Empowerment Station buffs really this pathetic?

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That salvage might seem like a big pile now, but it will NOT last if you try to use these stations the way they currently are.

Small SGs need something they can use. That was what these were supposed to be. As it stands, a small SG will get zero worthwhile use out of them.

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While many would agree that the empowerment buffs are underwhelming, that doesn't mean that the empowerment stations are useless.

They do provide a very cheap and easy way for SGs to convert their raw salvage into components.
While this might not be the most exciting benefit, it's nothing to be scoffed at either.

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However, if you're going to argue that larger SGs have an easier time gathering salvage/player, then you'd have to come up with more than that "It's demonstrably so".

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Why don't we look at the point I was actually making:

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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? Yes, it is.

I am not talking about larger SGs. I am talking about small SGs, which is the exact group for which these stations were supposed to be particularly useful. They aren't.

For the stations to be made useful, the buffs would have to be boosted or made less expensive. Boosted would be the way to go, IMO, as you can't slice a single piece of Salvage into smaller increments.

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They do provide a very cheap and easy way for SGs to convert their raw salvage into components.

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With which they can then do nothing useful.

... unless they can already afford a workbench, which in turn means they can already afford power and control, which in turn means that a teleport pad is about the only useful thing to build. If you're a small SG, that is.

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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.

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balogna sandwich?

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However, if you're going to argue that larger SGs have an easier time gathering salvage/player, then you'd have to come up with more than that "It's demonstrably so".

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Why don't we look at the point I was actually making:

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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? Yes, it is.

I am not talking about larger SGs. I am talking about small SGs, which is the exact group for which these stations were supposed to be particularly useful. They aren't.

For the stations to be made useful, the buffs would have to be boosted or made less expensive. Boosted would be the way to go, IMO, as you can't slice a single piece of Salvage into smaller increments.

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Then take a moment to think about the point you're apparently trying to make.

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.

"limited amount of salvage" can be interpreted in two ways.

It could be salvage/player (and thus affordable buffs/player).
It doesn't seem obvious that small SGs would be "much more likely" to be low on this. This was covered above.

The second way is that smaller SGs will generally have a smaller total amount of salvage. This was also covered above:

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.

Unless the large SG decides to only have a small number of members use the salvage (and get the buffs), they are still limited by salvage/player.
So an SG of 20 could choose to only let 5 people use the salvage, thus giving those 5 people more buffs/player.
Is that the point you're trying to make?


If so, then why stop there?
A SG of 75 could get 75 HOs per Hamidon raid. This is what, enough to pretty much completely outfit almost two players per raid?
The best an SG of 4 could hope for is to get 4 HOs per raid.
Clearly HOs greatly favour large SGs.
Or do they?



If you want to argue that the empowerment buffs has a low benefit/(salvage) cost ratio, then I'm with you.
But keep the size of the SGs out of it, it's a red herring at best.

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The second way is that smaller SGs will generally have a smaller total amount of salvage.

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Thank you, that's what I meant.

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Is that the point you're trying to make?

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The point I have made is that these stations are useless for small SGs, their main intended beneficiaries.

If you're arguing that they're not much use for large SGs either, then I'm not about to disagree. I'm just taking the design statement from Posi and working with that.

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But keep the size of the SGs out of it, it's a red herring at best.

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Sorry, it's totally relevant. Did you not read the stickied discussion at the top of the page in which these additions were first announced?

FYI: these stations were supposed to be the addition that brought base functionality to small SGs. They are priced so that small SGs can afford them. They do not require power nor control, because small SGs cannot afford power or control.

To quote Positron directly:

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Everything in this issue will be "reasonably priced". It doesn't make sense for us to set out to help small supergroups and then charge large supergroup Prestige for the items.

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I think you've misread my perspective here completely. I'm not having a rant about large SGs. I'm pointing out that a design goal has, in the current iteration at least, failed completely.

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If you want to argue that the empowerment buffs has a low benefit/(salvage) cost ratio, then I'm with you.
But keep the size of the SGs out of it, it's a red herring at best.

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That's *mostly* true. What it leaves out is the station itself. (and I'll take for granted that people of all size SGs all want the same buffs.)

At 300 salvage, a SG of 75 will have to contribute 4 salvage each to build these.
A SG of 5 people will have to contrubute 60 salvage each to build these.

if I take my personal salvage to create buffs, I'm better off joining a large group of people than a small one, as my share of the station construction is less. assuming I'm not a freeloader.

