Empowerment Station buffs really this pathetic?
By
Alodarn,
Posted on: 2006-06-09 05:41 in Base Construction
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I got the buff the first time, but every successive time I tried to create the same buff at another station I got a message saying there was no room in inventory.
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So it's not actually working as intended, then, because the buffs DON'T stack?
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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The problem with this is that you created these stations for small SGs. These guys have limited resources and limited amts of prestige. Do the math, Pos. Entrance Room, Energy Room, Control Room, and Work Station room. Now add the basic generator, mainframe, basic work table. Ok ... now here comes the answer small SGs have been waiting for. Add the enhancement storage thingee & the salvage storage thingee. Great ... drumroll please ...
Now add HOW many empowerment stations and more rare salvage to hear the answer for which small groups were waiting? Break it down for me, please. I want to believe these groups can earn enough prestige before I8 releases next year to test your theory, sir. Hell ... after all of this nonsense, maybe they can start actually decorating their bases with those nifty banners!
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Positron, i think its a question of either:
Is the buff too low for the investment
or
Is the investment too high for the buff?
You clearely state that the buff is working as intended, then the obvious question is, dont you think its a bit too expensive to make such a worthless (unless stacked) buff?
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But this is the dev team that came up with that base rent system.
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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So don't make 'em stack, and then you can make 'em as good as players "expect."
Its your al-mighty obsession with stacking stacked stacks of stacks, and how powerful that can be when stacked some more, that makes almost each and every individual buff in the game hardly worth having on its own. How you can't see that this is a fundamentally broken concept after 2 years is just beyond me.
F
My salvage collection is like souvineers. i save them all. ill give up extras, but never anything i only got one of.
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On Test, the buffs seemed underwhelming. I just had a chance to test them on Live in exactly the kind of circumstances for which they were meant.
Up against Nemesis, EB version. I brew up a couple of buffs: Knockback Protection (only a single tech material, good and cheap) and Disorient Protection (costly, but I don't want to be stunned).
KB protection seems to work, but halfway through the fight I'm suddenly reeling around, stunned. Couldn't pop the health insp that would have saved me. Hmm. Didn't I just invest some fairly rare salvage in some stun protection?
These stations have the potential to be really cool, but as it stands (whether by bug or by design) they just aren't worth the salvage it takes to make them.
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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Are you serious? You do realize this provides nothing (by design) to a resource strapped, small SG, while providing a large, organized PvP, who can farm a single av for a week and a half, a huge advantage for 15 mintes, aka 1 match.
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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This has been said a few times before me and I would hope a few times after me...
Simply make the buffs stronger and don't let them stack. Problem solved.
Now, if there was a way to make the buffs last longer than 15 minutes...
I mean seriously, I just got the very first Empowerment station for my small SG base today and spent 6 pieces of salvage to increase my fly speed. Well, the blasted thing was gone before I made it to my mission. (I'd entered my base in CaD and had to go to Nerva for my mish, and no base teleporters) Just a fly speed buff so I wasn't too upset.
At least until I realized that if I'd gotten any other type of buff, it would have been gone before I'd have had a chance to use it. Maybe make these free (no end use) toggles so we can turn them on when we need them and not waste them.
Yeah, it'd mean a LOT more coding and what-not, but right now as I see these Empowerment stations, they just seem like a waste.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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But... why make them stackable in the first place? These devices are for small SGs, right? A small SG is much more likely to have a limited amount of salvage, which it can invest in very few buffs before stores run out. As things stand, the buffs NEED to be stacked multiple times in order to be worthwhile at all.
What small SGs need is a non-stackable, worthwhile buff for a simple, low Salvage cost. They won't abuse that, because they don't have the resources to.
The resources necessary for even ONE application of (say) the Hold protection buff are extremely rare. In our SG of a full seventy-five members, we could probably afford to apply four of those buffs before we exhausted the rare Salvage needed for them. That's our entire repository of rare salvage burned up. Compare that to what a tray full of Break Frees would offer.
What is gained for small SGs by making the buffs small and stackable, as opposed to substantial and non-stackable?
A thought: how about several alternative recipes for the high-end buffs, which use larger amounts of the common salvage instead of small amounts of the rare stuff? That would allow small SGs to stack buffs until they reach a decent level, without having to expend salvage that's very hard to get.
