Rethinking Ship Buffs

[DavionFuxa]

I personally hate Ship Buffs but I figure they are probably in because they benefit Turbine so I don't expect to see them going anytime soon. I do however think they should be up for reworking because there are some ways they might be improved to make the game experience more enjoyable. These suggestions are a little different from the other thread in that I'm mostly looking to make suggestions to address the problem of them making earlier game content to easy and negating the use of House P or House J buffs which are now less important.

Some may argue that all content is trivial if you know it but in my opinion, a lot of the low level content becomes trivial regardless if you have a full slew of ship buffs on you. I believe it degrades the experience of low level quests for new players, makes the game too easy at the low levels, and ultimately it creates a mindset that you should have shipbuffs before entering every quest 1-20.

Probably not everything can be fixed but some things can be improved. Specifically I think for quests like Proof is in the Poison and Taming the Flames one can argue that it is slightly important. Remember when you had Taming the Flames at level 6 for example? I doubt anyone in the right mind can call the quest hard now due to a 30 Fire Resist. However, I'm pretty sure it was raised to level 7 because of the difficulty of the quest including the damage inflicted from other elements.

So without further ado, here is some ideas I'm thinking about. Note as well that I wouldn't necessarily consider implementing ALL my suggestions but some like the first 2 listed may have some synergies in how they are implemented-

- Level requirement to use Buffs -
Specifically, if you can't get your 10 Acid Resistance in Proof is in the Posion, your going to need either Resist Energy: Acid Pots, or the Resist Energy buff from a player, House P Favor, House J favor, or the Protection from Energy Spell - or a hell of a lot of curatives. Thus your establishing the previous difficulty that the quest entailed - and also enforcing some learning on the part of the player of the importance of preparation for a hard quest.

I would go further and say that you should make all of the ship buffs the same requirement as well, even if the incremental buffs like 10, 20, and 30 resists. This would encourage people to seek favor from House P and House J at earlier levels (encouraging people to buy Delera's, Tangleroot, Carnival, and the Ruins of Threnal perhaps as well).

If I was to give a level to suggest, I would go with level 11 - when you get your 30 point Resists, at least for the Resistance Shrines. For the Stat shrines I would give them a level requirement as well but I'm not exactly sure what a good level for them would be; all I can say is they should be high enough that you can't use them in a quest like Tear of Dhakaan or other quests where a stat score for a Rune would be important. For the others like the Npcs and Training Dummy you might allow those at any level since they provide a little less game impacting luxury.

Now, if you have level requirements but have them different for each buff, that can work too - especially if you couple them with the next selection. For example, you might make the 10 point Resistance shrines accessible to anyone (or really low leveled characters) and therefore at lower levels you could enjoy a little benefit from the shrines but not too much. Then as you level up you could get access to the 20 point and 30 point Resistance shrines. This may also encourage people to have more then just 30 point Resistance shrines on their ships as well.

- Different Times on Different Buffs -
Someone will probably hate me for saying this but you should consider decreasing the time for some of the buffs. Specifically, if you don't' consider the level requirements above, if you enter Proof is in the Poison but with a significantly reduced time on your Ship Resistance buffs - your going to probably run out of time halfway through the quest.

What I'm basically talking about here is that you could have the 10 Resistance shrines having a far lower time when you get them. You can complete most quests easily enough before they expire but those tough ones where the quest is longer and the buffs more crucial it will require people to think about bringing or loading Resist Energy for later on or pots or what not. Additionally, if the House J and P Resistances last longer then people will likely consider opting for those buffs.

Then of course as you get more powerful Shrines, the buffs last longer (since the quest normally last longer). At higher levels it will allow the spellcasters to save their mana for other things and if you don't have the longer lasting shrine buffs then it will encourage people to grind out renown for their guilds.

In regards to the times I would think that the 10 Resistance Point Shrines should last maybe 20 minutes at most (10 or 15 preferably) while 20 Resistance Point Shrines should last a bit longer (but not as long as the House P or House J buffs might) and the 30 Resistance Point Shrines lasting the longest, either at the current 1 hour or longer perhaps. Other buffs like the Npc ones should probably be the same time as the 30 Point ones, and the 2 stat shrines as well. The 1 stat shrine I would say should also last an hour as I really think the core of this suggestion is focused on the ship resistance buffs more then anything else.