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Well lets face it, they spend too much time worrying about what people can do at level 50, and not enough time worrying about the other 49 levels.

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Another mouthful said there, Circ. You are just full of zingers this week. Heh.

But you are absolutely right. I have said this before in a slightly different way: they worry too much about how the game plays at "cap" of a thing (capped resistance, capped defense, capped to-hit-buff, whatever) and spend all their time balancing the CAPS... when 99% of the players spend 99% of their play-time nowhere NEAR the cap.

So yes, "Oh if you hyper-stacked this stuff you would be so uber and powerful!", meanwhile, I'm sitting here with a +2% buff asking what the point is, since I have no way to stack it, and 2% is basically not noticeable in gameplay (and no, I'm not saying any of the buffs are +2%... it's just an example number).

F

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Large SGs are at an advantage because they have an easier time soloing?
Yeah, that makes sense.
It's so hard to find a good solo group these days.

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Well you can be snarky all you want... The reality is that if we assume soloing, a larger group has more people who can solo more enemies than a small group.

Let's take an extreme: An SG with 2 members, and one with 75 members (no alts, for simplicity). Let us assume that each player plays exactly 1 hour per day. Let us assume they solo 100% of the time (to get the best drops). Let us further assume that they fight about the same # of enemies per hour, and that this nets, just making up a number, 10 new salvage drops per hour. Each day, the 2-member SG gets 20 salvage drops. The 75-member gets 750. This is just with people soloing but being members of a large group.

You still going to maintain that a small group can get as many salvage bits as a large one? I don't see how that could be maintained with any claim to realism or honesty.

Beyond that, the more people, the more slavage total you have -- and the more total, the more likely you have enough different things in different "categories" of salvage to combine them. Certain types of mobs drop certain types of salvage. So if you are on a large team, you have more people doing different arcs, fighting different guys. The large group will be bringing in Crey, Rikti, Family, Arachnos, etc, drops all at once in a given week. The small group, both guys might be doing the Crey arc this week, meaning they will ONLY be getting whatever salvage the Crey drop, and NONE of the salvage dropped by Rikti, Arachnos, etc, etc. That means it'll take the smaller group more time to get combinable salvage dropes relative to the large ones.

Finally, although your per-kill rate might be higher for drops (as it certainly is for enhancements) soloing, the mob TYPE also affects the drop rate (as it does, also, for enhancements). I don't know what the salvage drop rate is, but the enhancement drop rate is about 12% for minions, 25% for LTs, and 66% for bosses. That means if you kille more bosses relative to minions, or more LTs, you get a higher drop rate (true for enhancements, and I believe, though I have not tracked it carefully, for salvage as well). In larger groups you get more LTs and more bosses, which means the chance a drop of any sort will occur is much higher, so even though you are splitting it with your team mates, the actual drops within a mission may go up, rather than down. This will depend, of course, on group size, type of mob, and especially difficulty setting.

All of that means that it really can't be true that a small group can "out salvage" a large one. Far from it... a large group can way WAY out-salvage a small one.

F

A number of people did a lot of testing when I7 was on the Training Room. None of that testing was done with this stacking in mind.
so... uh... what did our testing prove, exactly?
we seem to have neglected to evaluate any of the station's balance since no one was using these at full strength.

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However, if you're going to argue that larger SGs have an easier time gathering salvage/player, then you'd have to come up with more than that "It's demonstrably so".

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You might be somewhat on track if the TYPE of salvage dropped did not matter. Then maybe (maybe, but I would argue probably not), the guy on the 2-man SG might have the same total # of salvage pieces to his name as the guy on the 75-man SG.

The problem is, the total # of salvage items is not the only thing that matters. The types of items and how many you have of each does matter.

To see that this is so, imagine you have exactly 20 salvage. I use that number because it is the cap of a given type. Imagine that, just by some strange quirk of fate, you happen to have 20 Crey pistols, and zero of anything else, in your salvage. What can you make?

Odds are, not much... probably nothing. Because almost every schematic I can think of requires at least two kinds of salvage to create. So even though you have 20, it's not a very useful 20 just at the moment.