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Very well put. Stars if I had them.
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Are you serious? You do realize this provides nothing (by design) to a resource strapped, small SG, while providing a large, organized PvP, who can farm a single av for a week and a half, a huge advantage for 15 mintes, aka 1 match.
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You've summarized why our small, resource strapped, casually playing SG has no base at all. We all agreed that in theory bases are the coolest thing to happen to any MMO any of us have ever played, but since we can't see the math that makes rent ... erm, upkeep earnable within the time we spend playing, we'll never know if they're as much fun in practice as they are in theory. And we're a little baffled by an apparent intent, in this particular game, to close some of the play and features to the more casual and lightweight player. It's not as if there is an in-game economy that really benefits from influence (erm ... prestige ...) sinks. Kudos to the earnest grinders and larger groups tho.
Rather than repeat the choir, I'll ask the next very non-rhetorical question:
Is there anything in this game that poorly conceived stacking doesn't completely break in CoX?
Not even all the costumes stack properly.
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This has been said a few times before me and I would hope a few times after me...
Simply make the buffs stronger and don't let them stack. Problem solved.
Now, if there was a way to make the buffs last longer than 15 minutes...
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I always though they should have the 3 tiers and the same powers in each, but just up the duration in each.
or
Keep them as they are, but each power that is duplicated on the next tier has a longer duration or better buff. Example:
Tier 1 Run Speed: 15 Mins at 10% increase.
Tier 2 Run Speed: 30 Mins at 10% or 15 mins at 25%
Tier 3 Run Speed: 60 Mins at 10% or 30 Mins at 25% or 60 Mins at 10%
Now for the new power that show up in the 2nd tier, they start at the lowest LVL. Example:
Tier 2 Psi Protection: 5% Protection for 15 mins
Tier 3 Psi Protection: 10% Protection for 15mins or 5% for 30 mins.
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Are you serious? You do realize this provides nothing (by design) to a resource strapped, small SG, while providing a large, organized PvP, who can farm a single av for a week and a half, a huge advantage for 15 mintes, aka 1 match.
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Because, for whatever stupid reason, they've made a decision that PvE bases need to suffer PvP costs. They have right there in front of them the ability to separate the two, and give both sets meaningful functionality and appropriate costs that diverge along the lines of PvE and PvP, but they've decided its not worth their time to do.
As sarcastic as I was before, the idea that work is fun in a video game is piss poor and 20 years out of date, yet its a repeated mistake and why video games, and specifically MMOs can't advance. And why games that are so bogged down in minutia like CoH is will never appeal to the masses.
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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Are you serious? You do realize this provides nothing (by design) to a resource strapped, small SG, while providing a large, organized PvP, who can farm a single av for a week and a half, a huge advantage for 15 mintes, aka 1 match.
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AVs are (with a few exceptions) guaranteed to drop a "special" salvage (Alien Tech, Spells of Power...). There are no empowerment recipes that use these.
AVs also have a chance to drop "regular" salvage, but it seems to me that farming AVs would be one of the worst possible ways to gather salvage for empowerment buffs.
So while there are reasons to dislike the way empowerment buffs are set up, this is not one of them.
well you'd be farming so's as well and xp and inf/prestige
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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I'm not sure I understand. So to get a useful buff, our small sg has to build multiple empowerment stations? And then spend double or triple the salvage cost of a particular buff, to get one strong enough to be effective?
Why set things up like this? Why not charge the appropriate salvage cost for an appropriately useful buff, and not have the salvage stack?
Requiring multiple empowerment stations is a huge, and annoyingly hidden, cost.
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well you'd be farming so's as well and xp and inf/prestige
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Yes, but that wouldn't help them get empowerment buffs, would it?
Unless the "small SG" has trouble gathering the 15k prestige (more for the larger stations) needed for an empowerment station...
And I don't think that farming AVs is the best way to get prestige either.
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With respect, have you seen the recipes? Do you know just how much Salvage needs to be burned to make a buff worthwhile?
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I don't know what else we're going to do with all that salvage we've been collecting. We're not into PvP, and we've more or less have gotten all the functional stuff we want (so in all honesty, the workbench might be going soon). We've got maybe 3 regular members, and 2-3 who jump on once in a while. So that's 6 players and their characters. While I can think of some toys I wouldn't mind, truth be told we're doing fine as-is, and thus far nobody has been asking for more.
