Official Thread for Empowerment stations
By
Agent_117,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 13:22 in Developers' Corner
The duration makes no sense.
If you need 5% resistance to one type for all 15 minutes of a mission, you should consider dropping your difficulty.
If you need that 5% just to overcome one boss, just bring a Rugged or two for the duration of the boss fight.
Is this for soloing, or teaming?
If you're on a team, what's 5% resistance to one type of damage to one teammate?
If you're solo, would you spend the salvage instead of just finding a teammate to give you a similar buff? In a SG, there should be someone you can bug to help you out. Maybe the Devs feel this has to be less potent than a /Thermal's shields so you don't belittle their role on a team, but since it stacks with those shields I don't see the problem, and people will still prefer the free buffs. Sure, maybe the other person in the SG is a Brute or a Dominator or Stalker, but they can help you in other ways, too, that doesn't cost you Salvage.
I think they are concerned with people building a lot of these and then abusing them if they let them take the form of temp powers or custom Inspirations. However, I'd say that unless they do something like that they won't get used. If that means they're useless until Cryptic builds the code so you can only carry 1-3 or some other reasonable number, then that may be what has to happen. As it is now, I just don't see them being used for PvE or PvP. I really don't understand, they are certainly so far below what Warburg nukes can do, why those aren't balance threatening to carry with you but the buffs from Empowerment Stations are..... 0_o
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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I think they are concerned with people building a lot of these and then abusing them if they let them take the form of temp powers or custom Inspirations.
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I agree that they might be thinking that, but I have to wonder why it would be a concern. These buffs have a very particular cost. It's a cost you can't purchase with Infamy. It's a cost you can't gain any better at higher levels to feed to your low alts. Wouldn't that limit the usability of these stations?
I would think so, but if they are that worried they could cap the number that you can have or make them only last a day. There are lots of ways to lessen the chance of them being abused, of course there isn't much chance of abuse now 
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
These station don't help anyone. I have yet to see one positve post about these items here except that now they dont use power or control.
What would make these empowerment stations worth using is if they made inspires. Have different levels of salvage make different tiers of inspires which you can then store in your new inspire storage!
Or enhancement makers. TO,DO and SO based on the level you are and the type of salvage.
Or temp power makers. At least the stuff sold at the arena or pvp zones.
Or costume piece makers! Get enough nemesis salvage and unlock a nem helmet.
I wonder if people are forgetting the reason these were created...Small SGs asked for something they could use their salvage with if they were not going to be expanding their bases.
That being said, the Empowerment stations fulfil that request. A small SG that has no use for their salvage can now get a temp buff that may help them get past a boss. Larger SGs can always call on friends in the SG to help with this boss, small SG might not have that option.
The stations are designed with the original request in mind. If you have nothing to do with the salvage anyway, does it really matter how good the buff was? It wasn't there before at all.
Larger SGs are still supposed to want to use their salvage to build up the base.
I think this is a great item for small SGs, and has been designed just the way people asked.
Thats kind of like telling an office full of workers that they can print their messages and make them into paper airplanes to shoot down two flights of stairs for communication. Just because its a "use" for something doesn't mean it will get used. In this case, I don't see this as useful for anyone.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
The devs could have just created Salvage Deleting Stations to let small SGs do something with their salvage if they weren't concerned with getting something worthwhile back.
I like the implementation, but even if nothing else changes, the buffs need to be about 5 times as powerful as they are right now. They're temp powers, so they can't be stacked. One application has to be noticable.
I think a 25% resistance buff to one damage type or a 25% speed increase would be a nice, useful buff. I still wouldn't use the mez buffs, because Break Frees trump them in almost every regard.
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Larger SGs can always call on friends in the SG to help with this boss, small SG might not have that option.
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Positron (in the other thread I believe) showed how these were costed for a SG of 2 to easily get them, and support features like storage. The key here is still SuperGROUP. At least 2 people in a GROUP. This is not just a title you put under you name - I think it's safe to assume a SG has some kind of interactivity between them.
I don't think there's any issue wuth SG-related support for someone who solos. There's a small group, and then there's no-group.
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They're temp powers...
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this brings something to light...
do these even warrant the label "temp power"? What's the defense given by your average temp power like Cryonite Armor? What are the durations? Compare the recovery buff to the 15 minute buff you get after the Soul of Akarist mission. Where do I find those stats?
You get temp powers from missions at about the same frequency you can expect to gather enough salvage to use this station, so they should be comparable, right? How much power reduction are we seeing in exchange for choosing which power we get?
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On the splitting mez protection thing, I think it's really just a way to protect from pvp abuse.
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While I agree with the poster, here is a prime example of pvp, once again, screwing people who don't. So we have recipes that cost gobs of salvage in order to do fractions of what a Break Free and Rugged do. I can't think of few things more retarded.