- A Complete Rework of the Resistance Buffs -
Perhaps something that might be considered is changing the resistance buffs to perhaps be a percentage reduction instead of the point reduction? If I take x% less damage from element for example, like Lightening - that Kobold Shaman is still going to do damage as is the fire damage from the Kobold Thrower or what not. This might however make resistances a little too powerful later on because all of a sudden you could have a 30 point Resist Energy Cast on you with a little percentage of damage also getting reduced. However, I personally think it might be a good idea because it turns the Ship Buffs into more of a luxury then a need.

I'm not sure if it is possible but you could also perhaps make it stack with Resist Energy and the like. That could also perhaps work in that you could have 30 points of Resist Energy stacked with a few sparse points on a ship buffs for a higher point resist. In my opinion that should be up for consideration because it might make some of the Barbarian, Monk, and Ranger Enhancement worth considering if they did that - one of the reason we have so many useless enhancements is because there is something better they negates spending anything in them.

*****

Mostly, I'm writing this all out because I think the low level use of the Ship Buffs should be addressed and that was my key focus for starting this thread. I do however have an idea in regards to doing something about ship buffs that might make people less inclined to hold up groups so it is as follows after this paragraph, and one more idea that could be considered for older players-

*****

- You know how Rest Shrines in Casual and Normal require you to wait 5 minutes and 15 minutes? -
Why not make it so that you have to wait to reuse ship buffs? If people are less encouraged to use ship buffs then they may not hold people up in a group to use them. They may only use them as well for guild runs which I would personally like to see happen to them. Then for the random pick up group people will just be more inclined to skip the buffs.

This of course should apply however to only specific shrines and probably not the NPCs. The Experience shrine for example should not have a timer set on it and the Training Dummy already has a deterrent to its use in the form of time (though I wouldn't mind seeing it changed from a target with HP to take down to a target that you simple hit x times or for x minutes before it is knocked down).

If you make them last until log out like what the other thread is suggesting then this idea will of course hold less merit. However, if Turbine will not consider implementing the ideas in the other thread then perhaps this idea might work instead.

As for the time duration I would say that they should be short enough that you might consider using them twice in a long gaming session, but only once in a short duration. I would say they should be reusable within 5 or 6 hours after being used.

- An Earned Luxury for the TR or player who earns X amount of Overall Favor -
One last idea to consider is to make it so that with some of the above requirements, they can be bypassed by older players and turned into an earned luxury. I would personally be against it but if a TR character wants to bulldoze through content then maybe let him get his 30 point resistance shrine at level 1 on or allow the character that earns a certain amount of favor to do so with newly made characters on the server.

While the quests would probably still be completed easily enough, at least this way a new players doesn't get access to high powered resists and gets to learn the hard way about the importance of resists. I would however only suggest this if changing the ship buffs would draw dissatisfaction from a lot of players.

*****

One last note as well about my ideas. The times I'm suggesting are completely negotiable, so if you like the idea but thin I got some times wrong or in the case of liking the idea of changing the Resistance Shrines from a Point status to a resistance percentage and have an idea of a number then feel free to post a suggestion to what you think it should be.

[grodon9999]

TLR . . .

I would like to see the following reforms:

- Resist shrines should scale to your level. Level 30 resists on Korthos are absurdly over-powered.

- All buffs should last 8 hours or until death.

[Aganthor]

- Resist shrines should scale to your level. Level 30 resists on Korthos are absurdly over-powered.

This is really something that should be implemented.

[KillEveryone]

I think that ship buffs should automatically just be refreshed for the guild members once they exit the quest. If you die, they disappear until you finish the quest and exit, then they get refreshed.

I don't think that reducing ship buffs is necessary anyway. Those that earned them should be able to reap their rewards.

It is similar to how I have all my twink gear and when I run low level stuff with all my twink gear, I've earned that twink gear and can now more easily tear though quests than I did without that twink gear.

Low level content is easy enough without them and your idea seems to target the new players since you feel they make low level content trivial for the new player. Some of us know those quests already and ship buffs don't impact how easy they are all ready. Why should I be punished because you feel new players should have it more difficult.

