224 Void traces in one relic!

[Alcoholism]

6 minutes ago, (Xbox One)BULLS 0N PAR4DE said:

DE never said they were fixing the Double stack of any charm.

If you're referring to me - I was talking about this thread:

"Fixed Smeeta's Charm ‘Doubled Pickups and Affinity’ buff not working as intended and doubling a number of things that were unintended. It now properly doubles pickups: Resource, Health, Energy, Affinity, Credit and Ammo (previously it would)."

They clearly have not properly fixed the unintended buffs.

 

[ChuckMaverick]

6 minutes ago, Alcoholism said:

If you're referring to me - I was talking about this thread:

"Fixed Smeeta's Charm ‘Doubled Pickups and Affinity’ buff not working as intended and doubling a number of things that were unintended. It now properly doubles pickups: Resource, Health, Energy, Affinity, Credit and Ammo (previously it would)."

They clearly have not properly fixed the unintended buffs.

 

That fix was to stop it doubling the number of syndicate medallions and the like, not to fix multiple copies of the buff stacking.

[Alcoholism]

3 minutes ago, ChuckMaverick said:

That fix was to stop it doubling the number of syndicate medallions and the like, not to fix multiple copies of the buff stacking.

Yeah I can understand that - even though they don't specify this (and they should tbh). But that doesn't change the fact that having something stack on top of the other when it isn't even displayed in the HUD is an unintended mechanic. Something that hasn't been properly addressed and fixed. I mean I was expecting it to be fixed when I saw that in the hotfix notes.

[ChuckMaverick]

10 minutes ago, Alcoholism said:

Yeah I can understand that - even though they don't specify this (and they should tbh). But that doesn't change the fact that having something stack on top of the other when it isn't even displayed in the HUD is an unintended mechanic. Something that hasn't been properly addressed and fixed. I mean I was expecting it to be fixed when I saw that in the hotfix notes.

Well the fact that you can't tell which variety of the buff you have at all from the icon is poor UI design, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the double resource buff stacking was unintended.

[Alcoholism]

21 minutes ago, ChuckMaverick said:

that doesn't necessarily mean that the double resource buff stacking was unintended.

You're kidding right? Why do you think they nerfed the rare resource buff - because it was giving far more than was intended.
It's not just a UI oversight - if the buff icon on the HUD is overriding the previous buff, then what do you as the player expect to happen?
It's a design mechanic flaw that I am certain they will correct in time. Just like with the rare resource buff; people will whine and complain and not understand that getting the amount that was being buffed in that manner was completely ridiculous and made no sense at all in comparison to how you would normally obtain it.

[ChuckMaverick]

18 minutes ago, Alcoholism said:

You're kidding right? Why do you think they nerfed the rare resource buff - because it was giving far more than was intended.
It's not just a UI oversight - if the buff icon on the HUD is overriding the previous buff, then what do you as the player expect to happen?
It's a design mechanic flaw that I am certain they will correct in time. Just like with the rare resource buff; people will whine and complain and not understand that getting the amount that was being buffed in that manner was completely ridiculous and made no sense at all in comparison to how you would normally obtain it.

If the buff icon on the UI overriding the previous one was meant to have the same impact on the buffs themselves, why give the resource doubling buff a 120 second duration in the first place, as it will never run its full duration?

[Alcoholism]

10 hours ago, ChuckMaverick said:

If the buff icon on the UI overriding the previous one was meant to have the same impact on the buffs themselves, why give the resource doubling buff a 120 second duration in the first place, as it will never run its full duration?

Exactly - you just pointed out one of the mechanical flaws.
The charm ability has a lot of different types of buffs, as you know, and not all of them have timers or the same timer duration. Due to all of these variable at work, it was only ever going to cause problems without proper testing and tweaking. For example they could have made it so a buff can't be cast until a previous buff had ended, except they couldn't because not all of the buffs have timers.
Seeing as they have been busy with a lot of other aspects in the game, it's fair to assume they just didn't have the time or resources to test this thoroughly.

