I sent this into Mythic feedback. Ok I think we've covered this topic many times, so perhaps this is all useless, but go ahead and read my perspective on buffbots (coming from someone who has been using 2 accounts with many buffbots for several years, and has no intention of closing either account).

Feedback form (with a couple edits):

Please consider once again doing something about buffs/buffbots. I believe it has been one of the biggest downfalls of the game for many years even though it has brought extra money to DAOC through more subs, since it is almost completely necessary to run a buffbot.

This is coming from someone who owns and subscribes 2 accounts! Both of them have buffbots, and yet i'm writing to complain that the absolute necessity for buffs is STILL what ruins the game for me, even though I can easily log in both of my accounts at any time in order to buff myself. And more importantly, even if there was no need for a buffbot, I would not even consider unsubscribing one of my accounts. People have characters on both accounts that serve many purposes, not just for buffs. It is highly inaccurate to suggest that DAOC will lose half their subs if there was a proper system so that everyone had access to high level buffs. In fact I think only a very small portion of subs would be lost, and if it is done right, I think the number of extra subs could be even more.

Here's my idea, please take it into consideration.

Number 1 - There needs to be high level buffs that every character has access too, regardless of what zone they are in. But, it is still good if an active support class or a buffbot provides slightly better buffs. So I suggest giving people access to about +140 stats without the use of a buffbot (rather than the current +115ish). Then a buffbot provides the extra +15 (155 instead of 140) which will give people that extra edge in RvR.

Number 2 - Lets just say that the fallen heroes from long ago have come back in some sort of 'spirit form' in order to aid their allies. So although they cannot interfere with the 'physical world', they can still help by providing buffs. Ok, the lore part is not necessary but here is why it works well: People can call upon these fallen heroes by doing some sort of /pray command, but it takes a certain amount of time for the spirit buffer guy to hear them and respond to the call, say about 60 seconds (its absolutely crucial that the process takes a decent amount of time). The problem with very strong buff potions is that people can pop them almost immediately after being buff sheared, and even with a combat timer this can potentially effect RvR balance. But instead, someone is required to /pray without movement or combat for an entire 60 (or more) seconds in order to attain their npc buffs. This way, if someone dies in RvR and is resurrected, an active support class is far more useful than getting in a /pray position in the middle of a battlefield with a fight going on, and same thing goes if someone is buff sheared. This is why the timer must be 60 seconds, to maintain RvR (and PvE) balance as well as the usefulness of an active buffer.

The lore part of it is only to explain why/how these buff npc's can show up in any zone whatsoever and not be effected by whatever is going on around them. Or you implement cell phones, where you make long distance call to the King of the Realm requesting a buffbot, and then they send Druid/Shaman/Clerics (who wasn't good enough for actual RvR) to come on horseback in order to give you some buffs, but then if they die on their way back to the capital city or they forget to give you str/con or something, then they gotta send someone else to buff you and fire the other guy, and its just a big pain in the arse. It just makes more sense that you go into some prayer ritual thing and call upon some dead hero of the realm and then as long as you focus on that for a minute or so, they come and give you some +140 stat buffs that are concentration based and buff shearable.

Does this not seem like a good idea? I should mention it must also be very easy to implement, it would be pretty much the same coding for the existing buff npcs, except they have to look like ghosts, pop up out of no where, and give decent quality buffs.

 

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why don't they give everyone vamp stat buffs.... less then a capped bots.. but ample for pve and rvr... unless you need the few extra for points to win..

 

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Personally, what I'd rather see is the buffs spread between all the visible classes. Give each of the buff types to the class architypes that can use them least effectively solo, ie str & str/con to casters, haste, AF & acuity to healers, and dex & dex/qui to tanks. This spreads the burden of buffing out a bit between the visible classes and brings buffs back somewhat to their original intent.

 

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They should've sorted this a long time ago, but Mythic has been too spineless to sort it.

Give players vamp stat buffs which provide 80% of the buffing power of current buffs. Turn shearing classes into debuffing classes. Give the old buffing classes new spells which provide the remaining 20% buffing power, group only and limited range. Separate out resurrection sickness and stat sickness, with stat sickness being an RvR only sickness lasting 30 seconds and can't be cured.

Chances of Mythic doing anything with buffs? Absolutely no chance.

See your idea is not bad but it takes way more work to implement, and requires an entire revamp of the buff system. Also I don't think it should be group and range limited. But I hope you can see why I suggested my idea.. because it should be very easy to implement, and it doesn't require tampering with the way other things work, you just have to insert a 60 second spell/command that summons a transparent buff npc, and they already have the code for buff npc's in the game. And again, making it take 60+ seconds to buff takes care of RvR balance issues. They could also make this buff npc give buffs that scale linearly with your level, so that people in Molvik for example, still get a bit of an extra edge from using their buffbots. Only potential RvR balance issue is that killing a groups main buffer class in a fight may or may not strip buffs from other players if the other players are using a buff npc rather than their groupmates buffs. But this is almost non-existant anyways since everyone already uses bots, and its stupid for your whole groups buffs to rely on the survivability of one of your Healers, this is why people already use buffbots all the time.

 

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I like the idea of praying to the spirits of the heroes of the past to gain an almost top end buff. I think buffbots have been one of the biggest problems with this game right since the start. The OP is correct in stating they are almost mandatory to participate. My Hunter can do a pretty decent job on self-buffing combined with a potion or two, but he is the exception. I presume at least one class in each realm has a comparable ability. I would like to see the (current) buff oriented classes given a reason to be more active rather than passive. If they were powerful in their own right and fun to play then they might see more use and people wouldn't feel cheated if the change made them a bit redundant.

Do I expect Mythic to do anything about it, no. Not a chance in hell, if they were going to do so it would have long since been done I think

 

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I'd imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to implement full buffs on players all the time. Or install a merchant with capped buffs tokens. I think they would have more subscribers if buff bots weren't required.

The main issue would be handling shears. And I don't think debuff only is the right way to tackle shears if vamp-like buffs were implemented for everyone. While the debuff component makes sense, the idea of shears would still need to exist. If someone were debuffed by a shear class then they would need to get hit with some sort of spell from a support class to cancel the shear effect. The shear effect would have to last a lengthy bit of time (assuming an entire fight) so 5-10 minutes. But support would have some sort of cure shear spell. Would be like a res effect. Similar to NS. Currently debuffs don't last a very long time. 1 minutes before resists are taken into account. Sometimes even less.

 

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it's way too late in the game and people have invested too much time into their buffbots.

Buffs never should have been so powerful, it defeats the purposes of spending spec points into your character and defeats the point of having different class/race when you can max the stats anyway.

This.

 

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I see this as a possible advantage. Way back in the day, maybe people had level 45 support classes used 100% for buffing and nothing else, because it was hard to level them to 50. My idea now is that just about everyone with 2 accounts has some active RvR characters and several PvE toons on both accounts, so maybe if it was in any way possible for them to log on just 1 account and get right into fighting, they might do that sometimes, and yet not go ahead and cancel their other account(s).

 

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