City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Toggle buffs

Atilla_The_Pun

By Atilla_The_Pun,
Posted on: 2010-12-17 07:45 in Suggestions and Ideas

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordan_Yen View Post
I would like to respectfully ask that no one every say this. Ever.

There is another option besides "shut up and suck it up": discuss possible changes, evaluate the merits, work for change where practicable. Hence the point of the suggestions thread, no?

I think that Shark's statement was more in response to the contrary attitude someone else was displaying.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
There's prioritizing and - believe it or not - completely skipping buffs (depending on what they are) on some people. The people who complain about "having such a chore rebuffing" typically paint it like you have to give *everyone* every single buff every single time it comes up and that there's no time to do anything else. And that's just not true.
Yeah, that's exactly what I do if I'm ever caught playing kinetics on a team (only have a DP/Kin corr). When I play my FF/Eng defender (or more likely, my Sonic/Psi defender), designating time out to refresh my shields isn't a big deal for me as I learn to better allocate my time on those specific characters. It just takes an extra step of care so the buffs don't interfere with blasting.

Quote:
And with what you said earlier in this particular reply, that makes me lean a bit more toward the duration stacking - with "DR" in. I would, however, want to see two things (with a repeated call for a third: )

1. A warning as you get close to the DR limit. Let's call it, using FF, 3 bubbles, 10 minutes. I'd think of it with a color change on the buff icons, or a ring or something letting you know just where along the duration line you are.

2. Applying (for instance) a fourth bubble behaves just like trying to apply a second Mystic Fortune to someone - "Invalid," the power isn't fired off, END is not used until there's a "duration space" available. (This actually covers one of *my* concerns of END use, which is more a player psychology issue.)

3. Being able to see *only* the buffs you're giving - so you're not trying to reapply on someone else's buffs. That's been asked for for years.

Of course, all this brings another issue (at least if 3 isn't handled) of the UI clutter the game's had growing - but that's a whole other subject.
Those are particular concerns that are brought up by my suggestion. A simple UI solution that might look nice would be an EXP-bub type display (talking about the full/empty exp bub things that fill up as you gain exp by your status bars) around your buff divided into 4 sections. Each bub would be a fraction of x where x would be the maximum we'd want to set the stacking durations to be. You'd know which buffs are yours because it'd be the only one that would have that display (others' buffs would look like normal) and you'd know how close you are to maximum duration when all 4 bubs are filled.

Hopefully it wouldn't be obstructive. If it was small enough to ring around the buff icon in their display, or maybe a pie-section type brightening over the icon...

Anyway, yeah, as you think more on the idea, it starts getting more and more complex and difficult to implement. Hard enough stacking durations may not be supported by the game's system...