system would be buffs are SB by default and the SB AA is changed to make the next buff permanent (because when I die my magically enchanted armor comes with me but the magical enchantments on me don't???), but I do not know if that is possible.

4. Buff timers should not tick down in cities. This idea was previously discussed and written off with a vague claim that it could be exploitable. If someone wants to sit around killing guards all day with permabuffs that does not seem a big enough deal to not make this change. Maybe just a few cities like Sadri, Thurgadin, and Athica to further reduce potential abuse and add a cost (gate neck- Newport has two valid options so excluded) to being lame if it that big of a deal.

5. None of this is going to happen. Didn't you read the first line about "years of threads"? These are not new problems and annoyances. Nobody has ever thought buffing was a swell old time. Some durations were increased a while back and it's a case of "be glad with what you got" like a bowl of cold gruel.

tldr; c'mon I bolded
 
Every buff should last as long as Raego if there's a strong aversion to simplifying buffs or making them sb by default. If the main buffing classes (ie shaman/enchanters) need help with that (which I don't believe is an issue) then fix them.
 
I want to say three things.

1) The buff system used in DAoC was great and every game should use it.

2) As an enchanter I think we are plenty strong enough and don't need to be balanced upwards.

3) The box limit for casting buffs is kinda annoying I will agree. If three+ boxing were allowed in towns you weren't KOS in so you could just buff or even port both your chars at the same time that would really reduce the amount of time people spend typing in account information and loading the game. I can't see that doing any harm.

Actually I will say one more thing. I don't buff myself 99% of the time with anything other than self ones, and a lot of the time I don't even bother with those. To me it's not worth the time it takes, especially if I am already where I want to be killing stuff. Now since I box an enc I already have haste/jb and I can see porting back for 4+hrs of those buffs since it makes a huge difference in killing speed. But aego, won, focus, stats...all of those are very optional to me. Sometimes I see people spend large amounts of time trying to get something like won when really that time would have been a lot better spent actually bashing mobs in the face.
 
In my mind there are two kinds of buffs:
(1) those that improve basic stats (Stats / Resists / AC / HP / Mana / Attk)
These buffs are mostly useful for nearly-naked new players and for pushing past on-tier content. Folk with high-enough gear can easily go without these buffs and still be really effective on most content. Even comparing a fully raid-buffed fresh 65 toon with a buffless T7+ 65 toon the latter wins out easily in terms of basic stats.​
(2) those that provide unique effects not obtainable else-wise (Haste / FT / DS / Spell Crit / Regen / Run Speed / Etc.)
These buffs are generally game changing for everyone when you have them. Yes you still have higher-tiered folk having innately more buffless, but less so than with stats. And for fresh toons the difference is particularly pronounced - I still remember the first time Grinkles casted GoE on Haenir, the dps increase felt pretty epic. And once I got access to a buffbot enchanter, it was literally game-changing for me.
​
With that in mind - my 2 cp on buffing.
  1. I kind of get a nostalgia thing with the buff system as it is -- it feels like original EQ, I'm glad its not auras or all short-term buffs, or something like that.
  2. Most people over-buff / apparently are bad at loading buffbots. I can have the only buffs I need in less than a minute and be fully raid-buffed in less than 5 minutes. And for most content you really don't need a full buff-bar -- I know on Haenir as long as I have haste I'm good to go pretty much anywhere.
  3. Those NPC buff casters are pretty cool, I know I used them when I was first starting out -- but I don't think I used them past level ~40 because they became prohibitively expensive / completely irrelevant once I gained access to infos. Also, a number of them are on factions which are racist(?), which could be a problem for some players. I might actually use them again if their buff duration scaled somehow / they gained the ability to cast soulbonded buffs. Maybe cost / duration / soulbond could scale based on faction or something?
Ludovician said:
I think the long buffs are the root of a lot of issues here. Not really posting to push for their durations to be lowered, just posting for the sake of conversation and because the thought was on my mind and I do hope for the best for the health of this game.
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Eh, long buffs are less problematic than a lot of other things, imo. Low player-base (granted long buffs could be argued as a factor in this), 2-boxing, and plat drops scaling poorly with larger group size / more difficult content -- are all bigger (and linked) issues than buffs.
 
odizzido2 said:
1) The buff system used in DAoC was great and every game should use it.
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THIS! A hundred times this!

Haenir said:
Most people over-buff / apparently are bad at loading buffbots. I can have the only buffs I need in less than a minute and be fully raid-buffed in less than 5 minutes.
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You're also a rogue and don't need all that much. I'm sure things change for you if you go off to box a healer or tank as well... Those classes will require different buffs.
 
Haenir said:
Those NPC buff casters are pretty cool, I know I used them when I was first starting out -- but I don't think I used them past level ~40 because they became prohibitively expensive / completely irrelevant once I gained access to infos. Also, a number of them are on factions which are racist(?), which could be a problem for some players. I might actually use them again if their buff duration scaled somehow / they gained the ability to cast soulbonded buffs. Maybe cost / duration / soulbond could scale based on faction or something?
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Lightbulb! What if there were a quest Augur NPC made in each major city. The NPC would be a collector of magics. Say you were to go out and find these magics for this NPC, through a new line of quests. Fetching certain enchanted items in the game would allow you to unlock the ability for the NPC to cast somewhat equivalent buffs to relics on you/your group. Each time doing so, charging a fee, different depending on the buffs requested. Not only would this free people up from leveling "buffbots" but would also create new content for players to do.

Thoughts?
 
Swiftur said:
You're also a rogue and don't need all that much. I'm sure things change for you if you go off to box a healer or tank as well... Those classes will require different buffs.
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When solo 2-boxing I usually end up rogue-tanking things with just haste + w/e buffs the box provides -- pretty sufficient for the vast majority of the content I can 2-box (basically up to T2 targets). Sorry, I should have been more specific, those numbers are for when buffing Haenir + a box. Basically just click athica gate, load up w/e buffbots to character select while waiting on gate/zone (30 seconds). Camp box if using one (10 seconds). Load in buffer 1 (6 seconds). Cast buffs (3-10 seconds). Camp box/buffer 1 (10 seconds). Rinse repeat. So anywhere from ~1 min (chanter buffs only- lets be honest, JB/GoE are probably the only buffs most people "need" because they're just so powerful) to ~5 mins (full buffs) from the time I start gating to Athica. If multiple people are doing buffs it becomes even faster.

That fast camp in cities thing is pretty freakin great.
 
It all depends what you want to do really. With the limited population we have today and all the boxes required... If me and my 2 buds want to go box up a group and do some cita or BQ or something, you best well believe we'll be filling out our buff slots. Especially as a Beastlord... We are so boned... we need all the boofs and the praireedots! That's time consuming as all hell. Especially when you crash as much as I do.
 
Haenir said:
W with just haste + w/e buffs the box provides -- pretty sufficient for the vast majority of the content I can 2-box (basically up to T2 targets).
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you're 2 boxing tier 2 targets with a tier 9 rogue tank with goe and won? yeah bro ok please go away
 
sabuti said:
you're 2 boxing tier 2 targets with a tier 9 rogue tank with goe and won? yeah bro ok please go away
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NGL usually it is the cleric box that does the heavy lifting, though rogue-style tanking is basically dps-tanking (and the ac on most T1/T2 targets is pretty poor) since our mitigation is garbage. Its probably more a failing of the tier categorization system since I have more trouble with certain T1's than T2's.
 
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