Group Buffing. doable/not doable?

[Knight05]

Is group buffing similar to rally ever going to be doable and if yes do you currently have plans or are you willing to discuss adding it in game? I personally would love to have items like megacharge shields or psionic shield aoe buff the whole group. I know someone might scream shields for all wtf? Exploit! A quick fix for that and items like that which would be unfair is to make it only aoe buffable when out of combat or to make it simply take like 6-8x the reactor jioce a single buff would.

Saves time..
Saved carpal tunnel...
Makes old people with bad memory who can't remember who they buffed and who they didn't lives easier.
Makers getting a lagged group or dc'd group or multiple members back on the fought quickly etc

I can't see any negatives personally only positives.

So how about it guys?

[Abysial]

Great ideas. Very modern thinking. However, the client would have a bit of a nervous melt down. The group buffs that are intended to happen quick and seamlessly already do.

The skills that are single buff like overcharge, Psi shield , etc are designed and balanced to be choices. You make them mass automated with huge power costs, you risk removing the players choice.

The game is designed for a single player to behind the controls of the ship making the choices. While many of our population use multiboxing tech, it is not intended or supported by the devs. Mass skill useage really only benifits the multiboxer.

The Above is my opinion only. I make my statements about the projects stance on multiboxer tech from their public posts. Edited July 4, 2013 by Abysial

[Knight05]

I cab see your point on the choice thing and the multobpxing stuff and appreciate your input but honestly I can't think of a situation where a player wouldn't want a megacharged shield or a dozen other sexy buffs. There's only a few I can think of that would be annoying one of which exists currently. Max rally can mask sigs on a tanking pw which is bad and can't be undone. And enviro shield can return energy damage via feedback etc which can heal certain mobs etc. Giving a player a way to right click active buffs to remove them would fix both problems.

And there is another desire for group buffing outside multi boxing. There is raids which I don't think anyone would turn down group buffs on. But I see both sides mine AND yours.

[Vitaes]

This wouldn't work for some buffs. Environmental Shield, for example, is somewhat level dependent. If someone in the group is too low a level for a particular level of E shield, they wouldn't get buffed. The overall idea is great, and I can say that from my experience in at least one other MMO I played for a long time, it was a real time saver. That game had many more buffs though.

 

Another possible way to look at doing this is with an area-wide buff, where everyone within a certain distance of the buffer gets buffed. This might not be hard to do, since the game already has AoE attack forms such as shield nova, shield sap and leech at lv 7.

[Abysial]

I can see both sides, and can fully support the idea. I've been playing MMOs of one form or another since 1997. I fully see what your saying.

That being said, I have to acknowledge that our biggest limitation isn't the ideas, knowledge or sheer will to make it happen, it's the technology the game was built with.

If I remember correctly, Earth and Beyond was built before or with very early versions the communication tech that allows games like Warcraft to have hundreds if not thousands of people in the same area without the server and client having massive meltdowns. We are fighting some of these ancient mechanics today.

Which brings up just how difficult it would be to implement this idea, since we can only add to the client, and can't chance the code, it would come down to tricking the client to make it happen (making a device to add the effect)

Maybe I've been watching too many Counting Cars episodes. But Earth and Beyond is like a 68 (pick awesome car of choice). You can clean it up,make sure the mechanicals are up to par. Give it a rocket paint job. But that's about it. The resources required to give it all the modern features of a 2014 model of same car just isn't worth the effort,

In the end? I personally prefer the Dev team to expend their resources building content I can chew through at my pace. The extra coincidence suggested would be awesome, but I play EnB for the awesome feelings it gives me. Extra time buffing is a small price to pay. ( Don't forget the automatic buffs just from grouping)

Once again, just my viewpoint. Not a dev or trained as one, but after 15 years of play experience I've realized what is important to game health.

Thanks for reading the wall of text. Good hunting!

[tootie]

Yea I was thinking how a single button push for Group Psionic Shield would be.

But I was informed that the energy use for such a group buff would be immense.

 

While out of combat use wouldn't be bad, IN-combat use may not be a good idea,

when you take into consideration that the JDs energy is life and the aggression they 

would receive would kill.