The only thing worse than devs making bad decisions is the hoard of fanboys and bootlickers that keep cheering them on.
Probably the least of our worries... Radiation Emulator would be better named Radiation Emanator. or Radiation Emitter. An emulator is a simulator - considering the upper 2 levels are actual partical generators I don't think this is what you were going for.
Well, the patch notes now say Kheldians can use these buffs while in their forms. THANK YOU DEVS!
Now I can start some serious testing with my most familiar character to see how useful these things can be.
Speaking as someone who is in a small SG, I can say right now that I am disinclined to ever make use of the 'buff' from the Empowerment station. I have no interest in making our Base PvP raid enabled, so a lot of the Workshop items are of limited interest to us - only aesthetics would compel us to construct one of the defense measures and that would be after a bloating of salvage inventories and Prestige that I don't foresee happening. Now, I understand that that's a big part of what Bases are supposed to be for by design... and heck, I don't mind that the functionality is low. But this is just frustrating. We were told these were included with smaller SGs in mind and they just do not bear up to that.
For those who don't run in a small SG, this is my experience; the small SG tends to be more tightly knit. People ask what the SG needs, AT-wise, and build it. If we need a Corruptor (or a Defender, or whatever), we're willing to ask. If we need some funds, we ask. If we make good use of, say, Sturdy Inspirations, where most folks don't much care for them, we chime in on that. So... I'm not seeing the utility of a weak, short-term buff for a tightly knit group. Inspirations are cheap and drop regularly. Sure, they don't last 15 minutes, but you actually notice a difference between running with a Luck or a Rage up. Maybe if you wanted to ghost a mission, the Invis would be handy. ... I'm just not seeing a lot of utility in the Empowerment stations' buffing aspect. If I'm full on Salvage, I'll sell back a room at cost, build the Workshop and whittle things down into more compact bits (foci, etc). Or I'll use the new Salvage Storage. But... dumping my Salvage on a throw-away buff? No, I don't think so.
My input for empowerment stations...they are WAY too weak and useless...
I think they need to change the buffs to 5 minutes but click to activate.
If they think that is too powerful they they should make it so you can only carry one.
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
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I think they need to change the buffs to 5 minutes but click to activate.
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As the game is currently coded, 1-time buffs expire if you die. (Such as Speed Boost, or Dull Pain.) An auto temp power will still be part of your character if you die and rez. This would be a real waste of salvage if you took 2 steps into the final room and lost your power.
It's possible they could code around that, but I don't know if they could do it in time for I7 since most of it's locked up.
Is the risk of having the power work for only 30 seconds worth the new benefit of activating it whenever you want?
Some other ideas to prevent the power from using up before you've really benefitted from it...
- Only have the power active inside a mission map, and thus only count down inside a mission map. Yes, you lose PvP effectiveness, but I thought these were mostly for PvE.
- Instead of counting down by time, count down when you gain XP. (Use some equivalency for when you gain PvP Reputation.) Then the power ignores travel time, and can be balanced for one large fight or many small ones.
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If they think that is too powerful they they should make it so you can only carry one.
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I think the very specific, high cost would already limit them. People are seeing one or two buffs per character level. If you want to save up and burn 6 buffs at once every 3 levels, that's fine.
Stacking up a lot of these may actually be more useful as you could hit the one you need right when you need it instead of running back to the base. But then, maybe that type of utility is not what the designers want out of this. It's certainly not in the roleplay theme of what these stations are. In comics, heroes are often faced with a challenge, they return to a lab, build a solution, and confront the bad guy again. You don't see heroes first equip for every situation and then set up and do everything perfectly the first try. So maybe these aren't supposed to function like the store in Sirens. Maybe the point of these is to make you use the base at a particular time instead of when you happen to be jumping past it and need to restock a power.
That said... does the gameplay need click-powers to such a degree that theme should be set aside here?
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If they think that is too powerful they they should make it so you can only carry one.
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I think the very specific, high cost would already limit them. People are seeing one or two buffs per character level. If you want to save up and burn 6 buffs at once every 3 levels, that's fine.
Stacking up a lot of these may actually be more useful as you could hit the one you need right when you need it instead of running back to the base. But then, maybe that type of utility is not what the designers want out of this. It's certainly not in the roleplay theme of what these stations are. In comics, heroes are often faced with a challenge, they return to a lab, build a solution, and confront the bad guy again. You don't see heroes first equip for every situation and then set up and do everything perfectly the first try. So maybe these aren't supposed to function like the store in Sirens. Maybe the point of these is to make you use the base at a particular time instead of when you happen to be jumping past it and need to restock a power.
That said... does the gameplay need click-powers to such a degree that theme should be set aside here?
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This is actually the first time I have seen a post that appears to reflect the concept the game designers have had since the game started. Based on the posts I have seen from the Devs the Story lines and keeping to the "comic book look" is very important.