On the other hand, imagine you have 20 salvage, but you have 5 pistols, and 5 body armor, and 4...etc, etc. You get the idea. Now you might be able to craft something. But hold on... you'd be just as bad off if you had 1 each of 20 things, as if you had 20 of one thing, because most items take 2 or more of a given thing (sometimes into the double digits) to create. So what you really want is about a half-dozen of each thing.

If you are in a large group, it is MUCH easier to combine those 1- and 2-unit item types into a large amount. My 2 body armors and Fred's 3 body armors and Sally's 1 body armor combine to make 6, and you can make that item that takes 6 body armors. If you're going to have to rack all 6 up by yourself, and right now you just have one, well, given that there are about 100 different types of salvage drops out there, you could be waiting a very, very long time.

You keep looking at the raw total # of salvage components, but that is not the most important factor. What matters is how many you have of the relevant types for what you want to make. The BEST case scenario is to have 20 of every single kind of thing. A large SG could, perhaps, pool together to give one person 20 of everything, and you could get some serious crafting/empowring mojo going in such a case. A single person would not be able to do that, not even close... nor could a small group.

F

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At 300 salvage, a SG of 75 will have to contribute 4 salvage each to build these.
A SG of 5 people will have to contrubute 60 salvage each to build these.

if I take my personal salvage to create buffs, I'm better off joining a large group of people than a small one, as my share of the station construction is less. assuming I'm not a freeloader.

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Right.

And also, assuming you and your SG get along reasonably, etc, etc... You could mix and match salvage items each other need more easily.

"Hey Bob, do you have any Body Armors? I need just ONE more to make this thing..."

"Well, I can give you a few, but I need some blood samples to make something I want..."

"Oh hey, I have plenty of blood samples... let's swap."

More people in the group = more chances to swap around and get the right combo you need to construct whatever it is you're looking for, including empowerments.

F

The question the devs need to answer is:

What kind of usage are the players expected to do with these?

For exemple, players are probably not expected to use these every single missions. Then it becomes a permanent buff and they'd need to rebalance the entire game. So, how often are we expected to use these?

As players, we need to tell them what we expect too.
To me, rule #1 is: The buff needs to be worth the hastle.

Say, i'm by technician Naylor in deep Nerva, and i have a mission in the portal... I need a good buff to actually go back to my base, spend Salvage, and come back. For 10% run speed, i'm definitly not going.

So, what DO i expect as a player?

- I expect a buff that is as strong as using an inspiration, but lasts a lot longer (15 minutes).
- I expect to choose when this 15 minutes start (delayed activation with a click) so that i don't lose 75% of it in travelling and zoning.
- I expect it to cost about the salvage a player would get after 5 missions. That would mean, 1 buffed mission every 6 missions. Sounds about right, means you can collect during broker, get a buff for the mayhem. Collect during an arc, get a buff for the EB at the end.

Currently, it's yet another base feature that does nothing. Like having a teleporter that get's you nowhere closer to your mission then the hospital. Like having no IoP yet. Like a mission terminal that heroes can't use and only give 1 lvl 25 SF for villains.

There is currently NO reason to have a base. Zero.

I don't really have a problem with the buffs being passive temp powers that start counting down as soon as they're purchased. All I want is for them to be noticable.

I want Increase Run Speed to be as fast as unslotted Speed Boost.

I want the mez resistance to be as strong as Accelerate Metabolism.

I want the perception buff to be as strong as Tactics.

I want each damage resistance buff to be as good as one of the sonic shields.

I want an Endurance Recovery buff as strong as unslotted Stamina.

Maybe I'm a little greedy, but I thought the whole point of these buffs was to help in very specific ways as much as a defender can in a broader sense. The stations still wouldn't be as good as teaming with a defender, but they'd be worthwhile.

Just give them the strength they'd have if they were cast by a defender, but only let each empowerment buff count once (like it currently does).

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- I expect a buff that is as strong as using an inspiration, but lasts a lot longer (15 minutes).
- I expect to choose when this 15 minutes start (delayed activation with a click) so that i don't lose 75% of it in travelling and zoning.
- I expect it to cost about the salvage a player would get after 5 missions. That would mean, 1 buffed mission every 6 missions. Sounds about right, means you can collect during broker, get a buff for the mayhem. Collect during an arc, get a buff for the EB at the end.

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This is excellent. You are right on target. I'm not sure if "6" is the right number, but thereabouts (in the single digits anyway) sounds reasonable to me.

F

I'll just point the developers to my sig.

Meh. I'll take our ES out for the time being, then.