I carry lots of pots and cookies(when they are in season) and even with just all my pots, low level content is still trivial. I do occasionally die but I'm trying something stupid.

Finally, it is just low level content. Anything that makes it faster to get through that stuff is fine by me. I want to get to the higher level stuff that I think is more fun. I don't care much for all those kobolds. They annoy me.

[somenewnoob]

Only change I would like to see if them not ticking in public areas. Other than that they are ok as they are. Could also get onboard with the resists scaling based on level.

[dotHackSign]

I agree that the resistances should probably scale to your level. It's a huge advantage for a new player if they join a high ranking guild and it puts any player who doesn't do the same at a large disadvantage at lower levels. That said, its awfully nice for TRs to help them run through the lower levels, though I suppose its really not that difficult in the first place depending on the player.

[Silverwren]

I think that ship buffs should automatically just be refreshed for the guild members once they exit the quest. If you die, they disappear until you finish the quest and exit, then they get refreshed.

Your suggestion would make guild air ships irrelevant, except for travel, and since almost every House has a teleportation device airships would no longer be needed at all. Personally, I don't want every guild buff applied to me. A fighter doesn't cast spells, so there is no need for the buff that helps improve the DC of casters. One only needs +2 to WIS if one is a cleric or monk. /not signed

As for the OP, much of what you suggest has merit, but I think it might be difficult and complicated to implement. You're asking for shrines to not only be able to tell what level toon is using it, but also to dispense buffs that vary in both duration and strength based on the level of said individual. I'm no programmer, but I'd bet that would be hard to achieve in a single shrine. More than likely, it would have to done with multiple shrines, and I can't see airships possessing 30-40 different shrines, each one dispensing different strength buffs for toons within a certain level range.

All that being said, if it could be done I'd sign it, at least the varying strength part anyway.

[DavionFuxa]

I don't think that reducing ship buffs is necessary anyway. Those that earned them should be able to reap their rewards.

It is similar to how I have all my twink gear and when I run low level stuff with all my twink gear, I've earned that twink gear and can now more easily tear though quests than I did without that twink gear.

First, I would say no, they are similar. Gear you acquire is different because you put in the effort to acquire them and are entitled to reap the benefits of them. Ship Buffs are something the guild you are in required and you may not have even contributed all that much. For newly generated characters that are simply added in to the guild, they haven't contributed anything yet reap the full benefits of those shrines - that's a far cry from your other character that can wield a Greensteel Great Axe at level 12 after having had to acquire all the ingredients to create it and upgrade it.

Second, while your gear does give you a tremendous advantage, it doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting killed. With the Ship Buffs however, you can enter a quest and quite often those Ship Buffs can literally prevent you from being killed. That's what makes Ship Buffs overpowered, they are usable straight from level 1 when they should have a level requirement just like your twink gear does.

Low level content is easy enough without them and your idea seems to target the new players since you feel they make low level content trivial for the new player. Some of us know those quests already and ship buffs don't impact how easy they are all ready. Why should I be punished because you feel new players should have it more difficult.

I carry lots of pots and cookies(when they are in season) and even with just all my pots, low level content is still trivial. I do occasionally die but I'm trying something stupid.

For one, it isn't really punishment for you if the content is already easy so that seems like a harsh term. For those quests where there is no impact it won't really matter to you. For those quests where the ship buffs do change the difficulty you'll know what to do to prepare for them. It just takes an easy button away from you and forces you to have to buy your Resist Energy: Acid Potions or make use of your House P or House J Favor to get certain quests done.

Finally, it is just low level content. Anything that makes it faster to get through that stuff is fine by me. I want to get to the higher level stuff that I think is more fun. I don't care much for all those kobolds. They annoy me.

I like getting through the earlier levels too, but I don't necessarily want to do it at the expensive of something else in the game. Low level content perhaps isn't as important but new players will always go through that content first and it is what prepares them later on in the game. If they aren't prepared then the game becomes that much harder for them at the harder levels That annoys me.

