Maybe it's been this way for a while, and I just noticed it today, but...
Empowerment buffs shut down in PvP zones?
EDIT: Ah...correction. There's just a long down-time on the buffs when you're rezzed.
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Pardon me for being blunt...
Why do so many people think Empowerment Stations suck?
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To answer the original question, I do not use them because the duration is too short for whatever task I might actually need the buff for. If I am just doing regular missions, they aren't difficult enough to need the buff, and I could actually be out fighting and earning xp during the time it takes to craft the buff.
If I'm doing something that would warrant the time it takes to buff, say an ITF where I might want lethal resistance, increase attack speed, disorient resistance (for Rom's rez), +recovery, negative energy resistance, and whatever else looks good, after I take the time to craft all of these, then travel to Cimerora and get on a team (because mixed faction teams can't invite you when you're in a base), and maybe you need some more people for your team, and then you get started, you've used up that time on your buff.
If the duration was increased to four hours, it would cover your time to build your task force and travel where you need to go, plus the majority of the task forces in the game.
If the buff was changed to real time as opposed to in-game time, I don't see how this would be overpowered compared to the buffs as they are now. Lowering the effectiveness of the buffs to compensate for the longer period would be a poor answer and not convince more people to use them, I don't think. Perhaps raising the cost of salvage to balance the longer duration would be one way to go. As someone else here said, if one truly sees a benefit, they will pay no matter what the cost.
Now, maybe this will have a negative effect on PvP. I don't PvP often and am certainly no expert. I know PvPers who build the perception buff and some others, and extending the duration would certainly affect PvP. However, access to these buffs is restricted only by your SuperGroup's ability to put the stations in and collect and distribute salvage, which means people have an even starting point for this.
Furthermore, in PvP, if your base has a functioning medbay, you can very quickly jump to base for some empowerment buffs.
I have, at least once, intentionally self-droned as the fastest way to get to my base. I then exit via the base portal, get droned again, and hit the hospital fully buffed.
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To answer the original question, I do not use them because the duration is too short for whatever task I might actually need the buff for.
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Are you saying this about the actual 1 hour buff? or the 15 minutes it claims?
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... then travel to Cimerora and get on a team ...
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The inability to use any base resource on a mixed team is certainly a drawback. (if we ever get Market interfaces in the base, then this will become an even bigger issue.)
BUT... have you ever tried "we have all 8? can I take a moment to teleport to my base and buff up first?" If you porter (or rez) there and use the base portal to exit, you'll return to Cimerora without having to go thru the other zones. Doesn't help that it's only an hour, though, and the TF is longer, bringing me to...
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If the duration was increased to four hours, it would cover your time to build your task force and travel where you need to go, plus the majority of the task forces in the game.
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What if the duration could be made dynamic? What if Empowerment buffs were keyed to "as long as you're on the Task Force team", would that be good? Would it be too tough to balance with non-TF durations? (ie: would we need a whole different list of TF-based buffs?)
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To answer the original question, I do not use them because the duration is too short for whatever task I might actually need the buff for.
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Are you saying this about the actual 1 hour buff? or the 15 minutes it claims?
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... then travel to Cimerora and get on a team ...
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The inability to use any base resource on a mixed team is certainly a drawback. (if we ever get Market interfaces in the base, then this will become an even bigger issue.)
BUT... have you ever tried "we have all 8? can I take a moment to teleport to my base and buff up first?" If you porter (or rez) there and use the base portal to exit, you'll return to Cimerora without having to go thru the other zones. Doesn't help that it's only an hour, though, and the TF is longer, bringing me to...
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If the duration was increased to four hours, it would cover your time to build your task force and travel where you need to go, plus the majority of the task forces in the game.
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What if the duration could be made dynamic? What if Empowerment buffs were keyed to "as long as you're on the Task Force team", would that be good? Would it be too tough to balance with non-TF durations? (ie: would we need a whole different list of TF-based buffs?)
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I was talking about the one hour buff. One hour, if you are buffing yourself for a task force, is not long enough.