It also appears as though the Devs have held a high priority on making sure that no one is given anything for free, or for that matter easily. That is why everything has such a high cost.
Just my opinion
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- Instead of counting down by time, count down when you gain XP. (Use some equivalency for when you gain PvP Reputation.) Then the power ignores travel time, and can be balanced for one large fight or many small ones.
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Would this not be the same for SK/Lackey badges? You only gain progress when actively gaining XP? Or in this case, power time only gets used when actively participating in combat?
If so, then I would have to agree with this being a balanced change to avoid the power being lost with travel time/mapserver disconnects time issues.
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- Instead of counting down by time, count down when you gain XP. (Use some equivalency for when you gain PvP Reputation.) Then the power ignores travel time, and can be balanced for one large fight or many small ones.
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Would this not be the same for SK/Lackey badges? You only gain progress when actively gaining XP? Or in this case, power time only gets used when actively participating in combat?
If so, then I would have to agree with this being a balanced change to avoid the power being lost with travel time/mapserver disconnects time issues.
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That's a great point! I had thought this would be a new system of tracking XP gains, but it appears they would have most of the code for this in place. All this does is then define the life of these powers as "15 minutes of activity" and not the current "15 minutes of gametime". It's a subtle difference, but is probably worth it.
Just to point out, though, it *is* gametime and not real time. so you can logoff or get disconnected and not lose out on your power. Travel and loading times, however, are currently an issue.
More feedback:
Today I copied my main hero to test multiple times to get enough salvage to buy the top tier empowerment station in the hopes that the top tier station would provide stronger buffs.
5% Psionic Resistance for 15 minutes costs the following:
10 Tech Material
03 Tech Hardware
03 Tech Prototype
01 Tech Software
There will never, EVER, be a time on any conceivable character where this will be a worthwhile purchase. This is sheer insanity. 17 components, most of which require rare salvage, just to get less of an effect than an orange inspiration will give you?
No thanks.
It's useless to argue about the delivery method for these buffs if the buffs themselves are going to be so underwhelming.
C'mon, devs. What's the deal?
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In my SG we're going to only install the arcane version of the enhancement station (we're a Tech SG) and tell players that they can use up all of their arcane salvage on all of the buffs they want, but the Tech salvage is for the SG.
Granted, that means only one buff every 5-10 levels or so, but isn't that the point of these things? They're designed to soak up the excess salvage in the market, not to actually give the players something useful. IMHO, they'd be more effective at soaking up salvage if they were a lot cheaper (one or two tech powers/materials for most things, maybe a hardware/software for the big buffs) since people would actually use them if they didn't cost an arm and a leg.
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Actually, if they increased the duration of the buffs to an hour lets say...or long enough to make things matter in pvp, it wouldn't be designed to "soak up excess salvage", it would seriously increase the salvage's costs on the open game market. A player, instead of making one of these buffs, could end up selling their salvage at an incredibly elevated price. Set value would be established and goldfarmers would have something else to pitch for real life cash.
people would just buy orange inspirations for 50 infamy
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On the splitting mez protection thing, I think it's really just a way to protect from pvp abuse. If you could get total mez protection from one of these buffs then you can bet that every squishie who ever pvp'd would be hitting their base every 15 mins.
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You have a rough time in a Lost mission. They do both Sleep and Hold. Which do you get? Or both?
Tsoo do Holds and Slows and Disorients all from LTs. How much salvage does it take to overcome a room with too many mobs? Or to simply make your Tsoo kill-all mission a little less annoying?
Council will give you a mix of Hold, Sleep, Disorient, Immobilize.
I could keep going down the list of opponents. I don't see this as a PvP issue.
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As with PVP...if you have a serious issue with a boss or AV in a mission, you can leave the mission and have someone buff you with any of these buffs...and it would be more powerful and only cost the time of your sgmate. ANY OF THESE BUFFS. Run speed = speed boost...same for flight speed... Inertial reduction, the entire line of shields from any corrupter or mm. Every single one of these temporary and extremely costly buffs can be provided for free and be so much more potent as to make these additions to an SG full of corrupters and mms who are willing to help completely useless aside from being a status symbol.
What should have been done here is the ability to create special and storable enhancements that can be removed and traded with a life span dependent on number of times removed from each new host. The enhancements would provide the typical percentage of buff to a power + a special buff like slightly increased regen or speed or whatever. Certain things, like perception would be minimal, requiring a full set of perception buffing enhancements to equal something worthy of seeing someone with stealth activated. In the end a full set of these enhancements would be comprised of a variety of attribute buffs.
They're just not good enough to even qualify as buffs right now. 5% resistance to 1/8th the damage types a 1st tier orange inspiration can resist? Less of a travel boost than Swift/Hurdle? Mez empowerments that affect duration instead of magnitude and are separate per mez type?
No thanks.