As for the OP, much of what you suggest has merit, but I think it might be difficult and complicated to implement. You're asking for shrines to not only be able to tell what level toon is using it, but also to dispense buffs that vary in both duration and strength based on the level of said individual. I'm no programmer, but I'd bet that would be hard to achieve in a single shrine. More than likely, it would have to done with multiple shrines, and I can't see airships possessing 30-40 different shrines, each one dispensing different strength buffs for toons within a certain level range.

Not everything has to be implemented but I wouldn't think some of what I suggested could be hard to implement. I'm no programmer either but I can tell that certain codes won't be that difficult to adjust or add too. Times can easily be changed, they just need to adjust the time value for certain groups of shrines instead of having them all the same value (this may require them to create addition code instead of using the same one but that's just additional pathing). As for coding level requirements I don't see that much of an issue; whenever someone clicks on a shrine the shrine has two initial answers - the first answer from the shrine is if you don't meet or exceed the level requirement, you don't get the buff and you get a message saying you don't; the second answer would be that it answers back with the type of buff it provides. Now, changing what the shrine might answer back depending on your level wasn't really what I was talking about but that's actually something they could program it to do.

Personally I think it would be cool if you had a level 5, 10, and 11 characters click on a Greater Fire Resistance shrine, only to have the level 5 character refused, the level 10 character get a 20 point Fire Resist, and the level 11 get a 30 point Fire Resist. I also know that they have done similar code for example with the Relic of Sovereign Past Quest and a characters Social Skills. There your character would talk to King Dolgrim Nightforge and you would get 3 options depending on the social skill you use and its current rank at the time you talk to the King. Those options of course were - You would fight the King, you would fight the Kings Guards, or you wouldn't fight the King at all. I'm confident they can easily come up with something similar if they went this route with the shrines.

However, what I was more or less suggesting was instead of the above - you can put on a Lesser, Regular, or Greater Resistance Shrine for your guild to use if you have access to more then just one type. IE, you could put a Lesser Acid Resistance Shrine, a Cold Resistance Shrine, and a Greater Fire Resistance Shrine on your guild Ship. If a level 1 character, a level 7 character, and a level 20 character on a ship; the level 1 character can't use any of the resistance shrines at all since he doesn't meet the level requirements for any of them, the level 9 character all but the Greater Fire Resistance shrine, and the level 20 can use all 3. However, the level 20 who uses the Lesser Acid or Cold shrines will only get a 10 Acid point and 20 Cold point resistance for using them.

Now, I don't know how their code is structured but really there is a lot of stuff you can do with code. They could have it laid out so that one of the above ideas is easier to adjust to then the other and would require little work. However, I'm confident they could code either to work regardless of how the code is now.

[KillEveryone]

Your suggestion would make guild air ships irrelevant, except for travel, and since almost every House has a teleportation device airships would no longer be needed at all. Personally, I don't want every guild buff applied to me. A fighter doesn't cast spells, so there is no need for the buff that helps improve the DC of casters. One only needs +2 to WIS if one is a cleric or monk. /not signed

Actually, you would still need the ship so that the game needs to know what buffs to apply to you and your guildies.

It could also be worked to only apply the buffs that you gathered before you started questing so that if you don't take the caster DC, you won't get that reapplied.

It is also handy to have other things like the mailbox right next to the auctioneer as well as having the bank and all the Shroud alters.

[KillEveryone]

First, I would say no, they are similar. Gear you acquire is different because you put in the effort to acquire them and are entitled to reap the benefits of them. Ship Buffs are something the guild you are in required and you may not have even contributed all that much. For newly generated characters that are simply added in to the guild, they haven't contributed anything yet reap the full benefits of those shrines - that's a far cry from your other character that can wield a Greensteel Great Axe at level 12 after having had to acquire all the ingredients to create it and upgrade it.

So why punish me then? I may have joined Madborn when they were in the 60's but I have contributed a lot since then. Every end reward, unless there is a item that is just so rare and unique or a major menomonic, I take renoun. I've gathered quite a lot across the characters that I've run.

Second, while your gear does give you a tremendous advantage, it doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting killed. With the Ship Buffs however, you can enter a quest and quite often those Ship Buffs can literally prevent you from being killed. That's what makes Ship Buffs overpowered, they are usable straight from level 1 when they should have a level requirement just like your twink gear does.

WRONG!