I would like to point out that we were fine before the ES's, we were fine with it and its smallish buff, and we'll be fine without it. I'd like to hold off on it to see what changes were made in the next week or three, and will ask the SG to evalutate the worth of the ES to the SG if/when some changes are made. At this time I have no suggestions for the Devs, as quite frankly, this isn't important enough to me (again, I see this like recycling cans or getting bottle deposits) or to the SG. It would be nice to have, especially since Defenders are in short supply in our group, and our schedules are a bit wierd (we don't get to team as often as we'd like), but it's very much not a make or break thing for us, nor was it ever considered a "must have" item like storage (gah - a SG bank would be nice, or the ability to email/wire money...oh well). So at this time the ES is a nice thing to have, but doesn't seem compelling enough to keep.

Great idea though, hope that everything gets ironed out in a way that's pleasing to both the players and the devs. I still like COH leaps and bounds over WoW

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... This isn't important enough to me (again, I see this like recycling cans or getting bottle deposits) or to the SG.

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Save the world! Recycle cans and bottles!!

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... This isn't important enough to me (again, I see this like recycling cans or getting bottle deposits) or to the SG.

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Save the world! Recycle cans and bottles!!

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Recycle jokes! One might become a catch-phrase!

Recycle TV shows! They could become movies!

lol

I agree with most of what people are saying about the Empowerment stations, but I have a few observations I would like to present.

1. Positron has mentioned the Invention system. So with us not knowing all the details on that system, we dont know how the Empowerment stations fit in with that system. Why have 2 systems that do the samething, so i see the Invention system more for temp powers that you have more control over and the Empowerment Stations for a short time buff. 15 mins does seem to short, but 30 mins does seem to long. I would like to see a 20-25 min duration on them.

2. Also why make anything to powerfull out of the gate, there would be more cries when they finally got nerfed over and over again because of them being gamebreaking in someway, but in their present state they need to be modified. Get rid of the stacking idea and increase there effectiveness.

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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?

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AHEM! ****INFO**** if u'd bothered to look most of these last 15 minutes. So if u were solo and decided to make a ham sammich mid round oops!

Loved em in test, Loved em live!

Don't feel bad i posted negatively about base prestige....i am so retarded. I didnt even give it a chance and in 3 days ive got over 100k piled for rent. Mt public apologies to all i pissed off.

I am dissapointed.

As someone who is a part of several small SGs, I find this "release" for small SGs to be horribly unbalanced and weak. I urge the Developers to reconsider - for all our sakes.

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AHEM! ****INFO**** if u'd bothered to look most of these last 15 minutes. So if u were solo and decided to make a ham sammich mid round oops!

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Yes, I know that they last 15 minutes. All of them do, by the way, not 'most of them' as you have it.

The Nemesis fight was in a building in Crey's Folly, about 300 yards from the point where the base teleporter drops you off. I chose it for that very reason. Quick to get to, so plenty of buff testing time.

It's not the duration that's the problem, it's the intensity. The buff had easily another 13 minutes left to run on it. You can check by right clicking on the icon in the top right of your screen.

Trust me, if I had gone to get a ham sandwich halfway through the testing and let the buff run out, I would have said so.

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Loved em in test, Loved em live!

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I'm not sure what you loved so much about a NONSTACKABLE 2.5% increase to run speed, or a 5% resistance to one type of damage. These things are broken right now.

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Base costs are one of those rare moments when both PvE and PvP are simultaneously screwed, leaving even the conspiracy theorists genuinely stumped.

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lol.


Signiture worthy!

I honestly don't know why Posi and company would go down the stackable road yet again. Isn't it obvious what a balancing nightmare stackable effects have become? As it is currently, some of the ES buffs are useful without stacking. My Corruptor is already a huge fan of the KB protection buff, nice and cheap as Lady already mentioned. But buffs like Smashing Resistance have shown to be of little value. I fought an EB with my Brute yesterday and purchased the Smashing and Lethal buffs beforehand. Let's just say I went in expecting to stand toe to toe with him and ended up dancing and floating like Sugar Ray Leonard.

They really need to abandon this stacking idea and make these buffs useful on their own. Allowing for stacking only broadens the range of benefit from these buffs, meaning the system as a whole will only benefit individuals sitting at the upper end of that spectrum.

The base economy as a whole is already inflated, please don't add Empowerment Stations to the list of disposable content.