I run on PUG Task Forces and Strike Forces quite often, and I feel it's poor etiquette to tell a team, as soon as it's built, to hang on while I take 10 minutes to buff up. The buffs are usually a quality of life buff anyway, and will not make or break a Task Force. Working around the weakness they fill with inspirations, especially now that they can be combined, is usually just as easy.
If the buff could be made to last the duration of a task force, whether it be a 20 minute Katie Hannon with knockback protection, or a Shadow Shard psi resist that lasts for the two weeks you take to complete, that would be awesome and well worth any time and expense.
I believe there is some temporary powers in the game that use this already, the Hami temp power in the Lady Grey TF runs out at the conclusion of the Task Force, so maybe it's possible. I dont know how you distinguish a Task Force from a solo zone PvP situation, other than a different list of Task Force based-buffs. Im not a programmer so anything I offer there would be conjecture, but, if it was a Task Force buff, itd probably have to be crafted after the Task Force is started?
Or, what if they were all turned into clicky temporary powers like the Safeguard/Mayhem jetpack? You click it on when you enter a mission and click it off when you exit and travel to the next mission. If you die, you can click it back on after you rez. The one hour duration of actual use time could then be plenty of time.
Endurance cost would be an issue though. Could it be set to zero endurance cost?
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I run on PUG Task Forces and Strike Forces quite often, and I feel it's poor etiquette to tell a team, as soon as it's built, to hang on while I take 10 minutes to buff up.
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you could craft the components ahead of time, and just need to click on a couple of buffs to get going. I've got a character with no Acrobatics at level 20 and I have a stash of Elements ready to go for KB protection before every Cap dash. but I digress.
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If the buff could be made to last the duration of a task force, whether it be a 20 minute Katie Hannon with knockback protection, or a Shadow Shard psi resist that lasts for the two weeks you take to complete, that would be awesome and well worth any time and expense.
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Im not a programmer so anything I offer there would be conjecture, but, if it was a Task Force buff, itd probably have to be crafted after the Task Force is started?
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I bet it would be possible to have the system know if you're in TF Mode. After all, it knows you're in TF Mode when someone tries to invite you to a team, or a few other actions. So a recipe you can only craft while on a TF doesn't seem surprising.
What I was pondering with the "is it worth it" would really be the question of comparing to the other recipes.
Is it worth having a 2nd type of Lethal Resist recipe that's only usable on a TF and has an indefinite TF duration? How do you distinguish the two? Do you give them different costs?
Or would it be OK to just scrap the whole Empowerment 1 hour setup and change the whole station over to only work on a TF for the duration of a TF? Is the benefit of a TF-based buff system really worth losing the little time people do use an Empowerment station now? How does this compare to simply fixing the ability to hit your base on those 2 co-op TFs?
I feel like the TF-buff idea is the type of thing they should have thought of originally and it may be of little benefit for the effort to redesign into it now.
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Or, what if they were all turned into clicky temporary powers like the Safeguard/Mayhem jetpack? You click it on when you enter a mission and click it off when you exit and travel to the next mission. If you die, you can click it back on after you rez. The one hour duration of actual use time could then be plenty of time.
Endurance cost would be an issue though. Could it be set to zero endurance cost?
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I'll take the easy question first: Hide is a toggle power with zero end cost.
But there's also things like animation and activation times, which means a lot of coding time on these which may nix that idea.
Also, it creates a rather unfair balance that people with mez protection get a better benefit from these powers than people without. Consider how Empowerment KB Protection is actually better as an auto than Acrobatics. (Heck, I know people who respec'd out of Reflexes because of the need to keep clicking Practiced Brawler back on.)
*adding* click/toggle temp powers in the station may be very nice. Such as Heal-Other. or a temp version of Recall Friend. but changing over the nature of the buffs we alread have just doesn't seem like the heart of what makes those buffs weak. Would anyone suggest Fortitude should become a Toggle created by an Empath? It's just a whole different feel for a "buff".
I don't think it's a good idea. The idea I like the most is turning it into a click temp power on a timer, so you can turn it on and off when you want, and after an hour it burns up. I would build these all the time in this case.