If a buff is 120 seconds, you would assume that buff would continue to run until the end - mechanically it does, visual cue on HUD it doesn't.
If a buff is cast when another buff is active you would assume the previous buff would be overridden - mechanically it doesn't, visual cue on HUD it does.
Alternatively, if the same buff is cast when that buff is active, that buff should not be applied.
Alternatively, if a different buff to the current buff is cast, that buff may be applied and should show up next to the current buff visually (usually there should be a limit on how many buffs can be active at any given time)

Considering all the other buffs, (timers and non-timers) - you can see how this could be game breaking or would simply be a redundant pattern of events.
Another good example I can give you is the red crit buff, which can't be stacked - so why allow it to occur? Because the timer is only 30 seconds so it's not likely to happen?
It sounds more likely it is working unintentionally and as it has not really been brought to their attention much, they have decided to focus on more important aspects of the game.

I can wholeheartedly tell you - having the potential for a series of double drop/affinity buffs stacking (potentially being more powerful than a double resource/affinity boost which usually costs plat to acquire) makes no sense and is actually quite unbalanced considering other players may not be aware of it unlike ourselves. I don't think that is what DE intended to happen either.

[ChuckMaverick]

7 hours ago, Alcoholism said:

If a buff is 120 seconds, you would assume that buff would continue to run until the end - mechanically it does, visual cue on HUD it doesn't.

Absolutely, if you give a buff a specified duration, I expect it to run for that duration.

7 hours ago, Alcoholism said:

If a buff is cast when another buff is active you would assume the previous buff would be overridden - mechanically it doesn't, visual cue on HUD it does.

Not at all, I don't see why you would automatically assume that.

Given your two statement contradict each other, I'd apply Occam's Razor and choose to believe the first one as it's much more in line with my general experience of buffs within MMOs and doesn't imply the level of developer incompetence that the second would.

Given that DE have already had one pass at tweaking the mechanical affects of Charm and have chosen to leave the stacking buffs in place (don't kid yourself that they haven't noticed the many threads about it), I'd say it's reasonable to imply that it's working as intended.

On the other hand, there are valid reasons that the UI may be in its current state. Perhaps, as the buff represents 'good luck' you're not meant to know precisely which effect you have, just that you're temporarily 'lucky' as indicated by a four-leaf clover icon.

The chance of a resource buff double stacking, much less triple stacking, is really small and there's no guarantee that it will happen at a time that's useful to you. I wouldn't say it's overpowered or game breaking at all.

[-SR-Ahmed.Duke]

You made something out anf congratulations for that. But couldnt you just discuss or seek help from people using clan, alliance, region, relay chat sections? But no you had to publish it on the forums and I can see you've posted your video like 2-3 times already. This game has lost some many convenient features only due to this kinda behavior. When will we actually learn?

[ChuckMaverick]

9 hours ago, Alcoholism said:

I can wholeheartedly tell you - having the potential for a series of double drop/affinity buffs stacking (potentially being more powerful than a double resource/affinity boost which usually costs plat to acquire) makes no sense and is actually quite unbalanced considering other players may not be aware of it unlike ourselves. I don't think that is what DE intended to happen either.

So, I ran the numbers and here are the results...

In theory, given that the chance for a buff occurs once every 27 seconds, you could have five stacks of the double resource buff active at the same time giving 32x resources. However the chances of getting five double resource buffs in a row is ridiculously small, roughly one in 4.5 million.

Looking at all possible permutations for the previous five buff cycles and the relative probabilities of those occurring, the average resource gain from running a Charm Smeeta is 22.5%, and it only gets that high approximately two minutes into the mission, before that point your average resource gain is even lower.

Hardly overpowered, is it?

30 minutes ago, Dark_Prince_Duke said:

You made something out anf congratulations for that. But couldnt you just discuss or seek help from people using clan, alliance, region, relay chat sections? But no you had to publish it on the forums and I can see you've posted your video like 2-3 times already. This game has lost some many convenient features only due to this kinda behavior. When will we actually learn?

Really? Shh! I've found an exploit so let's keep quiet about it and we can benefit from it while the rest of the playerbase and DE is clueless.