I still die. Ship buffs can not preventing me from dying. I may be trying something that is beyond what my character is actually able to do but part of the fun is to see what your character limits are.

They most certainly cannot literally prevent you from being killed.

For one, it isn't really punishment for you if the content is already easy so that seems like a harsh term. For those quests where there is no impact it won't really matter to you. For those quests where the ship buffs do change the difficulty you'll know what to do to prepare for them. It just takes an easy button away from you and forces you to have to buy your Resist Energy: Acid Potions or make use of your House P or House J Favor to get certain quests done.

Yes you are punishing me. You are wanting to take away something away that I've contributed to have.

I like to have fun and play with the shinnies I've earned or helped earn. They are fine now.


I like getting through the earlier levels too, but I don't necessarily want to do it at the expensive of something else in the game. Low level content perhaps isn't as important but new players will always go through that content first and it is what prepares them later on in the game. If they aren't prepared then the game becomes that much harder for them at the harder levels That annoys me.

It isn't ship buffs that are not preparing players. We have all these bonuses to XP that getting a first life to cap now is much more quick than when I started and it was quite fast then.

Ship buffs are not preventing a player from learning the game. If a player isn't going to learn to carry pots, making ship buffs scale isn't going to help them learn.

Even still, if those ship buffs are helping those new players save some plat because they don't have to get certain resists, that is fine by me also. That helps them purchase other consumables that help way more at low level like a stack of CSW pots. Those things fill you up fast at that level and they can then at least afford to buy that item. I hated not being able to afford much when I started. It was a real PITA.

Not everything has to be implemented but I wouldn't think some of what I suggested could be hard to implement. I'm no programmer either but I can tell that certain codes won't be that difficult to adjust or add too. Times can easily be changed, they just need to adjust the time value for certain groups of shrines instead of having them all the same value (this may require them to create addition code instead of using the same one but that's just additional pathing). As for coding level requirements I don't see that much of an issue; whenever someone clicks on a shrine the shrine has two initial answers - the first answer from the shrine is if you don't meet or exceed the level requirement, you don't get the buff and you get a message saying you don't; the second answer would be that it answers back with the type of buff it provides. Now, changing what the shrine might answer back depending on your level wasn't really what I was talking about but that's actually something they could program it to do.

Personally I think it would be cool if you had a level 5, 10, and 11 characters click on a Greater Fire Resistance shrine, only to have the level 5 character refused, the level 10 character get a 20 point Fire Resist, and the level 11 get a 30 point Fire Resist. I also know that they have done similar code for example with the Relic of Sovereign Past Quest and a characters Social Skills. There your character would talk to King Dolgrim Nightforge and you would get 3 options depending on the social skill you use and its current rank at the time you talk to the King. Those options of course were - You would fight the King, you would fight the Kings Guards, or you wouldn't fight the King at all. I'm confident they can easily come up with something similar if they went this route with the shrines.

However, what I was more or less suggesting was instead of the above - you can put on a Lesser, Regular, or Greater Resistance Shrine for your guild to use if you have access to more then just one type. IE, you could put a Lesser Acid Resistance Shrine, a Cold Resistance Shrine, and a Greater Fire Resistance Shrine on your guild Ship. If a level 1 character, a level 7 character, and a level 20 character on a ship; the level 1 character can't use any of the resistance shrines at all since he doesn't meet the level requirements for any of them, the level 9 character all but the Greater Fire Resistance shrine, and the level 20 can use all 3. However, the level 20 who uses the Lesser Acid or Cold shrines will only get a 10 Acid point and 20 Cold point resistance for using them.

Now, I don't know how their code is structured but really there is a lot of stuff you can do with code. They could have it laid out so that one of the above ideas is easier to adjust to then the other and would require little work. However, I'm confident they could code either to work regardless of how the code is now.

I disagree with the rest but that is personal opinion on likes and dislikes and to each their own. I like my shinnies the way they are now.

[Falco_Easts]

Personally I don't think buffs should have been added but that ship has sailed. My thoughts are below.

All shrines should have a maximum level but the actual buff applied should be based off character level.

Stat shrines should be an enhancement bonus and and changed to a +8 maximum.