Low level toons run SG mode all the time, getting salvage and prestige. We don't require anyone to run SG mode after level 25. That being said some of us still do, and that's when we pitch in influence towards enhancements and such.
We pay our rent, we decorate, and until we as a group decide to "take it to the next level," the salvage we earn is pretty much junk. To you guys the buff isn't worthwhile (too low, doesn't last long enough, too expensive when stacked), and that's fine. For us it's a buff we didn't have before, and if we're smart about when/how we use it...
Kinda like recycling soda cans, I suppose.
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These devices are for small SGs, right? A small SG is much more likely to have a limited amount of salvage, which it can invest in very few buffs before stores run out.
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Is that really the case?
Such arguments make sense for prestige costs. The prestige earned by all SG members gets pooled together.
But for salvage? A larger SG will tend to have a larger total amount of salvage, but unless they choose to only let a few members actually use it, they also have a larger member-base to divide the salvage (buffs) among.
Larger SGs may have an easier time combining "scraps" from several members (1 Body Armor Fragment from player A, 1 EChip from player B...), but that wouldn't seem to be a huge advantage.
but it is. and the point still stands, because the larger sg's have a slight advantage (from the points you mentioned), while smaller sg's have no advantage
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Multiple empowerment stations will stack the buffs that are offered (by design). If we made the buffs as good as players "expect" right out the gate, they'd be WAY too good when stacked.
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Are you serious? You do realize this provides nothing (by design) to a resource strapped, small SG, while providing a large, organized PvP, who can farm a single av for a week and a half, a huge advantage for 15 mintes, aka 1 match.
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AVs are (with a few exceptions) guaranteed to drop a "special" salvage (Alien Tech, Spells of Power...). There are no empowerment recipes that use these.
AVs also have a chance to drop "regular" salvage, but it seems to me that farming AVs would be one of the worst possible ways to gather salvage for empowerment buffs.
So while there are reasons to dislike the way empowerment buffs are set up, this is not one of them.
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Well, then replace "farm av's" with whatever activity is most likely to drop salvage. ::EyeRoll::
like "playing the game"
One thing no one mentioned that also makes no sense is with the 15 minute timer and them being stackable taking the time to go around to each station will whittle the time down to nothing. So stacking the buffs is pointless because it only waste time.
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To you guys the buff isn't worthwhile (too low, doesn't last long enough, too expensive when stacked), and that's fine. For us it's a buff we didn't have before, and if we're smart about when/how we use it...
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I understand you're trying to be grateful, and that's an excellent attitude, but as they're currently implemented, these stations do nothing but offer false hope.
The buffs as they stand are too weak to make any sort of tangible difference in a battle. You can give yourself 5% resistance to one damage type, about 2.5% increase in speed, or some small amount of resistance to a specific type of mez (which only affects the duration of the mez, not the magnitude).
One application of any of these "buffs" is completely unnoticable, but multiple applications would be too costly to be worthwhile, and the stacking ability doesn't even work.
I've got my fingers crossed that Positron is remembering an old design of the Empowerment stations that allowed stacking, but was later scrapped in favor of the temp power idea. Temp powers are preferable because they'll persist for the specified period of in-game time even through death. Maybe the first design had powers "cast" on you when you spent the salvage, which would necessitate the lower individual values. "Cast" buffs from different sources (like multiple characters or multiple empowerment stations) can stack with each other. Hopefully this is the case, and the buff values just need to be changed to non-stacking strength.
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As sarcastic as I was before, the idea that work is fun in a video game is piss poor and 20 years out of date, yet its a repeated mistake and why video games, and specifically MMOs can't advance. And why games that are so bogged down in minutia like CoH is will never appeal to the masses.
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You said a mouthful right there Circ.
A game should be so blindingly fun you can't stop playing it... We all have plenty of work to do at WORK (or school)... we don't need a game to simulate WORK for us.
F
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plus the salvage cost of FIVE of the 3rd tier empowerment stations
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WHOA. I just reread what Positron said. Multiple stations will stack? So to stack the buffs, you have to have more than one STATION?
... I don't know what to say.
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Well, I know a few things you could say. One in particular is two words that start with B and S.