As I've shown above, the effect really isn't that powerful and shouldn't be considered an exploit, in fact I believe it is completely working as intended.

Regardless, your attitude to abusing 'exploits' is toxic and harmful to game balance and the players as a whole.

[Alcoholism]

1 hour ago, ChuckMaverick said:

Not at all, I don't see why you would automatically assume that.

I'm not automatically assuming that, the HUD is telling me this and therefore we are to assume that is how it is supposed to function. Because that is what features on a HUD do, they give the player feedback.
If you haven't got evidence to the contrary then I don't see the logic in that statement. Only your theories of how buffs work in other MMOs, which is nothing special, plenty of people have that. If you said you had actual game development experience or studied game design then it would be a different story ;)

1 hour ago, ChuckMaverick said:

Given your two statement contradict each other

I'm not sure how - but seeing as you won't explain it I'm going to assume it to be the typical Strawman fallacy.

1 hour ago, ChuckMaverick said:

Given that DE have already had one pass at tweaking the mechanical affects of Charm and have chosen to leave the stacking buffs in place (don't kid yourself that they haven't noticed the many threads about it), I'd say it's reasonable to imply that it's working as intended.

One pass at tweaking? Do you even know how many times they've sat there with Kavat abilities trying to get them to work correctly? Little alone balance them? Why do you think it took so long for them to change the rare resource buff to have it work as intended? As I stated they have a lot on their plate. I am 100% certain they know about it and it is far more likely they have it as a lower level priority bug fix until they are certain they know what to do with it. Based on what you said before, all they did was stop syndicate medallions from doubling. How is that a pass at tweaking the mechanical "affects" of charm? More like "Oh yeah we should probably fix that seeing as it's moved up enough in our list of bug priorities and shouldn't be too difficult to fix".

2 hours ago, ChuckMaverick said:

On the other hand, there are valid reasons that the UI may be in its current state. Perhaps, as the buff represents 'good luck' you're not meant to know precisely which effect you have, just that you're temporarily 'lucky' as indicated by a four-leaf clover icon.

If they wanted to do that, then why have timers? Why even have an icon at all? Then the player definitely won't know, right? Surprise! You got a buff but you don't know what it is, why don't you try a whole bunch of different things and see which one you got? I really don't see how the whole "luck" design you're describing correlates to the buff mechanic. Icons on a HUD are there as visual feedback to tell the player what has occurred and it does that. However the duration on the timers are giving the player incorrect feedback when one is overriding the other. That is an important factor you're for some reason leaving out. Perhaps because it is something you can't deny and is the only real proof that it is not functioning as intended.

Seeing as we can't agree, I'm going to leave this conversation where it is.
I'm sure in time they will actually revisit the Charm ability and have it working as intended.

[ChuckMaverick]

49 minutes ago, Alcoholism said:

3 hours ago, ChuckMaverick said:

Given your two statement contradict each other

I'm not sure how - but seeing as you won't explain it I'm going to assume it to be the typical Strawman fallacy.

Really? You can't see the contradiction here...

11 hours ago, Alcoholism said:

If a buff is 120 seconds, you would assume that buff would continue to run until the end

 

11 hours ago, Alcoholism said:

If a buff is cast when another buff is active you would assume the previous buff would be overridden

When buffs are potentially applied every 27 seconds, how can those two statements not be contradictory?

I notice you've conveniently ignored my other post where I explained that even as it is currently working, Smeeta's Charm only gives an average 22.5% increase in resources and only that much after it has has almost two minutes to ramp up, and therefore it is not overpowered or unbalanced at all.

[-SR-Ahmed.Duke]

3 hours ago, ChuckMaverick said:

Really? Shh! I've found an exploit so let's keep quiet about it and we can benefit from it while the rest of the playerbase and DE is clueless.

As I've shown above, the effect really isn't that powerful and shouldn't be considered an exploit, in fact I believe it is completely working as intended.

Regardless, your attitude to abusing 'exploits' is toxic and harmful to game balance and the players as a whole.

And you are to decide all that by yourself. I think DE needs you in their team. Period.

Note: I hardly use smeetas.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Dark_Prince_Duke