• Level 1 character using shrine would get +1
• Level 5 character using shrine would get +2
• Level 7 character using shrine would get +3
• Level 9 character using shrine would get +4
• Level 11 character using shrine would get +5
• Level 13 character using shrine would get +6
• Level 15 character using shrine would get +7
• Level 17 character using shrine would get +8

Being enhancement they would not stack with an equal or greater + item so only level 15+ characters can achieve stat bonus that gear cannot match.

Resist shrines should be applied at the same levels of a caster

• 10pt resist at levels 1-6
• 20pt resist at levels 7-10
• 30pt resists at levels 11+

You get the idea

[Talias006]

Personally I don't think buffs should have been added but that ship has sailed. My thoughts are below.

All shrines should have a maximum level but the actual buff applied should be based off character level.

Stat shrines should be an enhancement bonus and and changed to a +8 maximum.

• Level 1 character using shrine would get +1
• Level 5 character using shrine would get +2
• Level 7 character using shrine would get +3
• Level 9 character using shrine would get +4
• Level 11 character using shrine would get +5
• Level 13 character using shrine would get +6
• Level 15 character using shrine would get +7
• Level 17 character using shrine would get +8

Being enhancement they would not stack with an equal or greater + item so only level 15+ characters can achieve stat bonus that gear cannot match.

Resist shrines should be applied at the same levels of a caster

• 10pt resist at levels 1-6
• 20pt resist at levels 7-10
• 30pt resists at levels 11+

You get the idea

The reasoning behind the resists being scaled I like, but the scaling of stat bonuses doesn't work for me.
I do see that player cast resists are the same exact type as ship resists, and can see how you arrived to the exaggerated enhancement bonuses for stats.

But if you can scale the resists by level of character, you should then also be able to scale the artifact bonus to stats by level.
Keep them at the levels they can grow into, but separate the rising points to 7 and 13.
What I mean is this:

• +1 Artifact Stat bonus at levels 1 to 6
• +2 Artifact Stat bonus at levels 7 to 12
• +3 Artifact Stat bonus at levels 13+

[AestorTheKnight]

These suggestions that the Bonus's should scale with Character Level are entirely appropriate and are very clever and balanced suggestions. Kudos to the people here suggesting them. Cheers!

[DevHead]

/notsigned

If I choose to TR again, I want the process to be as painless as possible, which means getting the buffs that I earned by becoming a good enough player to join a higher level guild and work with them to level the guild for the buffs. Sure, you could scale the resists, but that's no different than getting the buff from a caster. Woo. No incentive beyond *maybe* mana conservation. No way will I *ever* sign to resist shrines being less than they currently are.

I do, however, like the idea of just making them last until logging off and/or death, with them being refreshed after quest completion in the case of a death.

[Dendrix]

Shorter duration buffs = people refresh between every quest = more wasted time.
Resule time on ship buffs = people will wait until they can use the buff = more wasted time. people won't skip the buffs.
Giving TR's benefits over newbies = makes TR even MORE powerful than newbies = bad idea.
Long reuse on shrines = stupid idea from start to finish. How do I know when I can reuse? so I waste time checking time and time again in the day.

Simple Fix:
Resist Shrines: Give +3 points per level of the shrine of "Artifact" Resist - so that it stacks with normal resist buffs, much like a fvs or an action boost stacks . Good for lowbies and highbies alike.

[GoRinNoSho]

Couple factors that I see.

Based on history:

Guild buffs showed up giving at first power guilds then others resists that nullify some basic effects of monsters.

Spell pass boosted basic effects of monsters. Higher lvl scorching rays now get past 30 fire, etc. This counteracts the guild buffs from a monster perspective. Players w/o these buffs are weakened and things like kolbold shamans become super effective against them.

There is a lot of complaints wrt grinding lower level content since players want to get back to the higher level/more interesting content faster. Bravery bonus is added as a result to lower the amount of time spent at lower levels on effectively any char with the right group.

This request is basically asking to slow the progress of characters to later quests. For the experienced player, the ship buffs allow you to throw caution to the wind and charge in on early levels. With that buff you don't have to maintain a wall between you and that shaman who can oneshot a no resist caster with a doublestrike lightning. The only way to get a no ML resist item is to farm sharn syndicate quests for BtA end rewards until one shows up and that is only a 10 resist item. Plus new f2p won't have that luxury.