What would be interesting to me is to change them to inspirations with the same effects, though perhaps in this case reduce them back to a 15 minute duration, or honestly maybe even 10 or 5, since you could activate them when you wish. This would also let you to store them, in the inspiration bins, and trade them to your comrades as needed, heck even sell them on the market. This might also warrant increasing the components needed to make them, or perhaps not with the decreased duration.
I would like to see numbers on how often these are currently used. I would also like to see a breakdown of how often they are used in PvE and in PvP, though that might be difficult to discern through datamining. I think making them into inspirations would definitely increase their use in PvE dramatically.
How would the timing of an inspiration help?
I'm considering something like a buff to one type of Resistance. For a 15 minute duration, you're looking at a benefit to a significant part of a mission, not just a single mob that starts to beat you down and you need 30 seconds of help. At that point, does a few seconds here or there affect the way this is used?
Besides, I'd rather carry 6 Ruggeds to buff any type of Res than to fill 6 slots with effects that each only work on one type.
It's unknown if inspirations could be recoded so the buff lasts through death, which is a key piece of the usefulness of the current powers on the station.
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Pardon me for being blunt...
Why do so many people think Empowerment Stations suck?
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Why? Because they are trying to do two things at once instead of one at a time - 1) making a resource sink, and 2) pretending some lame buffs are uber to be worth great costs.
To the devs : please don't assume your players are stupid. When something isn't worth it, *most* people tend not to do it. Examples : empowerment buffs, fighting Paladin in KR, killing malta turrets, non badge hunters going for the sg Combat Log, secured plots (lol), etc. etc. etc.
The empowerment buffs is a joke, we know it, they know it. Unfortunately, their data mining is going to show quite a lot of use because people are crafting KB buffs and burning it repeatedly and over and over in order to farm for the Fabricator badge. Great resource sink and scam, by the way.
The only thing worse than devs making bad decisions is the hoard of fanboys and bootlickers that keep cheering them on.
You make a good point about going in 2 directions at once, but I think the term "sink" is a little too harsh here.
This isn't really a way to drain Base Salvage out of the system (the way something like the market sales tax drains out Inf). It's more of a way to let everyone use Base Salvage since crafting opportunities are few and far between.
Maybe "outlet" is more appropriate.
and I do think it's a good idea to have something that puts that Base Salvage to use. We all have it, we don't use it, it might follow that we're dying to spend it. We just need something worth spending it on.
I wonder if there's some datamining they can do with IOs and Set Bonuses to see what types of buffs people want. Empowerment overlaps a lot of set bonuses, like +Move, +Res, +Recovery. Which bonuses do people go after the most?
What bonuses that are missing from the Station are people using? For example, is +HoldDuration popular as a set bonus? If so, would it be popular on a Station?
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How would the timing of an inspiration help?
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The inspiration would allow it to be used when you needed it, rather than crafting it and potentially wasting it. It would also give you a finite amount to be able to carry, and force a choice of what resources to give up in order to put it in the tray. Being an inspiration instead of a temp power would also allow you to craft and sell and/or store them, which would in turn bring more value to base salvage. Its a trade off, certainly, but I for one would be way more likely to put them to use in this format.
The duration I am not sure about. I would personally still craft and use 'Empowerment Inspirations" for even a five minute duration, but others might not appreciate such a drastic change from their current duration.
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You could craft it ahead of time and store it for when you need it.
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yes, that's the mechanic of it, but still not explaining the benefits.
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Or craft and use one now, and have another waiting for when it wears off.
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OK, now THAT's a good reason.
But it's a benefit geared to people who already craft these and want it to be easier to craft more of them. That doesn't help convince people to craft them in the first place. If I see a power as useless, I'm sure not crafting a backup copy of it, I'm not even crafting the copy to use now.
So what's the bigger problem here? The general uselessness of the table, or making it more convenient for the few recipes that people like to use? and should both parts be fixed at once, or just prioritize one of them and get coding time for other things?
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Honestly, if they changed them to be that way, I would start using the Empowerment stations for some of those buffs. No question about it. Whereas now, I actually kind of feel ashamed for having crafted the station in the first place since it never gets used.