The game has sped up progress for characters as a design to remove grind and just generally frustrating effects. The problem is people are looking at the pendulum in a local/recent light.

How many people actively stack blindness ward because blindness used to be permanent. Same with ability drain and level drain. When running to HoX and other subT quests countless players say "# neg" because they are not running a silver flame amulet. Now 1 of 2 items (mournlode armor is the 2nd) that directly counteract that debilitation. How many people stack stone to flesh for when that was permanent?

Experience penality for death. How hilarious would that be if you got kicked out of an Epic because you died and are no longer level 20? That would destroy Epic content.

These issues are in the same vein as the people who rely on ship buffs for fire resist in Shroud. Part 5 you won't have them, so do you preplan by having a 30 fire resist ring, cloak or gs item?

So wrt to weaken ship buffs. Please look more at the history of how things have changed. Remember when you were a low level char without equipment learning the game.

Plus personally I drop about 40k pp on maintaining ship buffs a week.

[Standal]

My number 1 wish on ship buffs is for the timer to freeze in public areas and/or be eliminated. As time sinks go, rebuffing is very unfun.

Stat shrines should be an enhancement bonus and and changed to a +8 maximum.

• Level 1 character using shrine would get +1
• Level 5 character using shrine would get +2
• Level 7 character using shrine would get +3
• Level 9 character using shrine would get +4
• Level 11 character using shrine would get +5
• Level 13 character using shrine would get +6
• Level 15 character using shrine would get +7
• Level 17 character using shrine would get +8

Being enhancement they would not stack with an equal or greater + item so only level 15+ characters can achieve stat bonus that gear cannot match.

This is grossly more OP at higher levels than what we have now IMO. You're basicly letting me slot best effect in slot on all gear slots. I don't need any stat enhancement gear at all. All toons will be running around with +8 to all stats at all time, loaded down with every possible guard/special effect.

Resist shrines should be applied at the same levels of a caster

• 10pt resist at levels 1-6
• 20pt resist at levels 7-10
• 30pt resists at levels 11+

You get the idea

I'm definitely behind this. It's a huge advantage to get all the resists you need even scaled to your level from a gear/sp/potion cost perspective. 30 resist at all levels is too OP.

[Dartwick]

The current situation is terrible - waiting for group members to run around in instacne alone is bad game design.

Probably the best solution to keep the airshi experience relevant is that you need to manually buff once a day.

[Silverwren]

Personally I think it would be cool if you had a level 5, 10, and 11 characters click on a Greater Fire Resistance shrine, only to have the level 5 character refused, the level 10 character get a 20 point Fire Resist, and the level 11 get a 30 point Fire Resist.

I could see this actually being a deterrent to joining or staying with a guild if you were a low level new player. Why bother to join or stay with a guild if you're below level six and aren't going to get anything out of gathering renown? Low level toons should also get benefits, just not as much as higher level toons, if your intention is to scale resistance buffs.

Actually, you would still need the ship so that the game needs to know what buffs to apply to you and your guildies.

No, you'd only need an area to purchase and display the buffs, such as the Guild tab. It would be viewable by all but could only be updated by officers. Not much fun if you ask me.

[DavionFuxa]

I could see this actually being a deterrent to joining or staying with a guild if you were a low level new player. Why bother to join or stay with a guild if you're below level six and aren't going to get anything out of gathering renown? Low level toons should also get benefits, just not as much as higher level toons, if your intention is to scale resistance buffs.(

Ignoring the who debate on joining a Guild for reasons besides the guild amenities that we have come to now find (IE, Guilds exist for you to join for the purpose of playing with like-minded players and Guild Amenities are Luxury's Debate), there are still reasons to join even without any of those shrines:

• You need to be in at least a level 1 Guild to use the equipment you find with Guild Augment Slots - else you can't use them until you do.
  You can use the airship for fast travel wherever there is an airship entrance.
  You are granted access to the Guild Vendors in House K at very low guild levels.

Additionally, I am not suggesting every single guild amenity require your player to be a certain minimum level. So if you are a low level character and you joining a guild just for its amenities, some of them would still be available to you like say the NPCs that give you buffs.